When you were learning, who did you emulate?

When I got into drawing I just drew for myself. Later on, about 2002/3 I found fanart central and found an artist named Sliver who inspired me and all that. Kept me drawing and I strove to draw like her.

http://www.fanart-central.net/user/Sliver/profile

Then I went off drawing for various years, hardly drawing anything at all.

These days my inspiration is SurrealKatie who is a great friend of mine. When we met she was a decent artist and I'd commission her a lot and I've watched her art go from good to amazing over the years and she's kept me striving for my own better art.

https://www.deviantart.com/surrealkatie

This isn't drawing related (as the person who mainly inspired me when i started drawing later sent ppl to attack me lol) but in terms of photography I've really kinda emulated Duane Michals in my portraits! Although I much prefer to photograph still-life and my figures, when going through rough times, I especially experimented more with his dark, gritty, black and white styled images.  

Here are a couple examples of my work that's more focused on Duane's style: 

Sister_Crowned

Vent_ShallowDOF

i feel like i'm still learning how to focus specifically on visual things that i like as opposed to "when i was learning," but...

my favorite artists right now that i'd like to try harder to emulate are:

KATE SHERIDAN

IVAN BILIBIN 
1 | 2 | 3

HIROSHI NAGAI
1 | 2 | 3

FELIX KRAMER

When I started out I was more inspired by books and live action film than artists? Any media that got my attention and kept me interested would inspire me to make my own stuff and I would try to imitate it to a degree. I would get those big art books or universe guides from shows/movies I liked and I'd draw a lot from those. Star Wars was always a big source of inspiration, I guess it's also what got me interested in world building.

There were def a few artists who did inspire me but unfortunately I don't remember their names. The ones I could recall were DA artists hopped accounts to change usernames and de-activated the old account I remembered the name of (this was before the username change feature came in) or just outright de-activated. If I did find someone with the right username (I did actually go through watch lists on old accounts for nostalgia's sake) their style's naturally changed over time as has their cast of OC's/interests so I'm not even sure I found the right person. 

I will say I did have a brief weeb phase in which I was really into the Black Lagoon manga, also the only manga I cared for. I think a lot of early style influence did from Black Lagoon because I would copy odd panels for practice. The rest of it was from me imitating whatever I found in those How To Draw Manga books or like I say drawing from film/TV art books/universe guides. 

I think this might be dating me but, when I was a kid...

I copied pretty much all the drawings out of the Mario 3 player's guide

Patrick Spaziante. I uh... see a lot of flaws now but I loved his attention to detail. Now the covers look pretty uncanny, tbh.
[x][x],[x]

Christian Riese Lassen. I grew out of him but he's still amazing. I ran across an artbook of his in Japan for ~$25 and passed on getting it and I kinda still regret it.
[x][x][x]

Later on when I went digital, it was Shilin/Oklnir. She's probably the only person from my initial da account I still follow. Honestly, if you ask me what my art goals are, it's her stuff. [x]
[x][x][I used to follow this tutorial to the letter. I think some of my best work from way back when was inspired by her and this tutorial.]holy cow this tutorial is over 12 years old

I have a lot of other inspirations but I think these guys were the only ones I made any attempt to emulate.

Yoshihiro Nagamori... I've said this a few times in some other threads but largely because I was a huge fan of toys anime back then so his artworks just stuck to my mind a lot, but even until now I still admire his character designs and works. For reference (and in case you don't feel like clicking the link), he did the main character design for almost every Beyblade, Bakugan and B-Daman series with few shoujo-styled works like Kirarin Revolution. These DVD covers are basically my fav work from him.

Though emphasis on the "almost", the anime that kicked me off to go with this style is actually an series titled "Crash B-Daman" which is...the only series from this franchise where Yoshihiro Nagamori ISN'T involved with ironically, lol. I wish I could list the main chara designer as an inspiration but this series is pretty much his only work from this kind of genre, although he's involved with recent works from Ufotable like Touken Ranbu/Katsugeki and F/SN: UBW. 

That said, this style was stuck to me since childhood and as much as how kiddy and outdated it is, I just...hold a strong attachment to it and couldn't find any new styles I could click with, ahahah. I'm a fan of 2000's anime artstyle in general, and the category for this artstyle is one of the most underappreciated ones :'D

I will say that I no longer tried to be the "fake official art" kind of artist towards my art and this style for reasons, but clearly the influence is still there and I did ended up emulating my own style that still fits within this genre...

ahahhahahaha (laughs in inuyasha) 

no joke when i was in middle school i only drew kagome knockoffs and pokemon trainers hh,, after that it was kawacy on dA! i cant link easily atm, but hes pretty famous ; w ; 

i tried really hard to emulate yun kouga's style, but unfortunately i only ever picked up a love for curly fluffy hair and not that lovely style LOL

my biggest inspirations were and still are yoji shinkawa [x, x], yoshitaka amano [x, x], and ayami kojima [x, x]. video games have always been a major influence in my life and have served as a main inspiration towards my art and writing, so i've learned about a lot of talented illustrators from that sort of media. ayami's was the style i tried the most to emulate, since i like stylized yet realistic work, and while i could never reach the same level as her, it helped me understand quite a bit about painting in the process!