This question was asked in Quora where I wrote my thoughts of this.   There are 3 schools of thought on tracing or projecting an image. It’s a sin It’s a timesaver Sometime it’s OK and other times not Let me go through the 3 thoughts.   Starting with “It’s a sin”:  When you trace you aren’t really learning to draw and you can become very reliant on tracing or projecting. Drawing freehand is hard. It’s a lot nicer to have something that looks like it’s supposed to. When you trace you are giving the impression that you can draw because you have a relatively accurate image, but in reality [...]