I am not sure I would call it cheating but there definitely is an issue here, and the author dismisses it all too easily. The issue is that it seems that a lot

I am not sure I would call it cheating but there definitely is an issue here, and the author dismisses it all too easily. The issue is that it seems that a lot of today's artists just do not have the skills of the artists of the past. Paul Graham actually touched on this as well in one of his old essays. Thus, when artists use photography they may not use it as a tool to expand their abilities, but as a crutch to compensate for lack of skill. And they try to argue around that by saying something like "art is not about skill it is about ideas and expression". But the thing is, when you get the skill then you can also have much more interesting ideas and expression. For example if you look at a portrait done by one of the old dutch masters, you often see so much expression and emotion and character in the face. This is often much more than you can see in the usual modern photograph to say nothing about the crude camera obscura methods of the past. How do they do it? Well they use their skill in connection with their vision in order to make painting more powerful. They make minor embellishments and subtly change this or that to make the face look more striking. But my point is, in order to do all of that you have to have the skill first. It is not that easy to separate skill and expression. I think that is why many artists today are talking about how the old masters used camera obscura. They just want to provide an explanation as to why no-one seems to have the skill of the old masters anymore. By the way that theory is wrong. All you have to do to prove it wrong is look at some rembrandt self portraits, for which he could not have possibly used camera obscura and which do not differ in technique from his usual portraits. Now maybe I am being too hard on artists. Those skills are tremendously difficult to master, even if you do have the talent. And considering people do not spend much on art anymore, it is probably unfair to expect today's artists to spend the enormous time and effort to obtain those skills. Perhaps, certain art skills will be permanently lost like ancient violin making. That's ok, and I cannot blame artists for being creative and expressing themselves with the skills and techniques they can practically develop. But lets not lie to ourselves and pretend that it is just as good. Something is definitely lost when a photograph replaces a face drawn by a skilled master.