I’m only on page 9, but that’s okay – I spent much of my time yesterday getting references for a panel I needed to fill in on a previous page.

And boy, do I feel bad.

I don’t mind tracing. It’s a good way to learn, and I often trace my own work when I’m drawing similar panels. But this time, I traced part of a photograph: the back right of a car. And for some reason, this bothers me. I mean, it’s not a special photograph, I’m rendering the thing my own way… I just traced the basic structure and that’s it. But I, for some reason, feel guilty, as if I didn’t do something right. As if I cheated. As if it would’ve been better to draw the thing by eye.

Tracing is a common trick, I believe. I’m sure Brian Bolland has done it with some of his covers (tracing a rifle, for instance). But is tracing a photograph art? Or should I be looking at the bigger picture, since the bigger picture (the entire graphic novel) is the art itself?

In other thoughts, my goal is to be able to lay out and do a full page of pencils in two days or less, since I only spend about an hour and fifteen every morning drawing. If I can meet this goal, hopefully my speed will increase I can get more work done within the same time allotment.

This weekend I’d like to up the page count by two, post some pencils here, and write a bit (prose, music, and otherwise), and start a site redesign (more on that later).