A comic to answer a question I get asked far too often.
As somebody who’s been drawing for upwards of 10 years and still has SO much to learn, please take my advice when I say: this mentality SUCKS. You should absolutely reference other artists as a way to learn, but not as a means to feel bad about your own skills.
Learning is not linear, and the way that I or any other artist draws does NOT affect your own skill. Just have fun and you’ll learn as u go.
imo the best way to interpret those “real people don’t do x” writing advice posts is “most people don’t do x, so if a character does x, it should be a distinguishing trait.” human behavior is infinitely varied; for any x, there are real people who do x. we can’t make absolute statements. we can, however, make probabilistic ones.
for example, most people don’t address each other by name in the middle of a casual conversation. if all your characters do that, your dialogue will sound stilted and unnatural. but if just one character does that, then it tells us something about that character.