Hello friends, here is a little tip for you!😁 This is for if you draw in a certain style and avoid using photo/life references because you are afraid your style might get mixed up.
It might be obvious to most, but I see a lot of artists are focusing on only cartoon refs and other artist's cartoon work, rather than real life or photo refs in fear of losing their signature style or drawing too realistically.
This is, of course, perfectly fine, but then your refs will be very limited and you won't always be able to find the exact ref of the pose you want to try.
So I wanted to give you guys an idea of how I try to approach it, since I did the very same when I was younger.
Start by grasping the anatomy of whatever you want to drawing with heavy referencing, sticking as close to realism as possible (1 and 2)
Pay attention to the shapes you used to draw the animal and to defined parts such as nose curves, long feet, big thighs ect. Everything that could be considered an identifying characteristic.
Redraw the animal again, posing the shapes in a way you like and slightly styling the animal through how you normally would, but still keep those shapes in tact (3 and 4)
Keep doing this and push your boundries. You can vary the shape sizes, as well as making them slightly more round/angular/uneven ect, as long it sticks close to the orignal outline, if that makes sense. And of course, keep those identifying characteristics that makes a bunny a bunny.
A simple example could be to take the rabbit's ears. It can be tiny like Thumper's or big like Judy's. The concept gets carried over the same way because the basic shape is the same.
Hope this helped somewhat😅
P.S. Shapes are not just circles and squares. They can be whatever you see in the animal, as long as they are solid and you can imagine them 3D.