I’m going to start this controversial subject off with a firm no! Unless you are directly tracing another artists work then it’s not cheating and shouldn’t be looked down upon.
I came across this video last night of a woman putting down an artist and trying to prove they were tracing from an AI generated image. Wow. Is there so much negativity in the world that we feel the need for putting people down for the things they enjoy doing because it doesn’t fit with our idea of how they should be doing it?
I’d like to make two points here:
- If the artist was tracing they were tracing from an ai generated image they’d generated themselves. If so what’s the problem? The ‘art’ doesn’t belong to anyone and isn’t copyrighted. A.I is stealing artists jobs all over the place and resulting in the decline of the artistic industry particularly for digital artists. Even Wacom have been caught using it! Why can artists not use it to their advantage?
- No matter how faithfully you try and replicate an image, even through digital art, the reproduction will not be a complete copy of the original. Some lines will be different, some colours. So the artist has made it their own work anyway.
When I started learning how to draw, I traced all the time! I found it helped me to learn a lot faster than the drawing books and tutorials could. I think it’s a great way to learn and makes the process of getting into art a lot less intimidating! So trace your reference if you want and practise how to colour or paint. The drawing can come in time and tracing an outline can make an art piece a lot less intimidating. But the biggest point is – we live in a world filled with so much negativity. Why not try and support and learn from each other and make life a bit of a happier place instead of feeling the need to put other people down?
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