Now They Tell Me!!

After being inspired by Bob Ross 'Joy of Painting', I signed up for an online Art course a few years ago and i can bang out a cloud and a mountain but I seem to have a real problem with dimensions and many a canvas has been ditched because of it and i mentioned it in the group chat and got the answer that i should trace the outline first.
I said that would be like cheating and blow me, it turns out that i was probably the only person NOT doing it!
Something called the Da Vinci Eye is particularity popular and throws the picture onto paper or canvas so you can sketch it out before painting and although it would be very useful, that doesn't feel right to me, its like the audio books which i maintain doesn't count as 'reading' a book.
I checked with a few other artists and it seemed split between yep its cheating and nope, it's perfectly fine but to me Art should be from your imagination where you paint what is in your mind's eye and then after deciding it's shite, painting over it in a huff and starting all over again.
The fact that nobody told me about Blending Stumps for pencil drawings was bad enough but now to find out that some of the brilliant art work i see from my fellow learners is actually a traced copy of something else just makes me think am i the mug for doing it the way i thought it should be done?
Maybe i should make Bob proud and just stick to painting mountains and clouds with a few trees thrown in but have to admit, it is tempting to get some additional help so my painted people don't end up looking like an Easter Island statue.