Nah base recolors still qualify as art, but I believe that people don't seem to realize that you can disrespect and not like a piece of art. Personally I have no respect towards base recolors because they're waaaaay too easy to do and unless someone can come in here and show me otherwise they are far from unique.

Nah base recolors still qualify as art, but I believe that people don't seem to realize that you can disrespect and not like a piece of art. Personally I have no respect towards base recolors because they're waaaaay too easy to do and unless someone can come in here and show me otherwise they are far from unique.

In my head, I can not let myself qualify recolors as art. It's essentially stealing art, and is no better than go to an artist's page and coloring over their art. But otherwise, I couldn't agree more with you.

This is my pet peeve too. Even worse is when you draw similar to the show's style and then people think you took a screen-shot, just because of your style... ugh.

I have drawn over a base when I was getting used to ponies. That was the only time I have ever done that. And irritates me so much when people get tons of recognition for that.

On another note, a guide is fine in my opinion. Like I sometimes use a wing guide if I'm drawing an allicorn so I don't screw up royally, but that's about it.

While there are certainly times where I can see a base and not view it as a valid piece of art, such as using a Pony Generator to design something, I would never say that using a base is something that can't ever be qualified as art.

As an artist who specializes in creating things almost exclusively with others' parts, I do know that creating something new out of something old can be classified as a unique form of art in its own right. Is it as impressive as creating something from scratch? No, and I know that when I go into it. Even still, though, I create the art out of sheer desire to see just what something might look like, or to put together things in an artistic way for something such as a wallpaper.

Take this image of mine as an example. It's a vector traced over a drawing that was originally of Pinkie Pie, seen here. The similarities are obviously there, and I do nothing to hide that I worked off of that piece of work, in fact trying to push the fact that I did so. However, the fact still also remains that my piece of art is different in many substantial ways from his, and in having it exist it does offer something that others may be interested in what with having color, or of being a different pony.

I'm not trying to say that I make amazing artwork of my own right or anything like that. I'm simply saying that, even working with a base, my art still stands on its own with enough differences that to deny that it is art would be ignorant, honestly. Similar, yet different; the same, yet not. It's almost insulting to insinuate that just because I used a base my art isn't valid, so I thought that I would throw this out here.

I always use bases as a starting point in whatever it is im doing when I first learn to draw.

But you have to quickly get out of the habit of using them because if not...you just wont go anywhere. 

Well I wouldn't Hnnng to them, more like "Try learning to do it instead." If you can't 'art' don't 'art' (Yes I'm using art as a verb.... try and stop me hnnnng.)