As a reaction to these two news articles recently posted on the subject of DA's policy on tracing: [link] and [link] , I have deactivated all of the prints from my DA prints account, like a few other artists I know. I do not wish to financially support this website anymore, sorry.

So, for now, prints sales are on hold. I'll get back to selling prints through my Etsy account and my website very soon.


No offense to anyone, but tracing is not creative. Tracing is not original. Tracing does not mean that the result of your traced lines is YOUR work. Tracing has nothing to do in an artistic community, where we should thrive to hone our skills by confronting ourselves to criticism, and to get constructive advice. What kind of constructive advice can you give to someone about a traced work? How is it creative to trace someone's work, even if you "add your own original elements"?

Maybe for some people, tracing is a learning tool. I'm not against tracing as an educational tool, but the result of those studies should be kept private, and has nothing to do in a public gallery on DA.

All the excuses made for tracing that are written in these articles are extremely lame, and just show how DA's policy lately has been to sacrifice quality, respect, skill and emulation to attracting the largest number of people and growing into a huge, low-quality database. And this, even to the point of disregarding the law, as it seems.
It just sends the wrong message to young artists. This sends the wrong message TO this community, and ABOUT this community. DA already doesn't exactly have a good reputation as an art community, and this will certainly not help.

Promoting low standards and cheap shortcuts is not going to help anybody in this community... why would you try to improve when you can trace, and nobody's going to tell you anything as long as the original creator doesn't complain?


[EDIT] Just to clarify: my main concern is *not* whether *my* art is going to be more or less traced and copied as it currently is. What I do find annoying is that it doesn't promote creative thinking to developing artists around here. There's no point denying it: we're all sensitive to feedback, good comments, favs, popularity, etc. Yes, it's motivating to feel supported. My question is, would I have improved the way I have if, when I joined DA six years ago as a beginner, tracing and eyeballing had not been much frowned upon? Would I have done the effort to try and develop my own work, if I had received better feedback by tracing and had been told it was alright as long as the original artist doesn't say anything? Would you? Would we? I don't know. Some of us would have anyway, but maybe that some of us wouldn't have. I think it's sad for developing artists today that we are sending the message that developing your own skills, your own creativity, is not really important.


Ok, rant over.