How to Use Reference Without Copying: An Illustrator's Research Routine

Every artist eventually asks some version of the same anxious question: if I look at a photograph while I draw, is the drawing still mine? The honest answer is that reference is not the risk. Reference used badly is, and the difference is a routine rather than a rule. Alexandra Fintova and Sandra Staub, who teach the Character Design Essentials Bundle and the Minimalist Art Bundle on Twotap, both build research directly into their process, and between them they describe a way of working where copying stops being a live possibility.

Research is not a shortage of imagination

Fintova addresses the anxiety head on, because it stops beginners from doing the one thing that would improve their work fastest.

"Doing research is essential, and it is sometimes misunderstood with lack of creativity or copying. By creating mood boards, seeing how other artists solve the problem, how something looks in real life, you can make your design grounded in reality, and make them more believable even if the character is based on a fantasy."
Alexandra Fintova, in the lesson Research from the Character Design Essentials Bundle

Invented things still have to obey something. A fantasy creature reads as real because its weight, joints, and materials behave the way the viewer has seen actual weight and joints and materials behave. That knowledge comes from looking. Refusing to look does not make work more original, it makes it vaguer.

Draw your references instead of saving them

The strongest anti-copying habit in either course is Fintova's opening exercise, and it works because of what your hand does rather than what you promise yourself.

She sends students to find one inspiration from each of six natural categories: plants, mushrooms, butterflies, bugs, fish, and birds. Her reasoning is that nature has already solved more design problems than you can invent your way past.

"Nature is the most creative thing in the whole world. You can't even think of things that are better than what nature already created. You don't need to reinvent the wheel."
Alexandra Fintova, in the lesson Find Inspiration

Then, crucially, she does not file the images away. She redraws each one on a new layer over the photo, using a single color and simple lines, either by observation or by tracing out the main shapes. No shading, no detail, no accuracy.

The point is stated plainly: this is about getting an idea of the shapes, structures, patterns and colors you can use. What comes out is a mood board you drew, and a drawn reference has already passed through your hand, your simplifications, and your mistakes. It is nobody's artwork but yours, and it teaches you the thing the photo knew.

Decide what you want before you look at what exists

Order matters more than most people expect, for reasons that are psychological rather than technical.

"If I would go through this research phase after I just say I want to do a sailor, I might have the imposter syndrome. That someone else did something that is my idea, and it's already done. Why do I want to draw this? So to prevent the imposter syndrome, lay down your ideas first."
Alexandra Fintova, in the lesson Research

Copying is what happens to people who arrive at reference empty. If you open Pinterest with no position of your own, the best image in the feed becomes your position by default. If you arrive with a written idea, however rough, every image is measured against it, and you take only what your idea was already asking for.

Take the structure, not the surface

Staub's approach to reference is the other half of this, and it is the practical technique that makes a drawn reference stop resembling its source. She works from photos constantly, and reduces every one of them.

Her method for a complex object is a question rather than a procedure: how many elements do I need in order for the viewer to understand what this is? Her monstera reference has a mass of leaves. One leaf is enough for recognition, because the silhouette is so distinctive, so the actual number becomes a composition decision instead of a reporting job. She draws three or five, preferring odd numbers, on separate layers so she can move them.

For flowers she works two ways: freehand, stylizing petals down while keeping the plant recognizable, or by construction, breaking a symmetrical flower like a tulip into a circle plus a few lateral lines. Her general rule is portable to anything:

"Always try and break down any object to its most characteristic elements, focus on representing those elements as accurately as possible, and leave out whatever is not essential."
Sandra Staub, in the lesson Simplifying Objects from the Minimalist Art Bundle

A reference photographed by someone else contains their lighting, their crop, their moment. Take the characteristic elements out of it and you are left with structural facts, which belong to the subject rather than to the photographer.

Recombine until the result is not in any of your references

Fintova's sailor ends up with tattoos, a seagull on the shoulder, a beard rendered as the sea with objects floating in it, and a joke running between the tattoos and the beard, where a "where are my keys" tattoo pays off with a key tangled in the hair. She found tattoos and seagulls in research. The beard as an ocean, and the pun, are hers.

That is the shape of honest reference use. Individual observations come from the world. The combination, and the reason for the combination, come from you. No single source could be pointed at as the thing you copied, because the drawing is an argument made out of many separate observations.

She is also candid that she deliberately did not build a visual mood board on screen for that lesson, because she did not want to display or lean on other artists' work. Looking at other artists to see how they solved a problem is research. Keeping their solution open beside your canvas while you draw is something else.

The routine

• Write your idea down first, in a sentence, before searching for anything
• Gather reference for the specific parts your idea already needs
• Redraw references simply, in one color, rather than collecting them
• Reduce each subject to its characteristic elements and drop the rest
• Prefer real life and nature over other people's finished illustrations
• Combine observations from several sources so no single one dominates
• Close the references before you start the final piece

Both instructors teach research as a stage with its own methods on Twotap: Alexandra Fintova in the Character Design Essentials Bundle, and Sandra Staub in the Minimalist Art Bundle.