Uh... I know I wrote this on my tumblr, but I decided to put it on here too for good measure. This BS is starting to really bother me again...

It really freaking pisses me off that loads of artists are tracing when doing portraits. As far as I'm concerned that's cheating and taking all the fun and pride out of drawing/painting. It doesn't show your skills of realism, it just shows you can draw over a picture to make yourself feel better about it. I hate when artists that aren't very good yet do it because they aren't skilled enough yet so it looks like crap anyway. They don't know what they're doing so everything may be in the right places, but the lines look traced and the coloring looks stupid. I really hate it when people trace over an image and put it on deviantArt and the tracing sucks and there is really no point in putting that on here because it looks stupid and they spent 3 minutes on it the picture probably looks better and they only did it so people would think they're talented. That's not art, that's freaking stupid what the hell is wrong with them? I also hate when skilled artists trace, even just a little bit to make sure everything is where it should be. Stop it. If you're not good enough to do it without tracing, how about you practice you idiot. Eyeball it. Don't make people think you're super amazing and wonderful because you're not, and I don't know about them, but I never feel good about my art unless it wasn't inspired by anything and there wasn't even one little reference used or anything, so I don't how they feel good about tracing. I've traced before when doing an assignment for school (it was part of the assignment to project a picture of ourself onto the canvas and trace a little bit of it before we painted) and I feel terrible about it. If anyone ever tells me it's good I feel really bad and automatically tell them I traced some of it. I don't know how people live with that. I also hate that a lot of the people that do it are digital artists taking advantage of layers and giving us a bad name. I once showed someone at school a portrait I did and she asked me what it meant that it was digital, and my friend said "It means you color over a picture." I was taken aback and enraged that she would think that. ALSO, I saw a TRACING box at Hobby Lobby. You put a picture in it and it shines a light through it and you trace it. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS WORLD COMING TO?

I really needed to get that off my chest before I exploded.