How To Draw Comics. Tracing & Transfers: Part 3.

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Leroy Brown

See Part 1 and Part 2 to catch up.

This is the back side of your tracing.

Once you have blacked the back of your tracing paper, you are now ready to transfer your drawing. Remember, you only need to black the area that corresponds to your drawing.

Now you can flip the tracing over and start transferring your drawing! Place your tracing in the exact spot on your strip were you want the drawing to appear. Now trace your drawing, paying close attention to the lines that you want to capture. A lot of times you don’t need to put in a lot of detail. In my case I was just after the gesture and proportions of my original sketch.

Presto! There is your original drawing, exactly where you want it on the page! It’s a great trick and I use it when I feel the need for speed! Looks great doesn’t it? Be sure you don’t dig in too much with your pencil just in case you need to erase and reposition your drawing.

I don’t consider this cheating by the way, since I drew the original drawing. It’s just that I drew it on my sketch pad and wanted to place it at the right spot inside my comic strip. Here are some examples of drawings I transferred recently.

5 thoughts on “How To Draw Comics. Tracing & Transfers: Part 3.”

Don Ahe
09/21/2011, 8:50 pm
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Cool Tip!
amuletts
09/21/2011, 9:04 pm
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Tracing paper is a really useful tool to have in your artistic arsenal. I used this technique to transfer one of my designs onto a T-Shirt then went over it in fabic pens.
1. Leroy Brown
  
  09/21/2011, 9:09 pm
  
  Reply
  
  I agree. I always have some tracing paper on hand. Also it feels great and it’s kind of exotic so people think your working on something special! 🙂
Antoine Gagnon
09/22/2011, 6:50 am
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How is this different than drawing directly on the paper?
Less erasing to do after I assume?
1. Leroy Brown
  
  09/23/2011, 5:39 pm
  
  Reply
  
  Well, read part 1 and part 2 to understand why I did it this way. This is to transfer the drawing from one page to another. I already did the drawing before and I wanted to copy it. So it is a way to copy your drawing from one place to another place!