I think it's great that your way of coloring doesn't look exactly like mine (or anyone else's for that matter)

Thank you so much for saying that! I have kind of found my own style, haven't I? *G*

I don't try to copy other people's styles completely, it's just a way of getting out of my set ways and do something differently, to expand my repertoire. The only way I know how to do this is take other people's icons and try and achieve the same look until I understand how they did it. I hope that's okay.

Oh I've certainly learned a lot from others, people write tutorials so that others can learn from them :) I definitely recommend reading tutorials from all kinds of makers with very different styles - my goal was always to learn tips and tricks from everyone and then see if I could blend those techniques and tricks with my own in some sort of original way. But the cool thing is that like you said, you already have your own original style, I mean people guess you so often at anonymous activites (and often correctly) so that's definitely something to be proud, there's something very recognizable there :)