Sketching Daily: Day 3 "Tracing Famous Artists"

Well, its Day 3 of my Sketching Daily Challenge, and today's exercise is inspired by famous artists. Today's exercise was to grab some tracing paper and a pencil and trace a famous artist's sketch. You want to get the line work as close as you can to the original piece. Most people look down on tracing, but many of the famous artists learned how to be great by copying the work of their masters. It is a great way to learn technique and is very good practice, especially if you are just learning how to draw.

In the book "Drawing Lab for Mixed Media Artists," Carla Sonheim instructs you to trace a picture by Leonardo Da Vinci to learn his method of hatching and creating sketches that look as if they are being pulled off the page.While I love Leonardo and admire his work, he was also left handed and after yesterday's exercise I was done drawing with my left hand! While I probably could have done a decent job sketching his work his strokes are created by the left hand and would be difficult to copy. If you would like to take this challenge and use one of Leonardo's sketches then I suggest flipping the image on a computer then printing it out so you can have a better grasp of his line work.

So because I am computer illiterate, and didn't feel like heading up to the school to find a printer, I choose one of Vincent Van Gogh's sketches instead. I will have to say I really enjoyed working with Van Gogh's piece. That is until I got so absorbed in the line work that I had to remind myself to slow down and focus on the lines. Even in a simple sketch Vincent still manages to bring you into his chaotic mind with quick tense line work. I will definitely have to tackle this piece again with ink instead of charcoal. I feel like it would flow better across the paper than mechanical pencil can.

Here is my attempt to capture Vincent Van Gogh's sketch. I eventually just had to tell myself to stop working because my strokes were to tense and I got lost within the chaos of them. Like I said this is one lesson I will need to try again in the future when I can spend more time on it.

Keep and eye out for my next Sketching Daily Challenge where I will get to be inspired by the creative genius that is children! Wait...Don't I do that on a daily bases anyways?!?!