Your tracing paper is in another castle

March 11, 2013 8:42 PM

I work in an art supply store. People ask for rolls of tracing paper very frequently, and I'm curious as to what they need them for.

Unfortunately, I don't have any control over what we stock, or I'd order some. We would sell out of it on a regular basis-- rolls of tracing paper seem to be very popular (we're also the only art supply store open as late as we are in my area.) I can't just ask because it would be an impertinent question from a retail drone-- the few occasions I've tried, the answer was "tracing."

There's no common denominator amongst all the people who ask for rolls of tracing paper. None of them want anything else. We sell tracing paper pads up to 18X24 inches; but this is not good enough. I really can't imagine what you'd want to trace that you couldn't piece together a few pieces for, but maybe someone here would know. I am this side of assuming it's for some weird scavenger hunt.

So why do all these people want to buy rolls of tracing paper?

posted by blnkfrnk to shopping (35 answers total)

Pattern making, maybe. That's what I use rolls of nice thick tracing paper for.
posted by jamaro at 8:45 PM on March 11 [11 favorites]

Rolling joints?
posted by twblalock at 8:45 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Artists use a metric crapton of this stuff, and I assume it is cheaper by the roll.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 8:45 PM on March 11

Oh, and what jamaro said.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 8:46 PM on March 11

Yeah, my guess would also be pattern making. Or possibly something to do with design schematics.
posted by Diagonalize at 8:46 PM on March 11

Question: do you stock rolls of vellum? It's not tracing paper, but is translucent enough to enable tracing. It's more expensive than tracing paper, but it does indeed come on rolls. I used it for drafting (theatre lighting plots, mostly), but I can see others wanting it for scrap booking.
posted by smirkette at 8:47 PM on March 11

I used it as an undergrad landscape architecture student, and we bought it (and used it) by the roll. Some drawing was best done by hand, especially large scale stuff (though I guess we could have also been using vellum).
posted by filthy light thief at 8:47 PM on March 11

Patterns. My mom used to make all our kids clothes, and she used rolls and rolls of it.
posted by monospace at 8:48 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Before photoshop/CadCam, tracing paper was a good way to work out ideas, "what if we move this here? How will that look?" I've known architects and artists to work out ideas with this.
When I was a kid it was just an easy way to make pictures of comic book stuff I thought was cool, or band logos (from album covers.) tracing was an easy way to understand how something was drawn.
posted by From Bklyn at 8:51 PM on March 11

They are used for hand drafting. When I was an art department PA for a TV series I used to get sent to the nearest art supply store for emergency tracing paper runs all the time.

Frequently the art supply store was out of tracing paper in the size/form/quantity I needed, and it was frustrating.

If you find you're frequently out of it and get a lot of requests, of course you should speak up!
posted by Sara C. at 8:52 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Tattoo stencils
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 8:53 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

Thanks, folks! We don't have vellum either. I suspect it's the local design/fashion school and high saturation of tattoo places that are doing it.

As a customer, please speak up when you want something to be stocked. They will listen to you, but the staff has no say.
posted by blnkfrnk at 9:01 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

I use rolls when I'm working on drafting up plans and sketching over other drawings. It's way handier to have a roll -- then I can work up lots of sketches quickly, tear the pages where needed, tear off trash and throw it away, etc. It's very satisfying to work that way.
posted by amanda at 9:03 PM on March 11

Yeah, these are really key in the built environment design fields (architecture/landscape architecture/planning). Obviously the process is increasingly digital, but when you do need to trace something, it's more likely to be a huge poster or map than something that could be adequately traced on a pad.
posted by threeants at 9:04 PM on March 11

If you have a local design school, that would do it. Back when I was taking those sorts of classes every single supply list included a roll of tracing paper. I would scoff but then it'd get eaten up. Temporary sculpture, light filters for photography, model making, flexible physical representations of print layouts in variable sizes, the list never ended. And that doesn't even cover the actual, you know, tracing purposes.
posted by Mizu at 9:05 PM on March 11

My wife uses rolls and rolls of it to trace sewing patterns. To explain a little further, in her case it's not to create new patterns but rather to preserve the original pattern (often vintage) and to make alterations to it. Sometimes she'll even re-trace the tracing, because the first tracing has gotten some wear and tear through use.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 9:28 PM on March 11 [4 favorites]

Although I used a lot of it in architecture school, even in the fully digital CAD-using offices that I've worked in everybody has a roll of trace at their desk. It's quick and cheap for working through possible design configurations or conveying information that needs to be added to a drawing without marking up the actual drawings (because printing is relatively expensive).
posted by LionIndex at 9:32 PM on March 11 [1 favorite]

In addition to everything else, I use tracing paper for stamps and carvings. I work out the design I want on regular paper, then trace it onto tracing paper with a 6B or similar pencil, then use a breyer (or a big wooden spoon) to transfer the pencil to the carving surface. This is nicer than opaque paper because the pencil seems to come up more nicely onto the stamp, and you can place the image correctly because you can see through to the carving medium. As for why rolls, my stamps/lino blocks are likely to be small and irregularly sized - much nicer to cut off just what I need than to have to try and keep a bunch of partially-used sheets nice for next time.
posted by heyforfour at 9:40 PM on March 11

I just discovered that canson makes rolls of tracing paper, which makes me happy - I use the pads right now for drawing. I've tried a roll of speedball tracing paper, but it's not just the same.
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:54 PM on March 11

Surely you could document the number of requests? "Thirty people asked for tracing paper rolls this month. None of them wanted anything else. They all asked if we could order some. This has been going on for months. Can we order some rolls?"
posted by barnone at 9:57 PM on March 11 [8 favorites]

For my part, sometimes I've done a great gesture drawing on crappy newsprint paper, or paper that got splashed or otherwise compromised, and I want to recreate it and/or tweak aspects of it on a different surface. The best way to manage this is to lay vellum over the original drawing, trace the compelling essentials, then flip the tracing paper or vellum upside down and retrace over your copied lines. It transfers a exact rendering: a light but clear line onto another surface for you to play with. Large scale vellum rolls are ideal for this. In the scale I like to work, I can't even imagine trying to accomplish this with single small sheets. You could also use it to transfer interesting bits of exact lines or aspects of one drawing/painting that has gone terribly off-course onto another painting or drawing to re-work. There is also a great abstract drawing/painting technique that builds by re-using certain interesting shapes or lines on a canvas - again, using vellum or tracing paper to reproduce the exact same line or shape is key. I've also used it to create translucent over-grids to 'blow up' or recreate a small scale drawing or picture onto a larger canvas.

A friend who was landscape architect also plowed through scads of vellum, which she used to show different possible planting formations: each translucent planting sketch could then be laid over top of a blueprint-type rendering or large photo of a given space to show what the finished product might look like and choose the best design. It's terribly useful stuff. I honestly can't imagine an art store being without it.
posted by involution at 11:57 PM on March 11

Check with Martha Stewart. Seriously.

When I worked at a paper store in NYC more than a decade ago, Martha had an article about storing away your winter clothes by wrapping them in archival tissue (kind of crazy in and of itself, but that's another story). The article had a "parts" list, including "25 sheets of 26 x 40" archival tissue, available at ABC Paper Store."

For months (years?), we got calls asking about archival tissue. I would explain to them that we had various sizes, and they could order the number of sheets they needed, they didn't have to order 25 sheets. Every caller, every single caller, said No thank you, I just need 25 sheets of 26 x 40" archival tissue, and I understand you sell that.

Whether it's Martha, or a local professor, it's possible that someone has put "1 roll tracing paper" on a supplies list, and your customers are dutifully tracking the item down.

Talk to one of your buyers; it's a good way to show you have your finger on the pulse. People have been promoted for less.
posted by segatakai at 12:56 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]

I understand that management might not listen to you about stocking it (after all, who listens to a 'mere' salesclerk?!?), but maybe you can make a kind of poll of customers who want it? At your sales counter, set out a sheet of paper requesting signatures (not addresses or other info, just names) of those interested, which would give you an accurate count of potential buyers you can take to your boss.
posted by easily confused at 2:50 AM on March 12

As a customer, please speak up when you want something to be stocked. They will listen to you, but the staff has no say.

Yes, I'm confused by this. Who is the "they" I would speak to, if not the sales staff? It wouldn't occur to me to say "You don't have it? Can I speak to a manager?" because you, being part of the store, now know that you're short on tracing paper.
posted by vitabellosi at 3:54 AM on March 12 [12 favorites]

Seconding "people who sew and want to trace patterns." If you're cutting a dress or coat, a single piece can take up a meter or two.
posted by Pallas Athena at 4:52 AM on March 12

I often use baking paper as a substitute when sewing. It's much cheaper than tracing paper and basically has the same properties.

vitabellosi: Rip off an email to coporate. Retail drones (especially ones who just work the floor) have next to no say in the ordering process.
posted by Jilder at 6:40 AM on March 12

I also trace off my sewing patterns. I will often trace a pattern, make alterations to it, and then trace off the altered version. So I go through crazy amounts of the stuff. Most folks who do garment sewing do the same.

Also if you're doing quilting, you might use it for paper pieced quilt blocks.
posted by lyra4 at 8:23 AM on March 12

Honestly, the kind of salesclerk who makes a point of fixing this gets promoted. Put your manager on the phone every time one of them calls? Start a "requested items list" so that all clerks can log the item and date anytime someone calls for something you don't stock? Figure it out.
posted by amaire at 8:46 AM on March 12 [1 favorite]

I really can't imagine what you'd want to trace that you couldn't piece together a few pieces for, but maybe someone here would know.

Again from the architecture angle: rolls are damn cheap compared to pads, and if I'm going to do 5 different iterations of a design for something it's really easy to just unroll a bit, draw on it, tear that portion off and then trace over it again. When working with trace (other industry names for it: bumwad, flimsy), having clean edges isn't really important, so a pad just seems way too fussy, and you might not need the whole sheet, which seems wasteful. I suspect that the tracing paper you have in pad form is actually some sort of vellum - actual trace is incredibly easy to tear and I imagine you'd have a hard time getting it out of the pad intact.

If the people requesting this have anything to do with the architecture trade, they're probably students or self-employed or with very small firms. The larger firms I've worked for would buy trace in bulk via catalog and have it shipped to our office.
posted by LionIndex at 10:17 AM on March 12

Trace is good. You print out your designs, roll over the trace, and try out different alternatives, before returning to the screen to make ajustments. Or your boss or teacher brings the trace and the corrections/discussion
posted by mumimor at 12:23 PM on March 12

I have to do occasional illustration work for my coms job, which is mostly PS based when I'm doing graphics, but I find it much handier to sketch iterations by hand and then photograph them and rework them in PS or Il than to do the initial sketches digitally. They're also handy for planning things like stencils and collage for my free time.
posted by klangklangston at 12:32 PM on March 12

Another possibility: When I was an art student we taped tracing paper over our mounted/matted artwork to protect it from smudging/dirt/etc. before we presented it in class. Design/architecture firms do this with their presentation materials as well. Maybe for some people it's easier to have a roll of tracing paper on hand instead of a flat pad of it, so that it can be cut to exact dimensions with less waste?
posted by cowboy_sally at 12:33 PM on March 12

I agree with everyone who mentioned architecture and landscape architecture. That's all we draw on until we get to more finished drawings. Much easier to store than pads, it can be rolled out any size. I'm surprised your store doesn't carry it- it's such a staple.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:35 PM on March 12

It's also part of the process for using a lot of projector enlargement techniques. You can't always fit the original in the projector slot, and it's also handy if you're transferring just parts of the image, like the linework. So it's handy for mural sized painting too.
posted by klangklangston at 2:14 PM on March 12

Some of the confusion about the "they" that won't listen to me may come from me not specifying that I work at a corporate-run chain. What we need at my specific store will not necessarily work for the entire chain, so there is very little motivation at the corporate level to listen to a single salesclerk at a single store. To their credit, there are a lot of issues with choice of vendor, length of time between requests and stock arriving in stores, investment in product that might not move, quantity discounts, etc. that make it difficult to tailor stock generally.

I have not had success with making suggestions in the past. We have had a few situations where we accidentally got a shipment of something people had been asking for, sold it out in a week, and when we presented this information and asked for more, we got no response or a "thanks, we'll take it under consideration." I hand out comment cards a lot, but nobody really goes for that. (Yes, I have considered writing fake comment cards. That would be unethical, though, and I can't make myself do it.) I can only assume the buying department worked out the math and decided against rolls of tracing paper for some reason-- we're still in business, so I guess they're doing something right.

Thank you, everyone, for the excellent answers. I had never considered architecture or pattern-making before, but it makes a lot more sense now!
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:14 AM on April 10