There is a huge difference between taking an image and coping it/tracing it and using it as reference.

References are usually a helpful way for you to get an understand of how a certain thing looks. If you take a image and do studies of the basic movements of shapes and forms, then you are using a reference correctly.

If you are taking an image and trying to duplicate it exactly, you are not using a reference properly.

I wish people would realize this before putting down people who use references and saying “Oh. I thought your art was really good, but then I heard you used references.”

People who usually claim references are the ones who trace and copy, so refrence using has become a tabu when it really isn’t. It’s just most people who use references are doing it wrong.

submitted by -guten-morgen

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    I agree with this and think that there are people who trace and copy exactly that don’t understand the concept of...

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    Though honestly I think...advantage of what reference means. I know people who ‘reference’...

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    I got bitched at for my Marvel t-shirt design by someone claiming that I copied someone else’s picture, when we’d just...

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    You know whats really funny is every art book you’re ever gonna find is going to tell you to use references and explains...

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    I agree with both statments here. While I never fully admit it, I do use references, but I use so many at once that it’s...

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