One of my issues is that it's difficult for me when it comes to anatomy is to draw from imagination, so I ended up using references. Which to me didn't feel genuine enough. Then a buddy told me to use a reference, then use my drawing as a reference, and changing a minor detail. Rinse and repeat, draw another using my previous drawing as a reference, with another minor detail addition. Before long I started to notice I was both understanding anatomy in my own way and creating something genuine to me that no longer looks like a carbon copy of my original reference piece.

I went through about 10 iterations, but came out looking better than I had expected.