Goddamnit, I so want to know how Maleev works. Even if I found out that it was some extra easy process, it wouldn't make me think less of the art. I just don't see where anyone can call a process "cheating." If this is what its come to, then where is the line drawn? What, you can't draw from photographs or even lightbox them, but its okay to draw from real life models? Its okay to reference buildings and objects but not people? Is it okay to lightbox your own sketches made from real life models, but once you do it from photographs its just taboo? So if you can "cheat" when making realistic art, can you cheat when making abstract art? Who cares? Seriously, if he never told you how he made his stuff, you'd all be going down on him for how great it looks. Just because he does something that makes it easier on him to produce work faster doesn't make it less than honorable. "Tracing" from real life has been around since the camera obscura. Even hundreds of years before the obscura's creation, people used plain old glass. And before that they used models and still life, and before that they used the images in their heads from seeing buffalos and wooly mammoths all the way to the beginning of man. Its all just a perspective of reality. I'll say it once, and I'll say it to the end of time, the only thing that matters in creating original art is the end result. Think of it as a privelage that an artist has let you in on his process. And stop whining, because ultimately all I see is jealousy that he can pull it off so well.