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Working from another person's photo without their permission is a copyright violation, and can cause trouble particularly if you ever show it on the web (which can count as "publishing" the image or as "public exhibition") or if you include the resulting artwork in your portfolio.
Doing this may also open you up to a lawsuit from the person depicted in the photo unless their permission is given to use their image. Check out the copyright and model's release threads of SOG for more info.
Taking good photos of subjects is not that hard and doesn't require any more equipment to get started than a point-and-shoot camera and a window.
Part of the fun of portraiture is creating the whole image from concept to finish, yourself. Copying photos taken by others just makes us very expensive photocopy machines, in my opinion.
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