Perhaps it's time now to insert that using references and learning to improve your drawing skills aren't always the same thing. I'd love to tackle the latter, but that would take a whole other tutorial. Or you can get a copy of Betty Edwards' Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain , which a lot of professors actually use to teach Drawing 101. I'm going to assume the reader of this tutorial can copy well enough whatever they're looking at as reference. If you're looking to develop your own style and don't want to be influenced by other artists' visions, pay more attention to real objects, or, second best, photographs instead.
Art is a supposed to be a reflection of life, after all.
Photographs of people, costumes, buildings and landscapes offer good references if you can't exactly go outside to find a medieval maiden against a mountain backdrop with Castle Neushwanstein for your picture. Frontal flash lighting rarely occurs naturally in the real world, unless you're walking around all the time with a 10,000-Watt miner's hat. On the design and costuming side of using references, photographs need not be your only sources. Now let's look at the brave new world of picture references out there. Many of these resouces are completely free.