so Tik Tok and the rest of the internet is now gatekeeping drawing apparently who would have ever [Music] known I don't watch TV like no one cares you don't get an award cuz you watch less TV we've had art Lord drama we've had art style slander but now it appears what's causing an itch in the drawers of the Tik Tok art community and its members is drawing with ref reference or from reference for some reason a lots of people supposedly have a growing problem with drawing from reference and believe it or not because it sounds rather ridiculous to me some artists are apparently getting called out for drawing with reference or from reference it's a tricky situation so bear with me now before we jump into the hot tea in today's episode I'm sure you all have your biscuits ready let's create a hypothetical situation so we can all have enough context about the situation before we die right in and begin biting our nails and smashing our hello kitten keyboards if I draw directly from a reference photo without changing anything at all in the drawing or transforming it to a completely new and original fresh idea and then I go ahead and post set drawing on the internet without crediting wherever I got the reference form is that going to get me in trouble questions for the Gods [Music] I literally can't draw without reference it makes me feel like I'm not a real artist sometimes I can draw without reference but it doesn't really have good Anatomy it just looks fine my art teacher made us draw without inspiration and said we had to be able to draw from our heads all the mixed feelings in the comments of this video is making me feel like I don't know maybe using references for your drawing is kind of important not to say there's no place for drawing from your head or using your imagination but when you're stuck trying to draw Twitter user twink fairies OC from your imagination and you can't think of a cute pose to draw the character in to show how cute they are maybe it is necessary to pull up a reference photo for your drawing using references by no way some sort of taboo or abolished practice when it comes to breathing life into fanciful images born out of your curiosity so calling people who draw with reference photo weird and saying they're not real artists is rather absurd to me the masterful painters that walked the earth years before you or I were born were all masterful painters because they used reference photos for every single one of their paintings which helped them convey the message they were trying to say in their paintings through color and light even if said messages happen to either be political or violent in nature the so-called art purists who parade themselves as new age masters of the Fine Arts and go around leaving comments on Tik Tok insinuating people who use reference in the their Arts are inferior and are not worthy of being praised because their art is nothing but metaphorical dog poop have nothing to say every time the Old Masters are brought up in an argument it's as if all of a sudden they forget that they were not the first people to invent drawing and other artists far more skilled than them have been using references for decades before either of us ever dreamed of picking up a pencil to make art but before we move on to the next part of this video let me tell you briefly about the sponsor of today's video Opera as an artist who spends most of their time drawing using reference is quite important if you want to make better drawings but when you start Gathering reference from Instagram Pinterest Google and whatnot your browser starts to slow down because now you have 34 tabs open at the same time and this is where Opera comes in Opera browser is the fastest and safest browser I have tried and has a ton of new features to make your experience serving the worldwide web much more enjoyable and relaxing you can easily organize tabs and collapse them as Island and it also comes with an ad block feature and a free VPN built in to browse safer and more private the sidebar has features like a music player and a chat messenger for easy access to all your chats across different platforms and it also has a feature called ARA which is the browser's artificial intelligence that gives you instant answers to any question right from the sidebar the good Folks at Oprah are eager for everyone to try out all the new exciting features so click the link in the description to download and try the browser for free and a big thank you to Oprah for sponsoring this video tracing reference photos or what some people like to refer to as normal behavior is now getting artists called out and harassed on Tik Tok for obvious reasons first obvious reason is because well since you happen to call yourself an artist laws of making drawings exempt you from using any form of tracing in your art according to the purist and AR enus us on Tik Tok be mindful of the Contour and strokes they look rather crooked when you're tracing [Music] while these people Cel artist for tracing on artist work since that is just flat out stealing they also consider tracing a photo reference as cheating and manipulating art because well you aren't starting to drawing all from your head and because you're not drawing it from scratch according to them I found it's pretty much always artists who've been drawing for years who villainized tracing and it discourages Young Artists the older artists have forgotten their roots and how hard perspective Anatomy poses Etc where when they started out tracing is fine for learning tracing is fine for for learning yes but will I say you should Trace all the time no you can trace when you're trying to learn but still leave room to practice how to draw just by looking at what you're trying to draw and figuring out how to draw it using shapes since that will help you later on when you're trying to draw poses from your mind I trace poses for reference a lot because Anatomy is hard but there's always a part of me that thinks it's wrong and it sucks if you're going to use references in portfolio pieces I suggest taking reference photos of yourself or your friends while the mass majority of pencil pushers in the comment section of this Tik Tok video all felt relieved and validated since their most humble method of making art was actually allowed and wasn't meant to be frowned upon and looked at with judgmental eyes some other artists thought it best to challenge the artist's thought on the subject matter stating other ways of drawing will prove to be rather beneficial to younger artists in the long run far more than just tracing over reference photos to which the astounding artist replied that they had tried them all and tracing still held its place high above the leaderboard in drawing techniques judging from the awesome drawings on the artist page you can tell they definitely have plenty of knowledge on what they're talking about and are just oozing with an excessive amount of Aura from the share drawing skill on their page a common theme I see with people gatekeeping drawing and calling artists out for drawing with reference or tracing from a reference photo saying that not real artists is making these claims because artists somehow don't credit the originator of the reference photo I got a few comments like this on my last video so let's talk about using photos for reference and why copyright may or may not be an issue first you should not be using somebody else's photo as reference and copying it exactly and then claiming it as your own work that would be copyright infringement but what is often taught is not to use Photo reference at all for things like understanding a pose or a gesture or an expression the big your problem is that people are taught to draw only from life and only from their imagination how are you supposed to learn anything Credit in the original owners of reference photos is leaving artists concerned as to how they can go about it without being labeled as an art thief or getting called out for stealing art and abusing copyright and as I said earlier this is a rather precarious situation artists have been called out on Twitter for drawing from a reference photo and using pictures of Cosplay artists as reference without ly giv credit to the cosplayer just as artists should get credited for drawings cosplayers should get credited if they get used as reference in my opinion which will definitely stand true if the artist draws verb at him from a reference photo without changing anything at all and draws the exact same photo same pose same outfit same hairstyle same everything artists don't credit each other if they use each other as reference this isn't traced it's just using the picture as inspiration and even adds entirely new props to the picture no reference is needed it's fair use false if an artist basically traces another artist work people do get mad and call it out this is traced pretty heavily and it's used on Tina patreon the dude could have at least credited the cosplayer as it cleared down to the lighting their likeness was used While most people were trying to argue between themselves if cosplay was a true form of art or not it still deserves credit as long as you're using it as a direct reference for your drawing and not transforming it to make it your own the entire premise of giving credit to reference owners is quite mindboggling and confusing to artists and I'm also confused myself if you're making a drawing and happen to use a number of different elements as reference in your drawing which references are you going to give credit to and which ones are you going to leave out how are you going to credit the cute little cat you use as reference for your persona Nora F who is an amazing cosplayer and artist has had to call out artist and manually tag herself every time she has found pictures of herself being used as reference in a drawing while these situations might be quite confusing since artists might not know where a reference photo is from and are just drawing it from Pinterest or Google people are suggesting leaving an indication that the drawing was made based off of a reference photo is the safest bet in situations like this Nora herself explained why she calls out artists on her Twitter account I wish people would see your original content as art itself not just something to freely reference or outright trace and recreate just a PSA you can always draw me or use me as reference all I ask for is some kind of credit when it's art of just me with no big alterations same outfit same face same pose in one piece if you're just using my body for references there's no need to credit me but I'll love to see it which makes so much sense because cosplayers don't just wake up in the morning throw jeans on and grab a towel and automatically become your favorite anime character most of the time these outfits and costumes cost a fair bit of time and money and also practice just like every other skill so crediting them for their craft is really important as well and pretty lenient with credit cuz there's no such thing as a truly original idea but if you use my body for reference pose outfit entire concept idea and you also go viral and profit from it then at least leave some credit I guess nor phone who also does cosplay of drawings made by artists along with anime characters does her part in making sure she credits the original artist and the source from where she got the idea from in the first place since a lot of artists using references from Pinterest are probably not going to know where an original image was sourced from before it landed on Pinterest we're going to have to leave some form of credit for the original owner of the photo we're using for reference in our drawing from now hence forth I know all of this seems pretty confusing believe me I'm confused as well but it's what the internet is asking in 2024 I don't make the rules I just make videos explaining the rules to you with interesting metaphors unspoken digital art rule number two reference don't copy a lot of times you see artists that are going onto Pinterest and they're finding pictures that they want to draw or it's their favorite celebrity or it's their favorite um just their favorite person who knows maybe it's just one of your favorite people and a lot of times people people go and they take that exact same picture and they just redraw the picture while that is you studying art that's not going to make you any better in the long run what I suggest is take that exact same picture and turn it into your own character maybe create your own original character that has you know a different hairstyle different color skin maybe different clothing um use the reference to create your own art don't just copy what you see take this art AR for example they used a photo of Nora from Pinterest and got tagged by Nora in correspondence hello Nora I found this photo on Pinterest and couldn't stop drawing from your Charming style and Vibe but I made one mistake I didn't ask your permission it's already late but I'll mention you in this post and if you allow me please let me continue to draw you I think it's safe to say the confusion is cleared case closed and dismissed the final verdict for all my lawful reference users if you're going to draw from a reference photo and are going to use not just the pose but the likeness and resemblance as well then you should consider leaving some form of credit since the photo might either be cosplay like this or may likely be photography from another artist but if you're just drawing the pose or the hands or feet or something else then it's okay I guess I don't know this all seems pretty confusing if you want to be a character designer you have to do more than just study from reference I went to atier School in Sweden and from day one they teach you to observe and record what you're seeing as closely as possible one of my drawings was off by a centimeter and I had to erase half of it and do it all over again most of the artists in this school who had been there for a couple years were trained purely based on observation could not draw without reference they lacked the ability to properly use the information they had so accurately observed they couldn't turn the forms move things the way that would fit a better design change the lighting they never practiced for memory if you want to be a designer like character designer you need to practice drawing from memory it's how you're able to draw from imagination just because you observe something a ton of times and even draw from it doesn't mean you actually know it you have to practice retrieving that information from memory watching this video just reminded me that there are people who still give good art tips and made me believe that there is still hope for the future of Tik Tok art I think using references for your drawings shouldn't be seen as a bad thing or something that should be hated or cancelled in the art community I never thought I'll have to explain this but there's nothing wrong with using a reference photo to solidify the knowledge of whatever it is your drawing reference you be used just like every other tool you use for your art yes it's good to also practice drawing from memory to teach yourself how to visualize and what it is you're trying to draw but that shouldn't negate or undermine the importance of using reference in your art practice drawing by using shapes and learn how to turn these shapes in three-dimensional space practice things like gesture and line of action as this will help you when it comes to drawing poses from memory but when you get stuck trying to draw a pose or you just can't understand how to draw the arm in perspective or in a particular pose it wouldn't hurt you to take a picture of your hand or that of your friends and use that as a reference you should learn to use reference to improve your drawings and not rely on it and as for the fine people of Tik Tok gatekeeping Arts from the rest of us please let us in the club no seriously I want to be considered an artist too I know I'm not a real artist since I draw from reference I know my place is outside with the other peasants who use AI to make their art but please let us in the real artist Club I promise we'll do no harm please pretty please I'm begging oh what we can come in yay well it looks like we've made it to the end of the video If you enjoyed the video video please leave it a like share the video with a friend and subscribe to the channel if you're new here with all that being said I'll see all you pretty penguins in the next video bye oh