Are you looking for a drawing tablet or pen display? Or an actual tablet like Surface Pro/iPad? Drawing tablet is where you draw on a flat mat-like surface with a stylus and look at your screen. You can get these pretty cheap. A pen display is basically a second monitor that you can physically draw on and see the lines as you go. They cannot operate without a computer/laptop to plug into. And the other option is the actual tablet with touchscreen/stylus options - these are generally $1000 range for a quality one. I like Surface Pro over the iPads I've tried (haven't used any other brands). Not much difference between SP4 and SP6 (current model) in terms of quality and screen. SP4 is about $850, but might go on sale for black Friday.

My home setup is a simple laptop with a Huion pen display. These are incredible displays and I cant recommend them enough. They are roughly half the price of Wacom and only really lack rotation/tilt options. 8000+ pen sensitivity, HD resolutions, older models only around 70% gamut (newer models 100%) and parallax, especially on newest versions, is barely noticeable. Compared to a $2000+ cintiq, you are getting a display with double the size and damn near equal quality and options. They have lightning deals and usually a coupon/% discount on amazon and typically come with lots of extras, like bonus nibs, extra pen and hand gloves. A 22" display is like $400-500 depending on model. I have this one. It's insanely huge and barely have to zoom in PS, CAD, Revit or other programs. Its an older model and I paid about $100 less than the current price. Look for sales. Huion pretty good for holiday sales. Id expect something on Friday. Its pretty damn amazing for me. I use Wacoms at work and would never drop like $2500 for an equivalent sized display. XP-Pen and Gaomon have similarly lower priced alternatives to Wacom.

Similarly, the plain drawing tablets can be found for $30-50 for smaller models. I could never stand the looking at screen while drawing on the pad. The pen displays are only digital option for me. Your mileage may vary.

As for programs, you have to pay for them unless you look for illegal means. They wont ever be pre-installed. Krita is free. Gimp, too. Google sketchup is pretty solid for creating and manipulating 3d objects that you can import for art. Ctrlpaint has a good tutorial on it and digital painting in general. But you'll have to pay for them. I like Clip Studio Paint Ex for sketching personally.

For the ability to run the programs, it comes down to specs. If its a laptop, a basic 15" with an i5 processor and dedicated graphics for about $500 should be able to run any program. Desktop probably built for less. Youd still need a drawing tablet or pen display. You wont get a decent portable tablet like an iPad or Surface Pro for the price range you want and you'll still need accessories and other options to make them viable drawing tablets.

Comes down to what you want and need and can afford. I recommend pen displays for the feeling of actually drawing on the screen compared to the older tablet style. I dont particularly like the ipad/surface pro options purely from price. I dont need to have it that portable. A smaller pen display can be quite portable if you have a school computer or laptop. Fits in the same bag if you have a 15" or so pen display.

Hi! Hopefully this isn't too late for you to see. Disclaimer, though: I'm a beginner when it comes to art, but seeing the lack of responses here, I thought I'd share.

1. Firstly, my advice is to practice these exercises regularly. For example, as a warmup, you might wanna do like half a page of each one or whatever you're comfortable with. Do not burn yourself out, though. If you do find yourself becoming tired of doing these lines over and over again, then take a break or go draw whatever you wanted to draw.
   
   Secondly, we all move at our own pace. Some might move faster, slower, or just at the average pace, but what's important it that you move at YOUR pace. If you want to consider moving on, then consider and maybe try the next exercise. If you think you're rushing, then I'd go back to practicing a bit more on the exercises you're on. However, I still like to have some sort of rough idea of how other progress with these, so I go through this subreddit and look at the homework that people have done for the exercise that I'm on. I like to find work that has been drawn in a similar way to mine, and then I read the critiques since they may also apply to me.
   
   Additionally, there's a self-critique thing that Matt Kohr/Uncomfortable (the creator of these guides) has included for each exercise. Here's the one for your exercise.
   
   
2. Always aim for the points. The purpose of the exercise is to ultimately exercise your accuracy. Because of this, we always want to connect our lines to the dots we've planned out. If we instead connected our lines to the ones we've drawn, then we'd be completing a different shape to the one we planned out originally (tell me if that didn't make sense. I'll make pictures for ya).
   
   
3. I'd say your pen is too thick (though it's a little hard to tell what thickness it is through the image). When doing super-imposed lines, having a thick line will make it harder to tell by how much you missed your original line by.
   
   Matt Kohr linked these two as examples of pens. He also recommends felt tip pens or fine liner pens with 0.5mm lines (but having a bit of a thinner or thicker line is still okay. If you can't get a hold of these pens, then ballpoint pens will suffice). If you can't afford some of the more expensive brands, then I'd very much recommend the Staedtler pigment liner or the Uni Pin Fineliner pen. I use the second one as it has black ink (my personal preference), while the Staedtler one is apparently grey ink.
   
   Still, your straight super-imposed lines are turning out nicely. The curved ones look like they need some practice, but you're on the right track. Ghosting might need some help, though. You might be going too slow, but I'd give Matt Kohr's video a re-watch just to make sure you're doing the technique correctly. Good luck!
   
   
   

Get one of those drawing figures. I'm not talking about the shitty wooden doll but those nice ones on amazon for ~50$ they are perfect for character drawing and can be posed any which way. Practice speed drawing these in different poses each day for like 30min or literally any amount will help. Do a few 1 min gesture drawings and then a few 5 min ones to warm up every day. Don't forget to hold your pencil (or better yet a clear ruler) at full arms length to measure body parts against each other (the hand is the same distance long as the amount of calf I can see from this angle/the feet are about the same distance apart as the torso is long, whatever it may be) and pay attention to exactly the angle of lines (I usually ask myself if the angle was a hand on a clock what minute is it pointing at, and often hold out my pencil at arms length and angle it along the thing I'm drawing to help me see the angle better) . Eventually you will become faster. My main tips when drawing a full scene are to first do a super fast pencil gesture of the scene (even if your just representing a tree or car or person with a oblong squiggle shape it doesn't matter) just to space things out so you don't spend time on the actual drawing of the objects only to realize you drew something too big or in the wrong space. Draw lightly at first with the pencil. Last tip for scenes is to use one two or three point perspective but use it loosely. Don't draw a thousand lines all the way across your paper just use your ruler or pencil to generally guide you.

edit: Bandai Tamashii Nations S.H. Figuarts Man (Solid Black Color Ver.) Action Figure https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GCACKEU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_TqEOAbJD5R1KW

That's the figure I'm talking about.

Well, you are supposed to do them with a felt-tip pen, but you don't need fancy ones for artists. I tried a lot of different ones so far, and honestly, I don't see much of a difference between most brands. Where I live you can get cheap "fineliners" in every store that sells school supplies, even supermarkets. These will do fine.
These https://www.amazon.de/Fineliner-STABILO-point-10er-schwarz/dp/B01BCE27BC/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1511466535&sr=8-9&keywords=fineliner are the ones that are most common in my country, but so far I like this one the most from all cheap ones https://www.amazon.de/edding-Fineliner-office-liner-schwarz/dp/B000KJME8W/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1511466493&sr=8-3&keywords=edding+office+liner
I have no idea if these are common in other countries as well, so it' mainly just to tell you that cheap pens work completely fine :)

If you can't even get these I guess you could start with ballpoint pens as well, as long as you switch to the recommended supplies as soon as possible :)

Good luck!

Get the 40% or more off coupon code at Michaels, you can use your phone. See if you can get 40% off all, instead of just one item. Otherwise bring a friend and use it on the expensive items.

• 15$ to 30$ - Paints like Winsor & Newton or Reeves or Prima I would avoid Artist Loft's paint as I have no experiance but other Michaels stuff is hit or miss. I think cakes is easiest to start with.
  
• 2$ - Palette or something to mix on. Dollar Store is probably good enough, otherwise like 5$.
  
• 20$ Paper - Canson or Strathmore make good tear off sheets. Make sure it says watercolour. A pad of paper is easier to start with then a bound sketchbook. These are usually on a buy two get one free type sale.
  
• 15$ - A brush set or Waterbrush if she travels with it (if you get this get it on amazon its overpriced in store) aim for something soft and labelled student or professioinal. Basically not Crayola.
  
• EDIT a WATERPROOF Sharpie.
  
  Depending on sales you can probably get everything for 50$. You might be able to get under 40$ but it'll be damn hard. The drawing pencils and kneaded erasers are cheapest at an art store where they will be sold loose for a few dollars, however with Christmas coming up also keep an eye out for sketching sets as they will use a like 5.99$ one to get all the art students back in stores and tempt them with other things

I had a similar concern when I started. I settled on a setup with printer paper attached to a clipboard (I use the Officemate Letter Size), and the clipboard mounted on a Artisul Freestyle Stand, with a strong clip securing the clipboard to the stand. I let the bottom of the clipboard rest on the lower rubber edge, so that my hand doesn't brush against the resistance.

With this setup I can mostly keep my neck straight and look with my eyes down at the angled paper. I'll also sometimes put the stand on top of a book to raise it higher up. It'll challenge your shoulder muscles but no more than an angled tablet. You also won't be able to rotate the page easily. I used that as an opportunity to practice drawing at all angles, instead.

It's a little pricy (about $70 for all the pieces) but your health is worth orders of magnitude more. As a bonus the stand works great with a tablet when you want to try digital drawing.

How big is the paper? That looks like a sidekick and I started in one of those too.

It's ok for doodling in but for these exercises it's probably better for you to get a spiral book, or draw directly on printer paper. Having to hold the thing open will hurt your lines and the kinks and kooks that the book gets from holding it will throw things off. If that thing is as small as I think it is, it'll be difficult for you to draw from the shoulder on such a small space too. Most of the planes exercises I see lurking here contain that many boxes but on paper 4x the size.

Otherwise I think you're doing ok. You've got some pretty good lines on there. If you can do it once you can do it again, so next time you make a line that's really good try to commit to memory how you prepared for it and do it next time. I've only just finished lesson 1 though so take what I say with a grain of salt lol.

The first tablet I ever had was a Wacom Bamboo that I got for $70 with a student discount, and it was always pretty reliable. I haven't had one in a while, but Wacom still sells cheap tablets for people who want to start out with digital. Looks like the Intuos is their new cheap tablet and it comes with free downloads of art software. It's $100 on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Intuos-Small-Bluetooth-CTL4100WLK0/dp/B079J2FSQ7
Again, I haven't used one of these in a while since I got a Cintiq, but Wacom is usually considered to have the best tablets.

I have the iPad Pro 12.9" 256GB with Apple Pencil and use Procreate. There's no way I'd be happy with the 32GB but the 128GB would have worked fine; I'm currently using 60GB storage on the iPad after moving 50GB to cloud storage.

You can certainly get by with the cheaper option if you use cloud storage, but if you plan on doing a lot of drawing I'd recommend more memory.

I'd also recommend a screen protector. I'm not a huge fan of screen protectors, but it improved the accuracy of my drawing by giving the pencil a little more friction across the screen.

I'm recently using a pen I had never tried before called the Marvy Le Pen. It's very slim and I think it only comes in one tip size (0.3mm), but it seems pretty good so far, and it's quite inexpensive. The tip seems pretty tough, to me. It's good for writing and sketching.

Here on Amazon you can get a 12-pack for only $17 usd.

There are a couple different ways for people who struggle with thinking of drawing prompts. I am one of those people as well so don't worry! I am in the same boat!

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Anyways, the first would be simply to get a drawing prompt book such as:

Piccadilly Sketchbook, 500 Drawing Prompts Notebook

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Another one would be to simply use a random word generator! You can find them pretty much everywhere if you just look it up and they give tons of great prompts such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Simply if the word is not an object, base it around what it is. Like if it is "Sad", well, draw a very sad scene. Maybe get a verb and a noun and make something out of that. There are literally endless possibilities!

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Hope this helps you out as I struggle with coming up with ideas as well! Good Luck!

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*Edit* A word.

A dip pen. You dip the nib in an inkwell to put ink on it, then you draw with the ink that's in the pen.

Usually dip pen point nibs have two tines that can be spread apart to a much greater extent than the nibs on a fountain pen. This allows you to get a wider variety of line weights compared to the pigment liners.

For cheap, good-quality ink Speedball Super Black India Ink is your best bet. However, it does come off some if you watercolor over it on a smooth bristol board, and it's not marker-safe either, but you can erase over it without picking up ink. Since you aren't required to watercolor anything for the Drawabox assignments, it's a perfect ink for the purpose. Get the 2 oz. bottle to start off with and get a 16oz or 32oz bottle if you need more. If you're going to go over the ink drawing with watercolor, marker, or other mixed media you should use Deleter Black No. 4, which is water-safe.

For nibs you can use Hunt #102 nibs which are generally lower-quality but will do the trick just fine. (You can get fewer than a dozen if you want.) Or, for higher quality you can get maru-pen or G-pen nibs from Japanese companies. Most nibs come with an anti-corrosive layer of oil and you can pass the nib through a candle frame to prep it for first use. Make sure to get a pen holder too if you don't have one, and always take the nib out and wash it after you're done. I have a small disposable cup of water that I rest my dip pen in if I need to go do something else, and I dry it on paper towel before dipping it back in the ink to make sure the ink dries out.

Fountain pen nibs generally don't allow the same variation in line weight that pointed nibs do.

It sound like you need a warm up for finger dexterity. I have a set of boading balls that work well for this. Here's a video, although I'd recommend a set that is solid and doesn't have those annoying bells in it. Here is another option for exercise using a squishie ball and hair scrunchy.

And, since we're taught to draw from the shoulder here, these might help as well.

I spent most of the day yesterday doing this exercises, so maybe like 6 or 7 hours... I didn't use any other resources, there's a great book that I have, and I have read in the past about animal constructions:

I'm using Uncomfortable's aproach on the exercises, but there are some great constructions there. One difference is that the guy from that book masses the whole shoulder area together.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Animal-Drawing-Construction-Action-Analysis-Caricature-Instruction/0486274268

In some time I plan on giving that book a re-read.