So I got my new tablet recently as you all know, and I found within Corel Essentials the ability to 'aint' on a photograph. Which I've done for a couple of my more recent pieces. So the question here is the artistic value behind these pieces over the fact that I 'Trace'. Trying to clear my conscience from the heckling stamps, and other things I found on DA, I decided to google whether tracing was wrong or not and came across this answer on Yahoo Answers:

It is neither right nor wrong. It is, merely, another technique.

I recall another question on Yahoo Answers that suggested that a "real" artist is one that can draw anything from memory. That, somehow, drawing from a a real, live subject, is cheating and not real art.

My response to that was "B*** S***!" The worlds FINEST artists worked from models and, in the field, with their subjects directly in front of them. Even those who depicted the most fantasic, unworldly, subjects had to know what something looked like in real life, to be able to make a believable depiction of something that could never exist. The most fantastic, monsterly dragons had to have a basis on some REAL creature to make that dragon seem like it COULD exist.

I asked it that person believed that Michaelangelo did the entire Mona Lisa painting from memory. Of course not!

Back to the "tracing issue." It is not the technique that is, either right or wrong. It is in the application of the technique and its intent that would place it into either category. If a person were to trace the image of Mickey Mouse from a Disney poster, and then made more posters from that tracing to sell online, THEN it would be wrong. But it would not be the act of tracing that is wrong. It would be the stealing of an image and selling it as one's own that makes it wrong.

On the other hand, if someone took that same tracing of Mickey Mouse and made a stencil to decorate his baby's room with it, it would be legal and perfectly "right" in its use.

As applied to myself, I can give you an answer based on my personal, professional experience. There is an old "Murphy's Law" that I learned many years ago and I apply it's spirit on a daily basis. It read:

"Never draw anything you can copy.
Never copy anything you can trace.
Never trace anything you can cut out and paste down."

The point is, that in most commercial endeavors, time really DOES equal money. If a technique saves me time, it can translate to my business' bottom line as increased money. If I draw something, and needed to make another drawing of exactly the same thing, why should I go through the entire effort of recreating it from scratch. Whether I trace it, photocopy it, or scan it, I will NOT waste any more time than I have to. My client doesn't care how it got to his desk. All he cares about is the quality of the work.

Here's another example. In the old days of animation, artists used to painstakingly draw out each frame, one by one, and then another artist would trace the paper image onto a transparent "cel," then ANOTHER artist would color in the cels, one by one, by hand. Then, in the late 1950s or early 60s, Disney technicians developed the technique of photocopying the paper drawings directly onto transparencies. That way, the original artist's work was more closely retained, with less chance of the "style" being changed by that tracing step. Also saved countless hours of time, even on a ten minute cartoon short.

Was this change in the process, somehow "wrong" simply because it was not done the way it was done before?

How about the present generation of animation. Does the use of computers to do, in minutes, what it used to take weeks to do "wrong?"

Again, it is not the technique or the tool that is "right," or "wrong." It is the intent and the result that counts.
Source(s):
Designer, Illustrator and Desktop Publisher for over 30 years

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Also, given the fact that I have a mild form of Cerebral Palsy, I figured these exercises would not only boost my confidence, but hand-eye coordination as well. Considering I haven't really had the materials to do art for a good several years now. Now that I have my tablet I have workspace where I don't have to worry about spilling things on my artwork, or getting a papercut and bleeding on a piece only to have to redo it again. (Yes that has happened to me. ><

So given all of this, I was wondering what you guys think.

Thanks!