Using references, crutch or necessity?

[Anonymous No.3219669]

I've had a few years experience doing life drawing.
I've recently been wanting to draw more illustrative type stuff, the problem is I have such a hard time coming up with poses, and using reference makes my drawings come out 100x better.

The way I use reference is usually just taking the pose and jotting down the skeleton. That's it. I might look at the reference again for the pose of the hand, or clothing folds.

Is this wrong to do? I usually take requests from anons so they'll ask for something specific like "so and so combing so and so's hair" or "so and so in a karate pose". Or vague requests where I just don't know where to start so I'll just search for vague terms like "tired" and go from there.

These are things that just aren't in my visual library, so I HAVE to just see images of them. I just feel so guilty. I'm not copying them line for line, but I'm not sure which is more detrimental, me being pigeon-hold into boring, comfortable poses because I can't visualize them properly, or me just taking a pose from a reference.

[Anonymous No.3219916]

>>3219669
>I just feel so guilty.

Stop listening to the trolls and try hards and idiots here. Using reference is fine. Artists have been doing it from day one.

No artist ever born made up everything they painted from memory. None of them.

[Anonymous No.3219922]

Stop using references.
Learn to draw instead of copying.

Pic related, one day you could be this good and draw a dog from imagination like I did.

[Anonymous No.3220029]

Drawing from imagination is a different skill than life drawing. If you wanna do it, practice it. I'd use reference for anything else but pose, coming up with your own pose and angle is way more rewarding.