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Looks like a pretty good start to me. How did you do this? Did you copy from an image or drawing or just go from scratch?

I'll throw out a few pointers if you don't mind, but I guess you wouldn't because you asked.

When shading, me mindful of the direction of your strokes. If the thing you're shading is curved, your strokes should follow that curve. You did this well in some areas, like the largest valve coming off the heart, but you have more of a flat shade on others (like the 3 top ones), and the result is that it makes the image look flat.

Get a nice and defined outline of your heart. Typically, the edges of round objects are darker than the front so it's okay to get a nice thick line around your subject like this. Some areas, like the bottom of the heart, are too sketchy.

Maybe use more than 1 lead hardness. Use softer leads for darker lines when you need them.

Having something to complete the image would help, like a background or something.

I'm no expert, but I could never sketch all through highschool, then I went to college for architecture and we were required to read this book and it really clicked for me. That, and practicing sketching in class for a semester, and I'm no expert, but I love sketching now. Here are some sketches I've done on a recent trip to Italy.

I'd say, keep practicing and enjoy the time.

Hello! If you like the feel of standard wood pencils, you can easily pick up a set that will give you a broad range in blackness, some charcoal and a kneaded eraser, a normal eraser, and a sharpener! This would be everything you need in terms of pencils/drawing equipment you need to get started.

As for paper, your preference may change over time. I know mine did. My current favorite paper to use right now is Bristol board/paper. It is very smooth and I find it quite forgiving as well. Bristol does not "absorb" the graphite/charcoal the way a more grainy or rough paper would. But if you love that texture and what it adds to the drawing, then go for it! Like I said, you may find you develop a taste for a certain type of paper later on.

I personally love mechanical pencils and graphite holders. I love the consistency in point size and they have a range of hardness and blackness just like standard pencils, however, it is not as wide a range. I just find the weight of the pencil paired with the consistency to be exactly what I need. However, they can be expensive and good ones are often sold individually, as is the graphite you want, so you'll end up with a set and many packages of graphite types and sizes. This can be a bit costly. Starting out, I would go with a standard pencil set, as it has everything you need!

One thing you'll need to know about pencils, that you may already know is that H stands for hardness and B stands for blackness (you'd think they'd use softness but whatever) HB is right in the middle, and then up the scale on either side means the graphite is hard or softer. The harder the graphite, the more pressure needed to make a line. This is great for drafting, as you will be making light lines (with light hand pressure) that will guide you and either be erased or worked over. The softer the graphite, the blacker the line you get with less pressure. These are great for adding darks, doing large areas of black, adding dark details, etc etc. One thing to remember about graphite is that it can be polished. If you are overworking an area, the area can become shiny and metallic. This can really take away from the drawing. If you need something to be really black, use a very soft graphite pencil. In the set that I linked you above, that would be the 8b pencil, or the charcoal would also work, though the tone of black may differ from the graphite black (in reference to the shade of black that is seen on the paper) if you use charcoal.

Charcoal is much softer than graphite and does not polish. I do not have a lot of experience with charcoal yet (I only know it's much messier), but would like to transition into it at some point (I like rich blacks, and hate the shine from graphite) but this might be something you want to dabble in early on so you can get a nice set of skills with multiple tools. =)

I hope this helps! Good luck and remember to share what you produce!

I'm no pro by any means but I have a lot of fun drawing after work and certainly I'd love my SO surprised me with something like:

• Faber Castell 9000!
  
• Lumograph 100!
  
• Prismacolor Premier Verithin!
  
• Polychromo!
  
• Bristol paper!
  
  Also you can always include some nice accesories like blending stumps, different types of erasers, a good cutter/blade or sharpener.
  
  Does she like books? Andrew Loomis' books are incredible! Drawing the Head and Hands!
  
  These are (for me) good options for a present. Depending on budget you could increse/decrease the count on the color set but 24/36 is a good starting point.
  
  I hope this helps.

Try different types of paper, I love how Nicolas Marlet draws on darker backgrounds. Play with more white and different white colored pencils, for those highlights (instead of relying on the white of the paper) white pencils
You can get blending sticks with different thickness, for blending small or larger areas. blending
There are artist gloves, I like to use these because I’m lazy and don’t like to pick up my hand off the paper, and I don’t like my art smudging where I want those sharp crisp edges.
Blacks, blacks, blacks, I love blacks, use different ranges. Go darker, go lighter.
Search for how to protect your drawings, you can spray fixative on them.
This piece looks like you have skill. Don’t sell yourself short as an artist, have confidence. Not everyone has the same taste, if someone doesn’t like something just listen to learn, respect their time to give you a critique. Number one rule - don’t take any bad critiques personally, everyone is different you don't need to change if that is your thing and you like it. Pick up Quentin Blake’s Drawing for the Artistically Undiscovered book. He has such a joy for art and the pencils are great. My favorite part is his On Misteakes section. He writes, “We don’t believe in them. You’ll note, in fact, that the erasers have all been painstakingly removed from our pencils. We did this ourselves, by hand, at our eraser-removal plant because you won’t (can’t) make any mistakes in drawing with these particular pencils. This is not to say you won’t get some drawings that succeed more than others. That’s our next point.” book

Alright CC time. So by now you probably know you need to work on your anatomy, and really I can't give you pointers on what to correct because unfortunately Anatomy is something you have to practice A LOT. My advice for this is drawing from life or pictures of men, never try to copy other drawings or use other art references for studying Anatomy... only do that when you're trying to study a style you really dig.

The arm is too big for the guy with the knife, just his shoulder alone is almost as big as his head. The muscles look weird and this is probably from a very common mistake that happens when you start to draw anatomy, you kinda memorize where lines go from other drawing and art you saw. Like.... oh well I remember in Dragonball Z when Goku would flex his arm he would have the biceps as a square here, the lines to show his shoulder muscles here and voila there's a buffed arm. In reality there's a flow of lines that follow muscles in anatomy, just look at medical illustrations of what a body looks like without skin and only muscle tissue, it's basically all lines that start together, fan out and then meet again somewhere else. Also perspective changes how muscles look A LOT, a line that might be concave in a muscle area from the front might actually look convex when the man is looking away from you. When you start to understand the major muscle groups it'll become much clearer how to position lines to convey muscle tissue.

Hands are tricky, any artists will tell you that. Even some professional artists absolutely hate hands (coughRobLiefeldcough), but the good news is that whereas body anatomy is impossible to observe without a model or reference because you can just look down at your body and try to draw that, you'll only really see one perspective and that's no good. You can always just raise your hand to your face and turn it around and you can draw your hand from any angle... do that... do that a lot.

As for the stiffness of the figures, that's something that happens when you're trying to convert poses from your head to the paper without actually having a reference to work with. There are two things you can do to help here... use guidelines to draw, most artists I know use them and it has nothing to do with skill, you know when you do your little stickman skeleton to get proportions right before you draw in the muscle shapes. If you ever see an artist just nail the pose of a character in one try chances are it's because he's drawn that same pose a ton of times. You should be doing stuff like posing in front of a mirror and taking pictures or going to google images and searching for models to use, like for that monster you can just google "man crouching" and find a pose you like. This will make it so that poses you draw have a more organic feel and not so stiff.

Now, my advice would be that you practice the things that you did wrong in this drawing like arm proportion towards the body, poses, hands and all that stuff and you re-draw this concept in the future. The biggest mistake an aspiring artist makes is trying to better their art through correction, specially when not all the concepts within their knowledge, sometimes you need to scrap it all and begin anew.

Good luck and I hope this helped!

PS: This is a really good book to understand the basic shapes of anatomy

I'm not far from your age, and while I've been drawing off and on almost my whole life I've only recently been getting serious about improving. I'll share some things that have helped me.

One book I'd recommend you buy above all others is Drawing on the Right side of the Brain - Betty Edwards. It's good even if you have never drawn before. Cartoons are a stylization of a person, so its good to study and draw people. If money is a factor, Andrew Loomis ebooks are free. Fun With a Pencil in particular has stuff thats good for cartoons.

Communities such as here and /r/LearnArt are good to get critique and to get help if you can't see where you are going wrong. If you are dry for ideas there is also /r/SketchDaily and /r/DailyDraw.

Youtube is an awesome resource. Proko did a good series on the Loomis method for drawing a head and its features. Will Terrell is one i found recently that's fun to watch, does a lot of cartoon/caricature and comic stuff.

The only way to improve is to practice. Get you a sketchbook and a some pencils. Don't worry about making every page a masterpeice. Beat that thing up, doodle, draw whatever in it. If you mess up, just flip to the next page. Draw draw draw! Things that catch your eye, old comic super heroes, Bugs Bunny, anything really. Draw as often as you can, I'd say an hour a day if that's possible with job and family. If not, just whenever you got some time. If time and money allow, take a class if you can.

Don't be afraid to use references. The mind can't remember every detail about everything. Even masters use them.

What kind of pencils do you use? It may just be the picture, but it looks like your shading kind of blends into a medium gray in a lot of places, when high contrast (light grays and really dark blacks) might be more effective.

I would suggest buying a set of Prismacolor Turquoise pencils or similar ones that have "softer" shades like 9B, 8B or 7B. Then use those soft pencils to increase the darkness of places like the eyes and mouth here. If you haven't already, familiarize yourself with how to use hard and soft pencils. It might also help to take an eraser to some of the shading when you're done to make really bright highlights. This can really make shading easier and prettier, resulting in a drawing with higher contrast. :)

I've been drawing for years, and the best book I've ever read on drawing is called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Basically, it's a book on how to draw for people who aren't predisposed to drawing. It's full of good exercises and information to help you learn.
Otherwise, I'd say the best way to get better at drawing is to draw. Every day. Everything you see, any time you have a moment. Also, keep a sketchbook specifically for drawing your own hand over and over and over - and never throw any of them away. When the book is full, you can look back to the beginning and you will see improvement. Don't get discouraged if they're ugly or you mess up - those drawings are just to get better at drawing, you never have to show them to anybody. Good luck!

The huion seems like a good choice! There's also cheap Wacom tablets under a 100 euros now. They are fairly small but they have solid software. A lot of cheaper brands tend to have more software issues. I got this one for my birthday last year:

https://www.amazon.com/Star05-Wireless-Graphics-Painting-Battery-free/dp/B01MAZ5FDL/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525384786&sr=1-3&keywords=xp+pen+star+05&dpID=31Zxxne6OqL&preST=_SY300_QL70_&dpSrc=srch

I like it, but it has its flaws. Like, my pc is relatively, not crazy, far away from my desk, so sometimes the wireless function doesn't work flawlessly until I slightly move my tablet towards the usb receiver in my desktop. Also I can't use the tablet while it's charging on cable. These are all things to consider!

Also there are a lot of graphics tablets that have a pen that needs to be charged, I specifically wanted one that doesn't need to be charged because that's what I was used to from my old, cheap wacom. If it's battery charged it's usually quite a bit heavier too. I don't know if you've owned a drawing tablet before but personally I like the lighter pens.

Overall huion has been growing as a great alternative for wacom, with their software stabilizing more recently! ( A newer model will probably have better, more stable software too)

I've been interested in getting a display tablet myself, but they're crazy expensive T-T

Does she use just one pen thickness? She might like something like this which has different thicknesses for more detailed drawings.

You said she had graded pencils, maybe she would like graded pens too? (I haven't used these yet, so not sure on the quality)

Has she ever used a brush pen? I found them very interesting and you can create unique drawings with them.

If you prefer to get her some paper, look for something with at least 100gsm (this is the thickness of paper) I find 80gsm too thin for ink drawings.

Maybe also having a look for books on things she might like, like books on historic maps or tattoo designs. Reference books are brilliant for inspiration.

This one here is at the top of your price range but it is very good. I have one myself and love it. You can also get a factory refurbished one here for about half the cost and buy her something else. I hope she likes whatever you get her!

You do not need a textbook for a drawing course the only text i would even consider would be Anatomy for the Artist but be aware that there are many nudes in this text. Typically i will photocopy important pages from this text that are safe for school and create packets for my students. meaning you would only need to purchase 1 copy of this book and be golden. As far as materials for a typical into to drawing course you would need:

multiple sets of drawing pencils. 4h, 2h, hb, 2b, 4b, 6b and i prefer prismacolor's Ebony jet black pencils.
Compressed and vine charcoal (you could also go with charcoal pencils)
Kneaded Erasers
Gum Erasers
India ink (you can buy this in large bottles which last quite a while)
Cheap watercolor sets
18x24 drawing paper with decent weight (i go through 1 ream a year with my classes)
11x14 watercolor paper (cheap canson pads can be purchased at walmart)
18x24 Newsprint

The teacher will also surely need a paper cutter if they do not have on already and perhaps drawing boards (a class set) if they intend on doing any drawings on site.

Get in touch with Sax or Blick art supply companies and shop around for good pricing.

Hope this helps

I know I'm 6 days late, but don't listen to that guy.

My advice is this: You seem to be in the stage of drawing development where you still draw everything as a symbol of what you see, rather than what you actually see (hence the (. .) nose comment).

Start really paying attention to what you see in front of you. What you'll begin to notice is that you're not drawing a "nose", or an "eye", or a "face", but rather a collection of shadows and tones that flesh out the object.

Also, I recommend Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It's one of my favorite books on drawing, and it has a lot of good exercises to help get you out of the mode of "symbolic" drawing, and into the mode of drawing what you really see.

Also, keep drawing. Draw every day. I know everyone always says that, but it really is the only thing that will make you better.

I'm a big fan of construction beneath design. Look at the body in shapes and cylinders and build the anatomy over that, it's so effective when inventing characters and with enough practice, will guarantee you proper proportions as well.

Check out the book written by my instructor: here

I used to always carry Loomis, Hogarth and Bridgemen with me where I went, After buying this book -- this is only one I carry. It's amazing.

I'm also very fond of gestural drawing before laying down any real construction or solid lines. Defining the flow of the body will guarantee beautiful flow.

For more examples, check out his website

Books, books and more books. Or courses.

I like to draw anime and I spent a few years just photocopying.
https://www.instagram.com/chrissyatsea/
The problem with that is that it made me better at copying not composing. Also I didnt like to get off my comfortable areas. I didnt know why the artist drew it like or how they did it. I just copied it. Like if you are copying a math problem you dont know what it means at all. So you need to be taught why it works like that. Unless of course you are gifted.<br /> <br /> So there is a good handful of books out there to help you with such things.<br /> <br /> The whole case on books is that if you arent a talented or gifted artist youre gonna have to do what we normies do best. Learn the fundamentals. Gifted people are gifted with the ability to just do and not know. Since we arent we start here.

Another thing to ask yourself if you arent willing to commit atleast an hour or more a day or atleast a good amount of hours a week on drawing is this: &quot;Does this just sound good or do I really want it?&quot;<br /> <br /> Here is a few books<br /> <br /> http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201<br /> http://www.amazon.com/Keys-Drawing-Bert-Dodson/dp/0891343377/ref=pd_sim_14_5/189-6540426-4014231?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;dpID=51BQ2AW%2BCWL&amp;amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR124%2C160_&amp;amp;refRID=181BN40T9TTX026F0EBF<br /> <br /> I am currently working with anatomy on George Bridgman Books.<br /> <br /> http://www.amazon.com/Constructive-Anatomy-Dover-Artists/dp/0486211045/ref=pd_sim_14_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;dpID=51vQXcL6ZyL&amp;amp;dpSrc=sims&amp;amp;preST=_AC_UL160_SR107%2C160_&amp;amp;refRID=13K2R2Y1Y6FZD3BJCBKK<br /> <br /> (Oh yeah try to find all the PDFS to these if you can`t afford them. I know that sounds wrong but these books are bestsellers if that makes you feel any better..)

The best resource I have found for learning how to draw/ progress in your skills is the book "drawing on the right side of the brain" here is an amazon link to the BOOK
But it's very easy to find this book online for free as well.
Other resources were weren't actually drawing books, but more of anatomy books. They are really helpful to teach you proportions, and shows you how the body is built up from bones to muscles, to skin etc...
I would avoid those "how to draw ___" books. They only teach you how to draw that one specific thing and its hard to transition that into drawing your own thing. The book I linked above does a good job of teaching you how to "see" what your drawing. So when you are drawing an eye, or an ear, it teaches you how to break down the subject into shapes and lines. A couple angled lines and squiggles are a lot easier to understand and draw than a full image of an eye/ ear.

The sidebar has good stuff (the Loomis books are pretty good). If you've got a little bit of money to spend, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards is fantastic.

Your best bet is to find a class. A good teacher can identify your weak spots and give you tips and exercises specifically for overcoming them.

As far as websites go, I really like wetcanvas.com for its forums. The artists there are (in general) fairly advanced and a lot of them make a living from their artwork; but they are generally supportive of beginners and will provide honest, direct, blunt critique if you ask for it.

Keep in mind that no amount of reading or video-watching or class-attending is going to make you a better draftsman. It is all about practice and identifying mistakes. Do the work, get critiques, do more work.

http://www.amazon.com/Staedtler-Lumograph-Sketching-100G12-Attractive/dp/B0014E2S0Q/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416962533&sr=8-3&keywords=staedtler+mars+lumograph+pencils

Only $14.58 and are amazing quality from what I've heard. Staedtler, in my opinion, make some of the finest art supplies when it comes down to graphite pencils. Prismacolor colored pencils are also great but are expensive - you can get a 24 set of them for $15 and they are excellent (I use them frequently).
Perhaps look on dickblick.com, they always have sales that include some products being 50% off.
Hope this helped you!

Get this book.

What makes a good comic artist is what makes anyone good at anything. The basics. You need to learn anatomy, its the most important part of drawing people. Read every page of that book, and draw EVERY page from top to bottom at least 5 times. And when you've done that, do it again, and keep it with your sketchbook as a reference. And when you've drawn that book, start drawing people you see in real life. Draw them eating at a cafe, walking in the park, draw your family, your pets, your TV, ETC. The stronger you are at drawing real life things, the farther you get from being Rob Leifeld (very important to be better than him).

Also, don't worry about color for the time being. Color is tough as hell, and requires a lot more information and knowledge than you think. When you want to start coloring, get a set of Copics or Fabre-Castells. Sharpies or Crayolas aren't high enough quality to give you anything decent until you are competent enough to handle inferior products.

On a more positive note: Keep working, the more you draw while studying why things look like they do, they quicker you will become better.

A demigoddess alights on the mortal plane to appraise a newly emerged deity.

This was a book cover I drew for 'The Counterfeit God' by Nikolaas Liquette. I'm really happy to finally share this finished piece now that the first book of 'The Fate of the Pantheon Rebellion' trilogy is published.

If you're interested in a good epic-scale fantasy read this weekend, you can get a digital copy of the book here:

https://www.amazon.com/Counterfeit-Fate-Pantheon-Rebellion-Book-ebook/dp/B07W95TD24/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=counterfeit+god&qid=1565814287&s=books&sr=1-2

There's also a paperback version as well. I know, because I formatted that cover too. :P

www.reddit.com/r/TheFoxBriar

So yeah, you can draw an eye at a time. That's great, because you took the time to notice what those gooey ocular nerves look like. Now you should buy a sketchbook and a few ink pens to aid your creativity. When I talk about effort, I mean time, dedication, focus, attention to detail.

Starting with a brush pen (fibeliner) will cause you all sorts of headaches. Although a novel way to make different lines and weights, I use it for large features or final touches.

I started with these great Steadler pens and this exact Sketchbook. The pens last me a long time, maybe 6 months of drawing almost every day.

I've drawn for a little more than two years, but have gotten exceptionally better because I bought the appropriate supplies.

These two are the main characters of Modern Life of Immortal Demons, my name is Fang LIU(Hiro), the author of Modern Life of Immortal Demons, and this book is available on Amazon now, hope you enjoy it :-D

Nice work! I love the texture of the hair.

If you want to get more realistic you'll need to start trying to draw what you see instead of what you think you see, if that makes any sense. For example, the eyes you drew are symbolic eyes, not really what eyes actually look like. They may resemble your eyes but they're missing the anatomical structures that make real eyes work.

I just picked up this book which covers pretty much exactly the problems you're having here: http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201. So far I really like it and I bet you'd find it helpful.

(And if you don't want to get more realistic please ignore me! You didn't say what you were going for so I was just guessing.)

Good book here: http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Artist-Sarah-Simblet/dp/078948045X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1397771944&sr=8-1&keywords=Anatomy+for+the+Artist

Another thing is once you feel comfortable with your drawing, take a life drawing class. You can usually take them at any community college where you will draw nude models, it will push you to get outside of your comfort zones because you will be forced to draw complex poses in short amounts of times. Developing muscle memory through speed and repetition will make you better and better.

I still take figure drawing classes even though I've been drawing for over 25 years.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01MAZ5FDL/ref=yo_ii_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1
This is the one I use 😊 if you do get a tablet, a helpful tip is to tape a sheet of paper over it so when you draw, you get the same feel as drawing in a sketchbook. It helps keep the pen from sliding and gives you straighter lines

http://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Comics-Marvel-Way/dp/0671530771

This book is a gold mine of how to do things like foreshortening, dramatic angles, action poses.

I kind of agree with tonka though, the best thing to do is just look at other people's drawings. You learn so much from just observation after you've got the basics down, so don't be afraid to just buy art books, especially if he likes video games. Many days of my childhood were spent copying drawings from Zelda and Metroid game guides.

I would absolutely recommend beginning by reading Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and doing the exercises. I'd follow it up with The Natural Way to Draw, again, doing the exercises.

1836to1846 has the right idea about focusing on shapes, not ideas, and drawing upside-down while you're first training your verbal mind to get out of the way and let you draw what you see, rather than the symbols you think you see. Drawing on the Right Side is exactly about that - teaching you that you can draw, and teaching you how to get out of your own way. After that, Nicolaides' book will teach you how to practice effectively.

Practice is absolutely the key, but getting some grounding in what to practice and how to practice effectively will allow you to get more out of it faster.

I'm hoping someone with some experience will chime in. As a fellow beginner, I like the following:

Figure Drawing, Design and Invention

Jack Hamm, Drawing the Head and Figure

But, with that said, the one I've had the most success with is:

Vilppu Drawing Manual. If I could only have one book, that is probably the one I would pick.

Good effort! May I recommend the book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain for some good exercises to do

Hi, I am learning how to draw using this book:
https://www.amazon.fr/Keys-Drawing-Bert-Dodson/dp/0891343377

I just started to learn portraits. Here is one from a 3/4 view. Do you have some advices?

Here is the original: http://orig11.deviantart.net/0b46/f/2014/007/3/4/touch_my_face_by_wondermee-d71908j.jpg

I guess my main shortcoming is that I am not patient, I don't like to spend a lot of time on details, so my drawings will never be even close to the very realistic portraits I see in this sub.

So as a side question: do you have to be patient to be a good draughtsman?

Thank you for your replies!

As it has been said, get him a basic set. If you get him all the colors, he won't want to mix his own. I would also get him a color wheel. You can get some that also has the color schemes on it( the one I have has it on the back). Some colors look better together than others, and these are called color schemes. Complimentary colors work well together and they are the colors on opposite sides of the color wheel. There are several color schemes, and the color wheel I got has them on the back.


https://www.amazon.com/Cox-133343-Color-Wheel-9-1/dp/B000I1TFMK/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=color+wheel&qid=1557179182&s=gateway&sr=8-3

They're great! And I can see the resemblance in the OP. This is the book, if you're interested: https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Artistically-Undiscovered-John-Cassidy/dp/1570543208

I also usually using a Blue Col-Erase Pencil. For me the best for that kind of work. It's true they really don’t smudge at all.

You'd have to toss in a little more money but this book is amazing. They have it listed for $27.19, but it is worth it. Now it is anatomy, but if you apply that with some exaggerated elements you have it knocked out.

When I was in high school we didn’t have art classes. I bought a book called Drawing Comics the Marvel Way and my world was never the same. It is a great primer for drawing the figure without being too academic. Check it out

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

I've found it a good resource for going back to the basics of representational drawing. If you've had some drawing training or experience most concepts won't be new, but they're explained well and accompanied by straightforward exercises (most of which would fit in your hour/night plan easily).

I'm far from naturally talented at drawing, but lately I've picked up a whole bunch of instructional art materials and my skill is noticeably increasing. One of the ones I'm using right now is Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. So far the instruction has noticeably increased my skills; I'm only a few exercises into it, and I'm already pretty happy with what I'm producing. Note though that the book itself is full of pseudo-scientific crap about the author's theory about brain hemispheres and their relationship to drawing; that makes it difficult to read, but just try not to take it too seriously and focus on the exercises.

oh yeah dude. there's plenty out there. don't be afraid to look into it. Some great books to get, but you just got see which ones would work for you. I don't know the level you're at so... I recommend this one for anatomy. Helped me out a bunch

http://www.amazon.com/Constructive-Anatomy-Dover-Artists/dp/0486211045/ref=pd_sim_b_2

The pencil I’m using for this is a Blue Col-Erase Pencil . I like them a lot because they really don’t smudge at all and I find them to be very satisfying to work with.

that's awesome! Is this the one you bought?

http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Splash-Tablet-CTL471/dp/B0089VGPII/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

You should be worried. It's too expensive. Only $55 on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Bamboo-Splash-Tablet-CTL471/dp/B0089VGPII

Also: You shouldn't be worried that this one is so cheap. It's miles better than what I had when I started (Graphire 2).

Plus: It's going to last for years. For instance: When I got the Graphire 2, Macs were still running on PowerPC. They updated the driver every so often. I'm running Graphire 2 on the latest macbook.

These things are built to last. You're gonna drool over some upgrades long before the one you buy dies. Don't get that anxiety to upgrade to more expensive models. It's not going to make your drawing any better. Trust me. I was there. It's my one mistake.

You can only go wrong by buying non-wacom tablet.

thanks! i used a set of fineliners on regular paper, staedtler i think, black. let's see, i think it's these;

http://www.amazon.com/Staedtler-Pigment-Sketch-Regular-308SB6P/dp/B004L87XRA/ref=sr_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1374696986&sr=8-14&keywords=staedtler+fineliner

I really liked Figure Drawing Design and Invention by Michael Hamilton.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0615272819/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1499456846&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=figure+drawing+design+and+invention&dpPl=1&dpID=51t3mG6LCXL&ref=plSrch

Figure drawing design and invention. Buy and study from it all your life every now and then. You're welcome.

Also, doesn't matter where you start as long as you do something.

I'd definitely recommend 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards. It assumes absolutely no prior skill and focuses on showing you how to properly translate the things you see onto paper. The trick is to forget what you think you know about the things you are trying to draw - 'eyes should be an oval shape, the sides of the table should be straight' - and just draw the actual visual information you're getting.

I've recently worked through the book myself and gone from having no idea what I'm doing to having the confidence that I can become good if I keep practicing. Here's a comparison between a self-portrait I did just before going through the book and one I did three weeks later. It by no means gives you a lot of information about how to draw but it shows you how to get started and move forward with your drawing.

If you want, you certainly can, but it's not necessary. If nothing else, get what's probably the only decent text for beginners- Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

http://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-Definitive/dp/1585429201

Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain

https://www.amazon.com/Strathmore-Bristol-Smooth-Bound-Sheets/dp/B00254AU8Q/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Bristol+smooth&qid=1558857022&s=arts-crafts&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.com/New-Drawing-Right-Side-Brain/dp/0874774241