Three Origins Of Drawings

There are three potential origins to any drawing.

• Other Artists' Work
• Observation
• Your Mind (memory/imagination)

You can't sell stuff you've created based on other artist's work, but it's excellent practice to learn why and how they did certain things in their drawings.

Drawing from observation is very important, especially early on. In doing so you create memories and mental studies of what things look like and how they behave, which helps immensely for the third origin.

Creating things from your mind is considered an advanced skill by Betty Edwards. And it is. Anything you create from memory or imagination is enhanced by knowledge you have of things you've examined in the past.