Grid technique - Cheating or Acceptable.

[Silverthorn]

Basically, the grid-technique has been used widely for copying famous artists' works. To get the proportions exact, to place the details at precisely the same position. Without knowing they're replicas, one could easily mistake them for the original.

Which brings me to the downside of using that grid technique: you copy stuff. Yeah, cool, you manage to draw a picture that looks really close to the original with little amount of time. However, what if you want to turn the angle a little? Imagine you were given a portrait and are now asked to draw a sideview of it. Will the grid work? I am pretty sure it won't. Because your points of interest lay at different positions now, distorted by perspective.

Sure, for just copying and/or getting used to drawing something, it's all right but when you don't have an exact ref that you can copy, you're going to be in a fix. Therefore, it's better to understand what things identify an object and where they go in 3D-space. It's a lot harder but you learn a lot more as well.

I haven't read all posts so pardon me if that has already been mentioned