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I did not participate in this experiment because I think it misses the point and further encourages people into a photo vs. life mentality - it's really not about that.
As artists, our ultimate goal should be to produce the best art we can and to constantly push our boundaries and enhance our skills.
So, to me, being an artist means being able to do great work from photos, and doing great work from life. Why? Because I firmly believe that it will help me make better pictures and enhance my ability to "see".
Look around you at the artists who you view as the current crop of "world-class" painters. I will bet that all of them have had extensive experience working from life and that even if they work from photo reference, they will extoll the virtues of learning to draw and paint from life as an essential part of how they learned to make art and how they "see" today.
That is certainly true for all of the most successful portrait painters today.
So it is not about either or, it is about using both photos and life to push your skills to a higher level.
The realities of portraiture today mean very few artists get to do very many portraits totally from life - people are too busy to sit. So photos are an essential part of making portraits, but it is important to know that working from photo reference is part of the beginning, but not the end of making good figurative and portrait work.
You can work from photos and make wonderful art - but if you stop there and never explore working from life then, in my opinion, you are cheating yourself as an artist.
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