In my experience people who accuse you of tracing are usually jealous themselves. Dont let it bother you keep doing what you do. Eventually you will be able to work your own peices from memories, or experiences that you had. What your doing is what I started doing a decade ago when I started, and now I enter competitions, have commisions, and produce my own original works. You'll get their, it will just take time. In the mean time however, your drawing are superb.
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I've had art classes that were terrible before. The teachers were way too critical about the student's work. I've had other teachers that encouraged us and graded us based on effort rather than how nice the project came out. So just because you didn't do well in an art class doesn't mean you are not an artist!
You should get yourself a nice little sketch book! That way you won't have any of those lines in your drawings should you ever decide to enter a piece in a contest or even hang it on your wall!
I actually do have quite a few sketch books. My only reason for using the journal is because every. single. one. of my friends (or anyone who sees my drawings) accuses me of tracing bcause I base my drawings off popular images from the internet. Anyway, I used lined paper because you can't trace (or at least I can't) using lined paper.
