Do not learn from the mistakes of others.
Before I became an artist, I wanted to become cartoonists, and somehow I was lucky enough to show their raw Known Joe Quesada. He flipped through them, and said that, I think I look too much into comics, and too little on real life. Do you understand? You can suck the creativity inspires you to people, but you should look to the same place and they are - in real life. Copying another artist, you copy his distorted vision of the real world, learn his habits, his mistakes. Drawing from nature does not have this baggage conventions. Eat the world directly, unfiltered, and you will learn many things quickly.