The advantages of drawing on tracing paper?

Justin_Ch7 February 2009 · 16:18

A recent thread here pointed me in the direction of Doyald Young's work, and in an interview he says he does his pencil drawings on tracing paper and then scans them. I was also looking at photos of what I think was a workshop run by Ale Paul and again everyone seemed to be drawing on tracing paper. What are the advantages of this? I'm guessing you can lay a grid under the paper without needing to draw and then erase them on the paper. Also being able to see your design in reverse. Is there something else that I'm missing? I use tracing paper only rarely and that is purely for tracing.

Although I was at art school in the late '80s my course was fine art and there weren't any design courses where I might have learnt about such techniques.

Craig Eliason7 February 2009 · 17:26

I'd imagine you could also lay over another sheet and revise a letter based on what you already have.

Russell McGorman7 February 2009 · 20:03

easy revisions and quick dupications of similar shapes. And so on.

-=®=-

kentlew8 February 2009 · 05:56

The Clearprint that I prefer (which is a little more translucent than ordinary tracing paper) stands up to significantly more erasure than ordinary paper.

Ricardo Cordoba8 February 2009 · 08:53

What eliason and russellm said. I know of graphic designers and illustrators who use tracing paper as well.

Justin_Ch8 February 2009 · 09:11

Thanks everyone. I hadn't thought about the durabilty, but that's a good point Kent. I realise it is good for revising drawings later on, which is where I use it, but I thought there might have been a specific reason for doing a first draft on tracing paper rather than something more opaque.

Captured from web.archive.org on 19 Apr 2015. view this capture