As an artist as well as an amateur writer (seeing as how I'm in RP) I see this behavior considerably lazy. I wouldn't go as far as to call it theft, since we're not making money off of it. But if you can't even write a basic narrative description then it just tells me you don't write well at all. So if I ask for a character description I do NOT want an image you pulled off of Google or DeviantArt, because then I'm told you are just lazy. Write it down and submit it in.

But if you are someone like me who can draw, or draw competently enough to portray your character in an objectively inoffensive way then go for it.

As a NRP'er too I see a lot of people snagging maps from the internet or DeviantArt. But more often than not these artists freely say people can use it. But I still feel it's rather lazy. If we're meant to be writing in a fictional world, then why keep recycling the same map used many times before? It doesn't make sense to me. The only exception to this might be maps of our world where it's understandable.