#Would no doubt help me with anatomy and style like OP pointed out

[theriu]

Listen. Listen. People who say tracing is useless know nothing. You know how I know? You know what essential tool basically is tracing?

INKING LINEART.

I didn’t actually start inking drawings until a couple years after I graduated high school, but I used to get complimented on my immaculate “sketches,” which were literally me drawing something, tracing my drawing but HARDER, then erasing bits at a time so I could trace the pencil indent of the exact lines I wanted. I was very particular about this, it was my own form of perfectionism. It allowed me to create pieces like this (one of my favorite pencil drawings):

But even before that, you wanna know what I enjoyed doing in fifth grade, which probably was the foundation for my clean line style?

Tracing pokemon pictures out of the pokemon chapter books.

And let me tell you, you cannot understate the true artistic struggle of a child who starts tracing moltres and realizes with mounting dread how ANNOYING IT IS to trace all those tiny little curly flames WITHOUT MOVING THE PAPER. (I had to realign the paper a LOT, and no I didn’t use tape, I was afraid it would tear either my paper or the library book.)

I remember feeling disappointed when I showed a friend and they were unimpressed because I traced them. Because I never SAID I drew them originally - I was just really proud of how well I traced them. That took effort! It took concentration!

Anyway, all of that helped when I finally dared to risk ruining my precious pencil art with ink and began practicing inking. And it’s essentially the same: You are tracing your own art. You might tweak a line here and there, but physical ink has no undo button, so the ability to patiently focus and trace the essential lines is IMPORTANT.

I am not a master artist, but you know what is the number one thing I get complimented in?

My clean lines that could be “out of a coloring book.”

So yeah! Long story short: Don’t knock tracing! =) It can be a really valuable tool for improving your art in a number of ways!

"Tracing will NOT teach you how to draw" is one of those conventional pieces of wisdom that's really overstating it's case.

You gotta think through what you're tracing, learn construction ect. but at the end of the day, I find it a very helpful study tool. Especially given one of my typical art goals is to mimic official styles and design conventions.

For example, I've been trying to draw in the Transformers Animated style since the teen days. Based on what I thought I saw, I have believed for years that the head shapes are really pushed and exaggerated.

My eyes are dumb, turns out. There's a few standouts but I did several draw-overs of several characters, and the heads are surprisingly conventional. I think what I was picking up on was with the shorter "nose bridge" they tend to have, there's a lot more open space on the face.

I also started getting a feel for the shapes of the helmets, which has a been a mystery that's tormented me for decades. Gets me into the designer's workflow a little.

Training the eye to not be dumb is an important part of studying, but it's also a wall that can keep me from drawing My Fun Robots. Choosing a less noble path means I can still get in practice when I don't feel like slamming my own head through said wall.

(Goes without saying, these traces or draw overs or whatever you want to call them, they're not my art. I'm not sharing. Also! Very helpful for getting a feel for Different Head Angles.)