Off the top of my head I can think of,
Krita's Reference Image Picking, Wall Projectors, Graphite Paper, Tracing, Pouncing, Dark Room, and Perspectographs.

All of this techniques,
are beautiful and ingenious - and they are art.

Krita, has a feature called Reference Images Tool,
and when you stretch a reference image over your entire canvas, and make it invisible by setting opacity to 1 percent.

Something magical happens,
and this thing give you the superpower to become an artist right now.

The reference layer is a layer above all other layers,
it lives in its own untouchable universe above all else.

When you have an invisible reference image stretched over your canvas,
the color picker won't care that the opacity is just 1 percent - it will only pick colors from the reference layer.

That means when you use a color picker, even in an empty area of your canvas,
you will pick the REAL color from the reference image, even though the opacity of the reference image is at 1 percent.

Press "B" to switch to your brush tool, and when you need a real color,
just hold control and pick.

Though your canvas maybe empty, or pink like mine always is,
it does not matter, yo still get the real color from your invisible reference image.

This is a superpower that would make, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo,
quit.

You can open up your own Art Studio,
and sell perfect portraits while you study and master adding extra beauty to them.

If you feel that art is not in the trace,
then it is surely in what you do to and around it.

But I assure you, tracing portraits is it,
tracing is also a magnificent teacher.

There is a second point I should try to note here,
when you begin tracing it becomes the loveliest teacher - that can take you from beginner on up.

Please don't start with copying by eye, or some hand-eye-coordination practice,
there are other lessons to be had first - and you find them all in tracing.

Order an inexpensive (about $40) pen and tablet,
and take a Krita Tutorial.

And begin taking commissions,
be it a week a month or a year, or a decade, or several - we need to create art the same way that we need to leave our journals behind.

Our art is an important picture of our soul,
one that is worth a million unspoken words, when all there is left is journals.

Take to art, make Photo Realism your first step,
and then travel countless many more.