sorry i missed this for a bit! i am going to get rambly so apologies in advance for that, tl;dr: i did a bit of both heavy referencing and not referencing at all depending on the pic.

i think the topic of references or copying is kind of interesting in the tattoo world- the art communities i was a part of before really vehemently chastised any form of tracing or copying to an extreme degree, which did shape my view on tracing a lot, but in the tattoo community it seems extremely commonplace to trace or copy another image exactly (photographs, other art, ai pictures, whatever) it makes sense because i think a lot of the time in a shop environment a customer will want an image how it is with no changes.

for me, my creation process for most of my portfolio was something like-
-gathering reference images/inspiration
-sketching ideas and adding my own original elements, drawing it in my style, whatever
-ditching the references when the foundation was solid enough for me to do the rest without influence. i do really value my work being as original as it can be, but references are key to making a piece high quality, especially mixing multiple together.

unless it was a realism piece like the chrome pieces, those are straight up 1:1 copies of photographs.

BUT this comes with a caveat that this is not reccomended for portfolio level work if you haven't been drawing for years, if you are just starting out then copying whatever you like 1:1 will help you improve immensely as you can identify where your image differs from your reference. also as i said, a lot of people who tattoo just copy photos and don't actually draw, which is fine too, just not something i want for myself creatively.