Darren Taylor wrote: When you boil it down, drawing with "pen & ink" is nothing more than hand writing. The difference is that the shape of a letter conveys the information the viewer needs to recognise a sound or emphisis.

Matt Hawes wrote: I mean, there are artists that you know can draw very well, per se, but don't appeal to you, and then there are "artists" who draw badly.

In the context of Darren's theory, I'd liken badly drawn art to someone's horribly crabbed or sloppy handwriting. I couldn't ever get above a B+ in handwriting in school...

Brian Miller says: "Ethan, we don't know what the question Neal was answering was. David didn't include his exact phrasing of his question in his post. "

Quite right.  But I feel I can deduce what the David's intent was from his opening paragraph, which follows: 

"JB,

I thought you might be interested in an email response I received from Neal Adams last week that he said I could share, on a recent controversy involving a current "hot" artist and tracing photo art/light box usage."

Since I know of no possible way in which practicing by copying photographs at home could become a 'recent controversy', much less public information, I have to assume David was referring to an artist who traces 'photo art' and uses a light box in his published work.  Therefore, when Neal spins off on a lecture on how tracing photographs is a good thing for educational purposes, I'll go ahead and conclude that the question and the answer don't match.

Eugene Nylander wrote: for Matt Hawkes(sic) ~ and yet many of the 'bad' artists have had large followings.

Too true, too true...