This, of course, has both positive and negative consequences. That is, the subjectivity of interpretive conventions can become a help to fill in missing data but can also lead to serious errors. Faintness and superposition are common problems in rock art that are perhaps best overcome by drawing and tracing techniques. Drawing, sketching or drafting is likely to be inaccurate even if methods are tightly regulated. Drawing also has the disadvantage of requiring substantially more time and skill by the recorder than does photography.
Drawing is faster than tracing but less accurate.
Sketches or drawings have another advantage over tracings in that they avoid rock contact. We report here on the first steps we are taking in a process to quantify and improve on free-hand drawing as a recording method. The study reported here began with 2 basic hypotheses. The first hypothesis is that general untrained recorders do not do a very good job of recording, especially when the subject is indistinct and relatively inaccessible. We believe that the purpose of recording is two-fold.