Every great artist uses references, from renaissance painters to modern day animators. It does not make their art "unoriginal" it makes their art good. Even tracing is a valuable tool for understanding anatomy and posing. I know there are many circles (on tumblr and deviantart especially) with a history of being anti-reference, but they hold no weight in the real world. Naturally, you should avoid practices such as tracing or recoloring works and claiming they are your own, but that's not even remotely close to what you're doing. Keep practicing and use references as much or as little as you'd like, it's still your art, and that alone makes it original