An interesting and highly amusing discussion.

From my perspective coming from traditional, when first dabbling in digital art (using ArtRage) I just produced a portrait as I normally would. I tended to sketch the face in charcoal loosely, firstly a line for the eyes, to achieve the right angle, then a line for the nose, for proportion and then angle. The outline of the face would generally come next, and then the difficult bit, which I still struggle with to this day (or have to pay extra attention to) which is the positioning of the mouth!.

If the mouth is just slightly out, the jawline can look off, which sometimes can lead to redrawing the jaw, then the nose is the wrong size, then the eyes are out of proportion. It can lead to portrait madness.

My technique has changed somewhat since using ArtRage in that I now jump straight to the oil brush to colour fill the main shapes of the face and then thumbnail by zooming out to check that the proportions are correct. Then the fun can begin!. I seem to be having less issues these days of getting the proportions correct using this technique which is so important when getting a portrait to look lifelike.

I have experimented quite a bit using tracing, and for a couple of portraits have traced the block filling first part of the painting and generally this has worked pretty well and has given me a fast starting point. I find myself uncomfortable in using this as it does feel a little like cheating, but I am adding the rest of the detail myself. However the painting is just for me, it is my hobby and I find it fun to add the detail and see the painting come together.

This may however lead to another question, that of originality and style. If at the end of a portrait I get to a point where I am just noodling, I decide the picture is finished, there are always parts that I notice I could produce more accurately, but if the portrait is identifiable then I am generally happy. So my style would be the filter that my eyes and brain had applied to the painting which would include tiny imperfections, which I feel maybe lost if tracing was employed more extensively throughout the process.