Might have made a tweet about this before but tracing for practice and learning is completely fine. We in the artist community have established that and made it acceptable. But heavily referencing artwork especially artwork from others have made is wrong.

Tracing and referencing will always be a double edge sword issue that always depends on the situation.

Before I mute this tweet, I want to offer up some clarifications. Paying homage to another's work is extremely different and is not tracing at all. This explains it: https://axiomgallerywp.com/educational/influence-homage-originality

What I mean by heavily referencing, it is basically copying off of another artist's artwork and the aspects of that work. Referencing is using artwork to observe and learn from. Anyways this is what I meant in the 2nd that this topic will always be a double-edge sword.