Don't trust every tips.
What you're already doing should work. You could study real photo too to avoid reproducing the same mistakes as the artists you study or lock yourself in the same style choices as them.
I see drawing style like a caricature recipe. Your goal is to capture essential traits and crank them up to your liking.
Example 1: To make waifus, my recipe will make similar choices as the fertility statues of ancient culture. (Cultured way to say big butt)
Example 2: Pointy chins, bigger eyes, smaller nose, etc are caricature recipe (conscious shift of proportion from realism)
When doing copy exercise you should try to copy as faithfully as possible to reveal all the choices that the artist made. If you can make it from memory, gg.
Warning: If you don't train realistic anatomy, you might learn caricature recipe, but it will stay as a dead unevolving style.
Once you have solid understanding of realistic anatomy, styles become vocabulary. You will be able to remix them to create your own style.
Styles are all different manifestation of the same root (realism). That's why it's easy to bridge styles together through realism.
When you test your recipes/style, you no longer need to stick to references. Only your own sense of aesthetics can guide you for this.
Who the hell worries about copying when learning anyway? When learning a music instrument, they shouldn't be allowed to use music sheet because it's copying the composer's music lol
It's all good as long as you don't claim your copies as your own.
