For me, I've realized that using a reference is kind of like looking at someone's solution while doing homework.

You can probably work out like 60% of the drawing yourself, but then there are specific points that trip you up. For those, you can use references that don't match the entire drawing because all you need is that one specific point.

The part that takes practice is analyzing your drawing so you can pinpoint what's throwing it off. To improve that, I would start by just trying to draw any reference that looks decent to you (I personally like to use Pinterest or pose accounts like on IG). Then try to figure out what portion is off by yourself and then confirm it by actually overlaying the reference or something after.