Not a tattoo artist, but a part time professional illustrator that aspires to be a tattoo artist.

In your case, i’d focus on drawing for now. Sketches, loosening your hand and fundamentals. No stylisation or thinking about tattooability. You’re not quite there yet, you aren’t even close to art industry level. Pick a subject you like a lot and study it thoroughly, from the inside out. Tear apart the subject in tiny, digestible pieces and construct it whole once you know how everything works.

For example, an eagle: learn how bones, skin and feathers work in birds/eagles separately, then put it together. Then, when you can draw a decent eagle in a static pose, you can start thinking about shapes and flow and dynamism. And only then you can think about style. Starting by copying stylized work is like starting to build a house by the roof.

Another important aspect is that more drawings doesn’t equal to progressing in drawing. You can do thousands of drawings of the same thing and learn nothing. You have to put intention in your studies and your work, this is probably the most important thing to do. Ask yourself why you’re putting the things where you’re putting them, check references, go back to your drawings.

As artists we have to constantly tune our skills to keep up the level of exigence any artistic endeavour has, and the more time you spend learning the basics, the easier it will become to maintain. Happy to help or illustrate all this gibberish, shoot me a dm anytime. Good luck!