I found someone with thousands of likes and hundreds of followers to be tracing another artists' art. I am generally unsure of what to do in these scenarios, but I messaged the original artist(who is huge by the way, so they probably won't check their dms)

and I left a comment, under the tracers post, with the original artists ig.

I then sent the tracer a dm telling them that tracing is not cool, but to go with the flow of progress.

I, admittedly, traced a very few drawings back in 2012-2013. I was a teenager, i was afraid of not showing progress. But honestly, those drawings are smears, to me, on my overall art journey. I cringe when I think of it because it 1. is so obviously out of place from my other work at the time. and 2. no different than ai art, in that it is simply stealing original content and creativity from someone and claiming it as your own.

I felt like garbage once I posted traced art back then, and that feeling never stopped. If this artist is in the same boat as me, i'd like to nip it in the bud as soon as possible.