What I usually do is I draw looking at objects unless I know I can do it out of my head. You can look at some of my old comics and tell which ones were out of my head and which ones I had to look at an object. I don’t trace anything except what I actually draw. My process is to draw on paper then scan in and trace using Flash. The reason I use Flash is because I know the program inside and out. I was a Macromedia man before Adobe bought them out and still struggle with Photoshop and the likes.

For the instance of the Chewbacca I tried several times to draw out of my head and it was terrible, everything else was looking real good in my opinion and I could not get Chewy like I wanted. So I found a picture drew it on paper. I can draw things fairly well when looking at them. Take Han Solo for instance, it was actually an action figure I was looking at while I was drawing it, took me about 4 hours but I wanted him to stand out obviously because he was the center piece.

I hope this answers your question.

Again, thanks for the input.