1. Please DON'T recommend art books to those of us who struggle to learn by art books because of megalophobia, the fear of facing big things (even if they are dissected into bite-sized pieces). Bite-sized is bite-sized.

2. When things like this get FPed for their anatomy and character, please DON'T try to mansplain anatomy and character by saying "you should look at anatomical references."

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  Regina Luminosa

  by Troisnyx

  Illustration

  691 Views

  (Everyone)

BECAUSE THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING.

3. Deplatform the Dutch masters if you think tracing is bad. Go and protest at the art museums, trash their work, show it for what it really is: nothing more than a tracing over camera obscura. But I don't see either of you doing anything comparable, in small ways and in great. I see your hypocrisy.

4. Please DON'T try to say that this is a learning place that doesn't act like art college, when you act like art college. I've followed much of your advice and we've driven people away — I've driven people away — from the joy of drawing by the absolute rigidity of how one "should" learn. "You must learn this way," "You must learn that way."

I get that you need to learn the rules in order to break them. I know, as a musician and an intermediate artist, that this is true — and we get a deep sense of empowerment from being able to break the rules of theory in this position of knowledge. That's good. I'm not denying that.

What I am disputing is that everyone has to learn by a fixed way. There are many roads, etc.

5. Only some of our resources are available for free. Not all of us can pirate things due to strict laws, and not all of us can afford them. Please check your privilege.

I couldn't access the internet very well in the country of my birth, and some websites were blocked, AND my school focused on STEM subjects, as did my parents. Learning art was so low on the priority list and I was in an abusive household, in an abusive country. As a child, I got so desperate to learn, I wound up tracing Kingdom Hearts artwork. I don't trace for any of my stuff for NG or elsewhere; I draw from memory or by reference these days, but there was once a time where this was impossible.

I wouldn't recommend tracing, but God help me if I throw the bell, book, and candle at someone in my situation who needed to do this to learn. That would be absolutely privileged and hypocritical of me to do. Not everyone who wants to draw can use the same means. Me getting a hold of Andrew Loomis's books back in the day was exceedingly difficult and I needed to find uploads of it somewhere, being very strictly nonprofit and all back then (asylum seeker and all).