Probably like a great many people who endeavour to create art, I’ve been amassing huge quantities of reference for many years, mostly digital in the form of categorized sets of images : anatomical references, nature, clothing and fashions, other illustration styles, sub cultures such as graffiti and skateboarding, punk, metal, goth, steampunk through to Victorian era references, etc. It’s not exhaustive and goes on.
I also have the obligatory pinterest boards where I add items of interest as I come across them. I have a particularly useful pinboard where I add art techniques if I’m looking at how a particular thing is achieved.
I also have my own very large collection of photo reference which i’ve collected for many years and there are separate sections in each for textures.
(I got into the habit a long time ago of taking texture photo reference, these are incredibly useful for photoshop work where you can either use them directly in illustrations, or create re-usable brushes and shape libraries.) There’s the obvious advantage that there are no copyright issues either, at least regarding the image provenance.
Since sketchbooks 1, I have a decent amount of sketchbooks on the go now and i’m getting more into the habit of working from a hybrid of live sketches / photos which I take at the time and I really like how this is working out.
If I find i’m too busy to do this, rather than do no drawing at all I sketch from stills of movies or do figure sketching from one of the many online reference sites such as SketchDaily.
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OCA Illustration 2: Responding to a brief 