Colleen is right, comparing what we do with how others do it can remove a lot of the enjoyment from our art, we all do it differently, full stop (or period!) It's the artist's prerogative (I'm a stickler for spelling, but I don't know how to spell that word!) to belittle their own work and not see what's good in it, perhaps because the artist's mind is pure and exciting, and then there is the problem of translating the images we have in our heads onto paper with whatever means we decide to use. Our imagination is unbound by the physical limitations of paint and pencils, and so what we paint is never what we envisaged. Every so often I look at my work and think, 'people won't like that', or 'that'll never sell' or 'so and so did it better', but then I have to remind myself that I don't paint for people to like what I do, though selling is nice, it can't be the goal, and I am not so and so, I am me and I do it this way.
Working from life though is a definite must, and increases the pleasure of being out in nature enormously, and as far as depicting nature in art, I think it was Gauguin that said something along the lines of 'not copying nature, but taking inspiration from it and creating something else'. Hence why I don't see meticulous copies of things as being especially artistic (even though technically they are brilliant).