The funny thing with all this is, I don't even know what kind of "proof" these people would find acceptable? I mean, she shows caps of her progress on several pieces of artwork on DeviantArt, from the initial sketch to the finished product. She follows clear steps--that are well-known to anyone who's had even rudimentary art lessons--to paint in a photorealistic style. And it is PAINTING, not manipulating a photo, as she has clearly shown time and again.
I don't see why this is so difficult for you to grasp. It's not like she's not the only photorealist out there. She's not even (pardon me for saying, euclase, for I am a huge fan) the "best" one, if we're speaking in strictly realistic terms; there are several artists whose work is SO photorealistic that you have to be told it's a painting before your brain can recognize it as such. I'm sure you've seen the post with all those women in the bathtub eating, or the one with Morgan Freeman, etc. Same deal.
Are you really "calling out" an entire artistic movement as a huge conspiracy of tracers and cheaters? Really? Why? What the hell does that get you?
To the question of tracing...oy. As any actual visual artist will tell you, unless you can actually PAINT, tracing an outline of something is no more guarantee of an accurate reproduction than drawing your own sketch. And if you aren't good enough to draw your own sketch from reference and then paint in the detail, no amount of tracing is going to help.
As for drawing from reference being some kind of "cheat"...what kind of willful morons are you people? What the fuck do you think portrait sitting IS?? Or still life? It's an artist painting/sculpting/sketching from a visual REFERENCE POINT. The Mona Lisa, one of the most famous pieces of artwork in our history, is a PORTRAIT. da Vinci sat down in front of a human woman for reference, and then proceeded to paint a slightly embellished version of her. Whole SCHOOLS of art were founded on teaching the skill of taking a person/thing and realistically reproducing it, then adding their own imaginative embellishments. You're literally criticizing an artist for doing WHAT ARTISTS DO.
[On a side note, THANK YOU, all artists who use references. eschergirls is an entire blog dedicated to the kind of mind-bogglingly bad figure drawing that can result from not actually, you know, GLANCING at a human figure once in a while.]
If this whole smear campaign is jealousy at work, recognize that your stubborn refusal to see truth makes you look even less capable and talented than you might have otherwise if you just admitted you can't quite achieve what she does. If it's misdirected anger coming from ignorance, a) Educate yourselves, and b) There are so many more worthy causes at which to aim your fury.
Either way, give it up. She's a good artist, with a visible track record of her technique, her talent and the development of her skill over time, who gives of her talent freely for our enjoyment. You are bafflingly dense if you think otherwise.
