And Dan, none of this should have discouraged you. This should have energized you. You might actually, with a slightly different perspective, feel exhilarated by the possibility of an additional way of "seeing."

If your originally posted drawing was from a photo and you're discouraged by the unanimous vote that it was in fact from a photo, you have nothing but opportunity in front of you to learn the "why" of that perception in the minds of others and -- if you choose -- spend some time on those elements.

Hey, it's all free, and it's fun, too. If you search for "photo life" in this Forum, you'll find many threads over many years in which this issue has been hashed out. It's nothing personal. Everyone's trying to help, to move the discussion and the process forward.

Email vs spoken word, photo vs life.
 

Stephen
Your last comment reminded me of an article I red once on email and how hard it is do determine the emotion behind the message. The difficulty arises when the human is separated from the words, the facial contortions, the gestures, and tone of voice, visual clues that aid us to determine what a person is trying to convey.

How appropriate this is to the subject at hand life vs the photo, or dare I say artist vs camera.
A well trained artist ( see Whitaker's threads on what it takes to be a well trained artist) can process information much more efficiently than a camera ( apologizes to you photographers ) Just as talking to another human is far more superior to typing them a message.

In conclusion: In order to paint a portrait that's true to the subject you have to meet and get to know that individual, see them, hear them ,study them in their environment, note their unique features and habits and then process and incorporate all that information into your portrait, all things a camera can not do.

So you see stephen I have been encouraged and energized by this discussion.