The major difference between fine art and illustration is clients, customers, and audiences don't really care how you get it done.

Tracing paper can be a good friend to get things accomplished. Today, while using tracing paper as a cheap onion skin on the drawing table, I remembered a trick from the graphic design days.

Tracing paper can be used like carbon paper. If you want to move a limb on a drawing, flip something, or trace something without a light table, do your tracing on the paper using a soft lead pencil. Deepen the lines with the soft lead. Then, flip the tracing paper on a surface you don't mind getting dirty. On the clean side, go over your lines with the soft lead.

From here, you can burnish either side onto your drawing, and create mirror images. To burnish, use a ball point pen, hard pencil, or something with a smooth rounded tip like a pen cap.

This technique came in very handy when I did a lot of drawing out in the field, away from computers or copy machines.