Is Tracing Art Bad? (And what to do if you can’t draw)

“I’d love to paint, but I can’t draw.”

I hear that more than almost anything else.

Someone told me recently that tracing is cheating. They felt pretty strong about it! One reader left a comment under this very article saying the idea of tracing “just feels wrong”. And yet I keep hearing from people who’d love to paint but say they can’t even draw a stick figure correctly. For them, tracing might be the very thing that makes painting possible.

So if you’ve been wondering whether you’re allowed to trace, let me put your mind at rest…

You are.

I’ve been teaching watercolors for over ten years, and tracing has been one of the fastest ways I know for someone who’s convinced they can’t draw to finish a painting they’re actually proud of.

Below I’ll explain why I encourage it, who else has done it (you’re in rather good company), the one thing tracing won’t do for you, and the four easy ways to get a drawing onto your paper.

Is tracing art bad or cheating?

No. Tracing art is not bad, and it isn’t cheating. It’s a way of getting an accurate outline onto your paper so you can spend your time on the painting. The only time it becomes a problem is when you trace someone else’s work and pass it off as your own.

This is my opinion, and not everyone shares it. It’s been a subject of debate for many years, and you’ll probably meet artists who feel quite strongly the other way.

But rather than having a fixed view of the morals of tracing, I think it’s more useful to ask what you’re actually trying to achieve?

If your goal is to draw freehand, then tracing alone probably isn’t going to help.

But if your goal is to paint watercolors… why would tracing be cheating exactly?

Cheating means breaking the rules of a game. And nobody’s handing out a prize for how perfectly you drew your pencil outline onto the paper. Once you’ve painted over it, nobody’s going to know anyway 🙂

Most of you didn’t come to watercolor to prove you can draw. You came because you wanted to paint. An outline is simply the thing standing between you and the fun part you actually want.

Do you need to know how to draw to paint watercolor?

No. You don’t need to know how to draw to start painting with watercolors. Drawing is a helpful skill, and the further you go the more useful you’ll find it. But it’s a separate skill, and it doesn’t have to come first.

Here’s what tends to happen instead.

You buy the paints. You sit down. And you look at that blank sheet, knowing there’s a drawing to do before any of the fun can start.

And then maybe a quiet little voice says: I’m not artistic. I’ll get it wrong. I’ll waste the paper.

So the painting never starts.

All because of a drawing that hasn’t happened yet.

One beginner put it rather well: “If I had to learn to draw first, I’d never paint.”

(If that little voice sounds familiar, I’ve written more about it in Is Art a Talent or a Skill?)

Why I encourage my students to trace

This is why I actively encourage my own students to trace. I give them the outline templates for the lessons, and I show them the easiest way to transfer them, so they can focus on the painting rather than struggle with the drawing.

Here’s what that changes:

• The blank page stops being frightening. The drawing is already done.
• You get to the painting quicker, which is the part you wanted to do in the first place.
• You finish something that looks like the thing you wanted to paint. And that means you’re far more likely to pick up a brush next time.
• You protect your paper. The surface of watercolor paper is delicate. Repeatedly erasing and re-drawing on it will damage the surface sizing, which changes how the paper handles the paint. A traced line only has to be drawn once.
• You start with the right proportions, which matters for making the painting look more like what you hoped.
• You can change the scale of a drawing without losing those proportions.

I’m sure there are plenty of other good reasons too. You can combine elements from different sketches, or reuse your own earlier drawings.

Confidence comes first.

Everything else follows.

Do real artists trace?

I trace too, by the way.

Some of you may know that I trained and worked as an architect. Tracing was an essential part of the creative process when I was studying. We used to buy translucent rolls of thin yellow tracing paper (vast amounts of the stuff!). I’d trace over my previous sketches, keeping the interesting parts and work on new options. And for working on plans of different building levels, it was an indispensable tool.

These days, I trace my outlines onto watercolor paper all the time. If I didn’t, I’d lose a lot of time. And honestly, I’m usually too impatient to get on with the painting part to spend ages on a precise drawing 🙂

Famous artists who trace

If you trace your artwork, you’re not alone. Here’s who you’d be sharing a table with:

1. Andy Warhol projected photographs and traced them onto paper. He said so himself in a 1981 interview, talking about his early soup can drawings, and he mentioned using a light box too.
2. Edgar Degas was a great believer in tracing paper. He traced and re-traced his own drawings, flipping and rearranging figures to build new compositions from them.
3. Leonardo da Vinci used pouncing, or spolvero, where you prick tiny holes along a paper drawing and dust charcoal through them. A study published in 2020 found traces of it under the Mona Lisa.
4. Raphael and other Renaissance painters used the same method to get their full-size drawings onto walls and panels.
5. Chuck Close made his enormous portraits, such as “Big Self-Portrait”, by transferring photographs square by square using a grid.

Some people think it goes back further still. The artist David Hockney and the physicist Charles Falco argued that painters may have been tracing projected images with lenses and mirrors as early as the 1430s. To be perfectly honest, art historians still argue about that one!

Either way…

We’re in reasonable company 🙂

What tracing won’t do for you

One thing to keep in mind though: tracing gets you an accurate outline, it doesn’t teach you to see.

Depth, light and shade, turning what’s in front of you into simple shapes of different values: none of that arrives with the outline. Neither does composition, color mixing or knowing what the water is going to do next.

That’s the part I spend a lot of my time teaching, and it’s what actually makes a painting look convincing.

After all, tracing only puts an outline on the sheet.

Believe me, the work is far from finished at that point 🙂

By the way, if you’d like somewhere to start with all of this, my free watercolor course is a good first step.

Is tracing a bad way to learn?

Tracing is a helpful support when you’re learning to draw or paint, and it can build more confident lines and hand-to-eye coordination. But if your goal is to draw by hand, it shouldn’t wholly replace drawing by eye.

A large part of drawing accurately is comparing your work with the original reference. Tracing can help with that, but only up to a point.

So if you’d like to improve your drawing, try tracing only a few reference lines and finishing the rest by eye. Or draw the subject freehand, then compare it with a tracing to see where you went astray.

Plenty of people learn to paint and draw at the same time. The only mistake is waiting until your drawing skills are “good enough” before you allow yourself to paint.

Tracing can also help you find your style. Trace a subject a few times and fill it in different ways, and you’ll soon notice what you enjoy.

When tracing really is a problem

There is one line I wouldn’t cross.

Tracing your own photos, free references, or outlines made for you to use is perfectly fine. Tracing someone else’s painting for practice at home harms nobody.

The problem comes when you trace another artist’s work and present it as your own, or sell it. That’s plagiarism, and it can be a copyright problem too. (I’m a painter rather than a lawyer, so if you plan to sell your work, check before you use someone else’s image.)

Four easy ways to transfer a drawing

I go through these in much more detail, with the pros and cons of each, in my guide to how to trace a picture onto paper. But here’s the short version.

1. A light box. This is my favorite. A light box like this (Amazon) lights your reference from behind, so you can see it through the sheet, even through 140lb watercolor paper. This is the quickest and most straightforward approach to tracing a sketch outline.
2. A window. Tape your reference to the glass during the day, tape your paper over it and trace. It costs nothing, although your arm will start to complain after a few minutes!
3. Transfer paper. Place a sheet of graphite or carbon paper between your reference and your watercolor paper, then go over the outline with a pencil. It works, but I find it messy, and the lines can be dark and difficult to erase.
4. Tracing paper and a soft pencil. Trace the outline onto tracing paper, rub graphite over the back, then lay it on your watercolor paper and go over the lines again. It’s a little long-winded, but you only need a pencil and a sheet of tracing paper.

You’ll also come across other methods, like an optical projector (Amazon), which is very practical for changing the scale of a picture. And the grid method, where you copy your reference one square at a time.

Whichever you choose, keep your pencil line light. Watercolor is transparent, so a heavy line will show through the paint.

To trace or not to trace?

Tracing won’t paint the picture for you, and it won’t replace learning to see.

But as a way to get past the blank page and into watercolors?

Tracing is NOT cheating. Just sensible.

So if “I can’t draw” is the reason you haven’t started, that drawing no longer has to stand in your way.

Do you trace your outlines, or has someone told you that you shouldn’t? Let me know in the comments 👇