Best products from r/learntodraw

Hey man, thanks a lot! It's been a few months and I've gotten pretty good fast which scares me because I'm afraid of hitting my first plateau. But to answer your question, I think it deserves a thorough explanation of my experience through the lens of a complete novice artist, so forgive this massive wall of text.

Most if not all of my drawings were flat and 2D and instead of drawing what I saw or imagined, I'd sort of just put marks down on the paper or tablet and course correct until I found something I thought looked good. So I just started practicing anything that could help and boiled it down to this process.

Drawing better figures (drawing anything, really) starts with four components: creativity, mechanical skill, analysis and community. And this isn't just about drawing theory, but also managing your headspace so that you can make it a habit to draw everyday, because nothing substitutes practice.

Creativity is 100% necessary to improving at art, and you need to draw for fun, regardless of your level of practice. Because if it stops being fun, you stop doing it. I've gone days, if not weeks without drawing anything because nothing was coming out how I wanted it to. So I'd stick to practicing fundamentals for weeks only to become frustrated at the marginal improvement I was making, but also bored of drawing because it became a chore. I think the hardest realization at least for me as a beginner is accepting that my art will never get "good enough." You have to swing for the fences with what you know, identify your mistakes afterward, and divide that up into key problem areas to focus on for when you step away from the creative process to practice fundamentals. This all being said, I think the exercise I find most useful for creativity is opening my vault of unfinished story scripts and doing character designs for them. If you for whatever reason don't have any unfinished stories collecting dust on your Google Drive, do what your default state is when you're doing creative work. You really gotta explore your mind and do what feels good. For me, there's nothing quite like the feeling of bringing a character from your own imagination to life. Don't be afraid to make mistakes for this process. That's the point.

Mechanical skill is line confidence. Mine still isn't the best, and I definitely chicken scratch lines loosely before finding the correct one. If you can see in the sketch, I used an orange layer for my messy sketch, and use a few light strokes in black on a second layer for the outline. Eventually those get smudged to create realistic skin tones, but that's a subject on its own. To practice more confident lines, I use drawabox. It's a free series of line exercises you should do. They're time consuming to do at first, but if you do it enough, you should be comfortable enough to use any of the exercises as a 15 minute warm-up every time you pick up a pencil. There’s also an active subreddit and YT community where you can post your exercises and receive criticism. More on community later. Drawing confident lines, in theory, should dramatically cut down the time it takes to sketch something. These exercises also incorporate drawing simple geometric shapes in 3D space. This is important because every visual object you could ever produce is composed of simple or complex shapes. When I get home from work I'll post a video of the timelapse for this drawing, and you can see all the mistakes I made because I couldn't confidently create lines.

Analysis is the act of seeing and interpreting, and in art I feel like it's neglected in the same way listening is in communication. Art is a means of communicating something, and if you're always producing and never observe, it stops holding meaning. It's kind of like when that hipster band sells out and people stop identifying with their music. In order to make genuine pieces of art in my opinion, you have to be constantly observing, or you'll produce the same stuff over and over again, or produce something that isn't you. So to practice analysis, the best exercise by a mile IMHO is drawing from life or photo reference. In art schools, they focus on building rich visual libraries, meaning the number things you can imagine at any angle and can draw from imagination. So say you're practicing architecture for a week. The instructor will have students draw buildings and interior spaces from a particular time period, whilst mixing in exercises that involve drawing from imagination in the style of what was observed. Then they move on to another time period. So if you want to improve your faces, draw all female/male/child/elderly faces doing different facial expressions at different angles both from reference and imagination, then switch when you get bored or exhausted. Then if you get bored of faces do hands, or another part of the body, or animals, or flowers, or buildings! After you finish drawing, compare them to your reference photo, analyze your mistakes, and try again until you're confident enough to draw something completely from imagination. Pretty soon you'll have a robust library of visual elements that you can combine to create complex and believable compositions.

Community is another overlooked subject in this field. I used to be a solitary artist. I mentioned earlier that I always believed I would just get "good enough" one day and only then will I show off my work. That was the single most damaging belief I held. There will always be someone better than you, but they should be a source of inspiration, not envy. Because if you get involved in local art galleries, you'll meet the artists and learn they're genuinely nice people. I do security work at this newer young company and they put commissioned art pieces in their buildings, so over the weekend I got to watch a few of them work. They had friends come from their community and help them scale and paint. They convinced me to start an Instagram for my work, because the fundamental purpose of social media is to give artists you meet irl something to look at after meeting you. The problem with the artiste hermit is that you'll never be confident to show people without worrying about the quality of your art. As they say, "an artist's work is never finished", so you'll always feel a bit of doubt when showing people your work, but that's natural and you learn to manage it better. Additionally, it just helps to be around other artists because we view the world differently. I asked one of the commission artists I met, "Is it a bad time to be an artist?" He replied, "It's always a bad time to be an artist." We shared a hearty laugh, and it was at that moment I realized community is also an important tool for life enrichment. Nothing is worse than being stranded in a sea of people who can't comprehend why you would want to be an artist in the 21st century.

I don't think any of these four components are more important than the other. The more you understand each one individually, the more you see how they all affect each other. If you draw a lot of cylinders in 3D space, foreshortening an arm will just make sense more because you've drawn a similar shape at that angle several times. If you go out to a gallery and observe art, you might see something that evokes a feeling that you'll need to recreate. If your lines get really confident, you'll spend less time fixing mistakes and more time putting more ideas on paper/canvas/tablet. They work in tandem, and I wouldn't give each component a structured dedication of time everyday, but I would switch off whenever the process gets stale or boring.

I hope I answered your questions and more. Sorry I went off on such a long post, but I would have liked a road map when I first started. Happy drawing, don't forget to have fun and take breaks.

Other resources:

YouTube is helpful, but most of them aren't for beginners despite being labeled as such. Shapes in 3D space will always be the most beneficial exercise for understanding space and perspective so do that more often than looking up "how to draw (a specific thing) tutorial)" on YT. There's this app called Magic Poser, and many others that let you put objects into 3D space and adjust for angles and lighting. Just play around with the light, observe how it behaves, trace it, draw it from imagination, add shapes, and so on.

Books are also a great resource and I'd start with Scott Roberson and Thomas Bertling's How To Draw: Drawing and Sketching Objects and Environments From Your Imagination. It's a great jumping off point, because there are book recommendations at the start of most chapters for specific topics. Books are also extremely useful because there are detailed, hi-resolution photos for you to observe. It also makes you look sophisticated when you have a library.

Oh, another classic book is the Loomis guide on head and hands. It gives you a detailed guide on drawing any type of head and face, but it is a dry read. Great resource, but very dry and a little dated.

Lastly, never pay for anything unless it's absolutely necessary for self-study. If you have books you haven't read about perspective or anatomy yet, don't buy a $300 course from an online school. If you have paper and a pencil, don't go buy a tablet. I did, and though I don't necessarily regret it, I didn't need to get a tablet to get started.

All of these are linked to Amazon, if you have an account, you can make a wishlist to keep track of ‘em:

• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
  
  This one teaches you how to see shapes objectively, which will improve your drawing from photo or real life. I recommend getting it from the library because you’ll only need the book once. Drawing a lot of still lifes/self-portraits helps achieve the same goal even without the book, though the exercises are awesome and will speed up the process. You can ignore the author’s rambling about the brain, it’s been debunked by science~ I’ve republished the first exercise of the book on my blog here - trying to build a step-by-step guide for beginners, but I only have a few hours a week. :)
  
  
• For anatomy and portraits, after “Fun with A Pencil”, you can also read “Drawing the Head and the Hands” and “Figure Drawing for All It’s Worth” by Loomis. See sidebar. They’re all about the same material, just more in depth.
  
  
• “Perspective Made Easy” by Ernest Norling.
  Do the exercises! They’re simple yet awesome. After you finish the book, apply perspective to stuff you draw from imagination. When I finished it, I didn’t use what I learned, but once I started applying perspective to every drawing I made, my skill skyrocketed. I believe perspective is the second most important drawing skill, but it can be tedious.
  
  
• "Drawing Comics the Marvel Way"
  Teaches you a variety of solid fundamentals, like construction and composition. Useful for after you’ve got the basics down with Loomis and Perspective.
  
  
  
• Hardcore: “How to Draw" and “How to Render” by Scott Robertson. His books are intensive. Most of my friends bought them but didn’t use them because they’re so technical. You have to be prepared and comfortable with sketching before tackling these. Even I haven’t finished the books cover to cover, yet I use his techniques for every single artwork that I make (I was taught them by FZD).
  
  
  
• Here’s the most important: have FUN. You can start studying and struggling but remember why you are drawing and doodle for fun every now and then. Play some good music while sketching. If you have fun, you will keep doing it. No matter how fast or slow you learn, stick with it and you’ll be damn good someday.

First: get yourself a nice big pad of 18x24 newsprint, some charcoal (a mix of soft vine charcoal and compressed will give you nice range of values and edges to draw with) a kneaded eraser to pull out highlights and correct mistakes, and a chamois cloth (get it really nice and dirty with charcoal) for laying down smooth tones. It's messy, it's weird, but it gives you much more range than a pencil and costs almost nothing. Working larger and sitting further away will help you to form the habit of drawing from the shoulder for smoother line quality. You want this, especially while you're in the early learning stages. Your first step is to teach your body and eyes what to draw, not how to draw X Y or Z or even how to tattoo. That comes much later, and I'm glad to see you already knew that.

Before you jump into the figure focus on basic geometric forms - basic white cubes, cylinders, cones, spheres, etc. Draw them from life, not photographs or imagination. Something like this would be great. I know, they suck - every student I've ever had has let me know, but now they're off making Big Hero 6, League of Legends, and many other awesome projects and would tell you the same. These basic forms help you by reducing variables so you can focus on how light wraps around the form. The difference between a highlight, form light, form shadow, a core shadow, reflected light, and a cast shadow is difficult to pick out when you're dealing with lots of subtle plane changes. This is where you learn the basics of value control to distinguish between different levels of light. Lay down these values with masses, not individual lines. It's kinda half-way between drawing and painting with a broad brush by using the side of the charcoal rather than just the tip.

Certain types of light/shadow produce different edge qualities, pay attention to how hard or soft transitions are from light to dark and think about the physics behind it to understand why - pinning up some light fabric on the wall with a single light off to the side is a fantastic way to see this - the cloth catches the light, creating form and cast shadows as the light wraps around the folds and reflects a little light back onto nearby surfaces.

The goal here is to understand how to represent the light accurately to describe the form (that is all you're doing as an artist- recreating light to trick the eye, it doesn't matter what the subject is) When you're feeling confident with this (and probably filled up 1-3 of those newsprint pads) move on to still life set ups and introduce some more complex forms and add a dash of color (1-2 at a time, keep it simple) Feel free to start playing with the figure, but you'll be hard pressed to find anything more complex and subtle to attempt. Without a teacher present, Andrew Loomis books will be an invaluable resource once you get to this stage. They're free online as PDFs for the most part.

Everyone else's advice is great, but once you're ready to move in to pens, I suggest a liner pen set like https://www.amazon.com/Staedtler-Pigment-Sketch-Regular-308SB6P/dp/B004L87XRA < this, if you can get it (~$11 USD; online and in art stores. Sakura's Pigma Micron pens are also good but a little less sturdy and pigmented in my experience). They're of different widths so you can explore line width (this piece looks to me like one width though), and they come in a sturdy case. Like all pens, be gentle on the tips, and they'll last a long time.

And besides lessons online, try thinking of your own drawing challenges. Once you learn how to put shapes together and show what you see on paper, it's a lot more fun to draw things you want to draw.

Best of luck and keep posting your progress!

If you want to draw characters, my advice would be to get a figure drawing and/or anatomy book, and draw people.
Draw them daily, draw them a lot, and when you're drawing, reference the parts of the body that you don't understand and/or take the pose yourself in the mirror, look up that part in your book and see how it works, understand what is causing the shape you're seeing.

Eventually, all those little pieces that make up a human figure are going to click and you'll naturally start applying that to your own characters.

There are a lot of books out there so I'll leave it to you to research a bit to find something that appeals to you, but my own recommendations would be:

Figure Drawing Design and Invention by Michael Hampton

and/or

Classic Human Anatomy by Valerie Winslow

Hampton will teach you gesture, form, and how to break the body down piece by piece and use simple shapes based on muscle groups.

Winslow will teach you more traditional artistic anatomy.

Regardless of what book you have, take it slowly, go back and review things constantly while you're drawing, anatomy isn't something you just copy out of a book, it's reference material to be used actively.

If you find yourself thinking "I can't get X right", get your book and work it out.
Break it down into small understandable pieces and shapes, and then fit them together.
If after that you still can't figure it out(and trust me that's quite common), put it down for a while come back in an hour or two, and look at it again when you've cleared your head, learn to manage the frustration that comes with art because it will always be there.
Drawing is a logical process if you let it be.

Either way, understanding the human form takes a long time, and you're learning to translate a 3d form into a 2d representation; it's not an easy task for any artist, and everyone struggles with it.
People spend weeks, or sometimes months focusing on specific body parts, drawing them meticulously, hundreds of times.

Don't get discouraged, take your time, and be consistent!

Set aside some time each day to draw, even just 30 minutes, but do it daily. Even when you don't want to, draw something, anything!

You're building a technical skill along with your knowledge, and often times your eye is way ahead of your hand, you know things don't look right because you know what a human figure is supposed to look like, but your ability to produce it aren't at that level yet.
Take every thing you've done and put it aside, at the end of the week look at it again and try to identify your mistakes, ask online, or take a figure class and ask a teacher if one is available in your area.

Everything nsio mentions in that list are things you're going to need eventually to draw great characters, even the simple basics like spheres and boxes, perspective, and design elements; there's no magic book that's going to teach you everything, and they're all equally important.
However, as they mention in the "Mastery Levels" section, they're not things you learn in an order, they are all things you need to come back to over and over again, you're never done with them, you just get a little better at them each time.

You're on a long journey, best of luck, and have fun drawing!

I'm a computer science student too, it actually taught me how to learn difficult stuff which translated really well into my artistic endeavors.

As for the drawing you linked, it's all about 1) practice and 2) perspective drawing. It looks difficult but its not really, just takes a lot of time and patience to render it out. The artist most likely used a reference photo which used a fisheyes lens pic, and constructed his work out of that.

Scott Robertson's How To Draw is a really great book on perspective/3D drawing that would probably get you on the right course. It's more on the advanced side though so I'd probably start out with an easier book.

> My question now is.. where do I start to ever be able to create something like this? I know you've to start very small and I'm guessing I have to draw by hand as well (Which I'm okay with)


Lots and lots of practice really. I've been drawing and painting for like 9 years now and I still am not at the level of the art you linked (but getting there). You just have to realize that its not something you just learn on the fly and be done with. You really have to dedicate yourself to it to be that good.

Right now, it looks like you're drawing symbols. The symbol of lips aren't what lips really look like. It's a simplification that won't ever look quite like the real thing. So draw what you see not what you think.

Drawing is mostly seeing. It takes careful observation to replicate an image on a 2d surface. What you are doing on the page is a result of what you are seeing. So use a reference and take your time looking. Really understand what you are seeing before you start to draw it. That means paying attention to shape, proportion and angle. And pay especially careful attention to value (lights and darks). One of these can help you compare the values of your reference to the values in your drawing. And if you practice with it for a while, you will start to learn to see value more accurately on your own.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007SQ2MIM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_y2HsCbBA76H3Z

For realism you should be using a reference. Photo references are OK, but life drawing is even better. Life drawing is incredibly helpful.

The book Keys to Drawing by Bert Dodson might be helpful. It has lessons that will help with specific skills and it will help you learn to observe. Drawing with the right side of the brain might be helpful for you too.

Haha, thanks man, you're welcome. Glad it was helpful. Not a Wizard, but I learned practical perspective from one: Scott Robertson's How to draw, objects and environments from your imagination book. Looking back, I'd bust through Norling: Perspective made easy first, then move to Scoro. Almost every little bit of what I know about perspective is down to Scott's awesomeness :)

I studied Mech Eng, but started down the path of drawing last year. My observational drawing sucks though :P So I pretty much went the full constructive/understanding route.

Your ruler plan sounds like a good one, though I'd consider a large Geometry triangle instead. The printed grid on them makes it easy to see if close-to-parallel lines are converging or not.

Let me know if there's anything else. Looking forward to seeing your next drawing though! It's always cool to see someone starting to delve into perspective so early.

You have some options.

If you wish to simply attain some better looking results and not have to be burdened with the long and arduous process of learning to draw intuitively, I'd recommend you look into the sight-size method of drawing. Where you set up your canvas next to your subject, whether it's a picture or a model and measure angles and distances in a "one to one" ratio kind of way. this will produce very accurate results and placement of features and works very well as a blocking in method. From there on it's just all practice. And understanding how to measure is a useful skill in and of itself.

Unfortunately I don't dabble much with sight-size anymore, although I recognize its benefits. I can't give you any good material, but from a glance, https://www.sightsize.com/ probably isn't a bad idea to start.

​

​

If time is of no concern I would recommend you start on the long and slow and painful process of understanding construction. To do so you'll need a very good grasp of forms in perspective. 1,2 and 3 point perspective being the most used. (sometimes 4, but it's not essential unless you're looking at specific effects). Understanding forms in perspective, usually starting with boxes, will lead you onto understanding how to light forms in perspective. From there you can go on to lighting forms in perspective and these kinds of methods and practice of drawing every living and non-living thing under the sun are the basics of all drawing. And from there it's a lot of practice. Years of practice. This is the past most kids try to go down these days because they want to be able to.. in their own imaginations... "draw from imagination". A term that's so overused and misunderstood that it will most likely cause my ulcer to burst and kill me on the spot one day. But it is the road to the aforementioned "intuitive" way of drawing, were you use the same method for basically everything. And you'll simply be relying on reference to guide the information you choose for your work, rather than having a need to copy what you see religiously.

​

Good material for learning perspective, are Scott Robertson's books, but they can be .. a bit heavy for beginners, so as an introduction, "Perspective made easy" is a decent grab

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Perspective-Made-Easy-Dover-Instruction/dp/0486404730/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549974784&sr=8-1&keywords=perspective+made+easy

​

As for construction. I'm partial to Karl Gnass head drawing book and Michael Hampton's Figure drawing design and invention.

https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819

https://www.amazon.com/Head-Shots-Artists-Guide-Drawing/dp/0975281232

​

​

​

I hope I haven't confused you too much. What I think you should do is to practice both of these methods, and if faster results to compliment your painting is your cup of tea, I would recommend sight-size. If you are simply drawing for your own enjoyment and personal progression, I would recommend looking into perspective, simple forms in perspective and then use that as a starting point for construction.

​

People will undoubtedly mention anatomy, but I tend to leave that bit out until it presents itself naturally.

​

Mind you. This is just my opinion. Others may have other and/or better ideas for your personal goals.

Most people do not suck at drawing because they do not know the technique, but because they do not know how to see. What you want to do is train your eyes and I recommend the book "Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards. EDIT: Here is the Amazon link and I just noticed there is a 4th edition! If I needed another I would get this to check it out but I am sure she added a lot of good things. The author studied the human brain to have a better understand of how drawing works so I am sure she added new techniques and things from current studies.

Try to look for it at a local library, I am guessing you are either Australian or English so I am not sure if they will have the book but you can drop about 20$ and then some for shipping from Amazon.

About styles: you develop it over time. I am not really talking about manga style, but your own flavor of doing things. I recommend trying out the manga style, but I do not recommend making that your main form of learning. That is bad, because (1) you are copying another stylized piece of work (you want to draw from nature or non-photoshopped photographs) and (2) you most likely will be learning mistakes and it is really hard to fix mistakes. I read some manga and Kubo and Oda are two artists I love and if you look at their beginning work, it is almost flat out horrible to where they are now. There are small nuances to other people's work and you want to be careful what you copy. The only thing you can copy are the masters (Da Vinci, other Renaissance masters). Here is a website describing what Da Vinci did for practice which I recommend everyone to check out, but if you are a very beginner, I recommend checking out the book I recommended first. Practice, practice, practice. Try to draw something once a day, even if it is just a stick figure.

(3) Drawing from imagination is very, very, hard. In the beginning a lot of your manga/cartoon/stylized work will look so stiff and maybe not so fun to look at. That will be because of basics and experience. Life drawing will be what corrects this. Look into that after you got the basics. Backgrounds and landscapes are usually another set of classes/studies so check those out after as well.

Other than that, those are my tips. I want to be clear to you, and any other beginner, that I beat myself up when looking at my earlier and current drawings. Drawing can be a challenge because you need to know when to look past your mistakes and look at the tiny improvements. This is a sentiment shared with a lot of artists so do not think you are alone. Do not give up. If it is becoming stressful it is so great to take a step back, work on another project, or just take a week off. I find this to be the challenging part of drawing.

Any other questions? I will try to answer to the best of my abilities.

Hello! Would love good resources for Disney-style art, if you could spare those.


Here are some of the best things I've found for comic art

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way A classic. Can be bought used for next to nothing. My only gripe is that it moves very fast and superficially

Incredible Comics with Tom Nguyen: He has a really clean style. Communicates a lot with very few lines. Excellent resource.


How to Draw: Heroic Anatomy More advanced resource. Uses a lot more lines and shading.


Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels How to construct the actual comic panels and books

You have a good sense of gesture, but you would benefit from more underlying structure.

Try to see and draw the elements of the figure as simplified geometric forms, three dimensionally solid and less flexible than what you have.

The flexibility is between the forms; the basic elements themselves are not so bendable. Your rib cage is a bit collapsed, and your arm and leg sections a bit too curved at times. It helps to see the hips as a block to which the legs are attached.

​

In particular, try to see the sections of the arms and legs as three dimensional geometric shapes, basically tapered and slightly curved cylinders. Get the proportions of those shapes right — without the distraction of detail — and it will then be easier to build your more detailed forms on top of them.

https://marswillsendnomore.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/john-buscema-figure-and-head-lessons-7.jpg

https://marswillsendnomore.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/john-buscema-figure-and-head-lessons-6.jpg?w=529

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_gB64U1Dy7eU/S8QfbgasgJI/AAAAAAAAA5o/InikIWqx2CY/s1600/facc_05_figuredetail_009.jpg

https://dbclemons.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/famartfig4b.jpg

This book may be helpful in that regard: https://www.amazon.com/Draw-Human-Figure-Step-step/dp/0832709018/

​

It can sometimes help to work with an artist's mannequin, though their range of position can be limited. The basic ones are inexpensive and are enough to help with proportions:

https://www.dickblick.com/products/blick-hardwood-manikin/

https://www.dickblick.com/products/wood-manikin/

The more elaborate ones have more realistic forms and a greater range of motion:

https://www.dickblick.com/products/art-s-buck-anatomical-models/#photos

I'm not really sure why you want to work digitally if youre opposed to computers/internet being part of the process, that's kind of a big part of 'digital'. The cheaper tablets are not going to have a screen, they're going to function basically like a mouse connected to your PC and move the cursor around with the pen. Even the best of the best Cintiq level tablets basically act like an extra monitor you can draw on. There are cheaper tablets similar to cintiqs but they still need a PC running Photoshop or some other art program.

Something like an iPad or other tablet doesn't have to connect to a PC but it basically is a self-contained computer itself. I use a Samsung galaxy note, it's an Android tablet that works without being connected to a PC. You would need WiFi to install art programs from the app store but other than that you don't have to use internet on it. It lets you draw directly on the screen which was my main priority. Investing $200+ might be a big ask if you're just starting out though. If youre interested in this make sure you do your research. Samsung has tablets with the 'S Pen', which have more levels of pressure sensitivity than a normal touch screen and works much better for digital art. You want to find the most sensitivity within your price range.

I used an Intuos 3 for...a decade or so? It's a solid tablet but requires a PC to use and doesn't let you draw directly on the screen. I guess the modern day version of that would be something like this, which seems like a pretty affordable pick for getting your foot in the door with digital art.

Read the pinned post:https://www.reddit.com/r/learntodraw/comments/adyijo/welcome_to_rlearntodraw_heres_the_sidebar_and/

The day 1, day 2 and day 3 links are down, you can find them in the first comment in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/learntodraw/comments/c8wqwh/about_how_some_of_the_sidebar_links_are_down/

I'm not good yet, been drawing for only 6 months, but the best advice I can give is to not forget to have fun.

There is no point if you start doing lots of boring exercises if you end up getting bored and stop drawing, just focus on trying to do some drawing everyday, and have fun.

This is the book I started with: https://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Draw-30-Days/dp/0738212415/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=learn+to+draw+30+days&qid=1564793025&s=gateway&sr=8-1

It helped me a lot to stop getting nervous about getting nice drawings and to just have fun drawing.

Good luck!

Note: before picking up a tablet, draw traditionally. You don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on a tablet only to find out you need more practice, or want to quit (ever wonder why there's so many used tablets for sale?). If you've already built up some mileage, continue.

I had a small Intuos Comic (just an Intuos Draw w/ some software) for a half a year. It was affordable, and worked without issue. I did have two big issues with it, which mostly came down to personal circumstance.

• I have a huge monitor in comparison to the Draw. I came across a good rule of thumb on stack exchange while researching my new tablet. It's called the 1/3 rule. Basically, if your tablet is less than a third the size of your screen, there's going to be a dramatic difference between a stroke on your tablet and a stroke on your screen. I found this disorienting. Here is a comparison between the two tablets, alongside my screen. The difference is clear. Of course, if you have a smaller monitor, this point may be null.
  
  
  
• Every time I drew for more than an hour my hand would cramp up. Drawing with my arm was out of the picture (the drawing area is about the size of my hand), so I had to draw with my wrist :P. The pain turned me off from digital for a while.
  
  
  I recently upgraded to an Intuos Pro Large. I got it refurbished for the price of a medium pro. I am very happy with my purchase. I can draw as big as I want, and for longer than a few hours. My computer is now my primary sketchbook.
  
  The Intuos Pro Large is a bit spendy though. I got it at a discount for $350. If I were you, I'd spend the extra $100 to get the next largest tablet in the Intuos line, the Intuos medium. You could probably get it refurbished, if it costs too much.
  
  I should add that I haven't tried this tablet, so take my suggestion with a grain of salt. If it is just a larger version with all the same features (it looks like it is), then I would go for it. My only issue with the smaller one was that it was small. If size isn't that big an issue for you, then go for the small version.
  
  Whatever tablet you choose, make sure you have a solid return path if you change your mind; no one wants to buy used tablets :(.

I realize that this is a quick sketch, but you're asking for critique, so here goes.

You have to learn to draw spheres before you can draw boobs. Work on the basic shapes first. Spheres, cylinders, cubes. Learn to shade them, how light interacts. Then move on to anatomy and what muscles go where, how they attach to the skeleton, and what skin does on top of them. And as much fun as it is to draw a naked lady, that picture already exists. And if you learn shapes, anatomy, and shading, you don't have to draw from a reference if you don't want to.

EDIT: I see a lot of people making good progress using this guy's lessons: http://drawabox.com/ Personally, I can't speak to their effectiveness because I learned most of what I know a long time ago from Stan Lee and John Buscema.

Copying the works Kentaro Miura is an excellent way to get better at technique and mark making. If you want to get better at making faces I suggest drawing from life or picking up a book like this. Understanding anatomy is key. I am not one to say don't draw anime or copy others' works. There is benefit to that. But if you want to understand faces, you have to draw faces.

I think it's both. As Bill Perkins says (NMA instructor) "don't overrender in the hope of looking good". I've a tendency to do that, probably my inexperience. Thanks for your honesty, it means a lot, I started to draw from the ground-up 2 years and half ago seriously.

I'm currently focusing on texture, volume and line quality with the book "Pen and Ink drawing : A Simple Guide" from Alphonso Dunn : https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/0997046538/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I'm trying to apply to my favorite medium all the light theory I learned about too.

Maybe studies, time and practice will get me at my dream job and being concept artist !

How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination by Scott Robertson:

amazon dot com/How-Draw-sketching-environments-imagination/dp/1933492732

I haven't made it to far into the book because my primary focus is on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, but so far it seems pretty fun. It's about $25ish.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It is a very good book and definitely worth a read. You can probably find a version at the local library.

Practice practice practice.

Start from the beginning and just keep doing it. The more time you put in the better you get. Success doesn't happen over night. Check out the book "How To Draw" to learn perspective drawing which will teach you form and shapes correctly. Also check out https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals

It sounds like you need to practice gestural drawings more. So first thing 1) Believe in yourself 2) Practice gesture drawings.

Gesture drawings are to capture subjects using simple curves/lines. And generally, you can spend anywhere between 15 seconds - 10/20 minutes per model/figure. I feel the faster it is, the more you are forced to nail down the essentials of motion/action.

You'd be surprised how little can express so much.

http://artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/


A pretty good book on figure drawing which also covers gestural drawing
http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1453373514&sr=8-3&keywords=gesture+drawing

Gestural drawing is not just for people. It can apply to everything.

I say start with /r/ArtFundamentals and this book. Its hard (i think) to go right into manga style and only do manga style, plan to try out lots of different styles, including manga.

I also recommend learning both traditional pencil/pen and paper and digital pretty much at the same time. Some will say learn traditional before you do digital, but I think they are complementary and you do better learning them at the same time.

I bought a life size torso model on Amazon. It really helped. The vital organs can be removed. What's best, it is life size, I used to buy a miniaute one, it is just a toy. Here is where I bought it. Kind of expensive, but worths it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MLYYYKQ

To tag do u/(inserttheirnamehere) and the human body is a lot to learn I’ve been doing a ton of study here lately and I would suggest Andrew loomis’s figure drawing for all its worth https://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-All-Its-Worth/dp/0857680986 and also I have had some success with using Skillshare and taking figure drawing classes on there for starting out.

I will like to recommend Mark Kistlers book. Learn to draw in 30 days.

1. Lesson on video here.
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcwpFpZVk-g
   
   http://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Draw-30-Days/dp/0738212415/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1450907569&sr=8-5&keywords=learn+to+draw

i just started with "You can draw in 30 days" http://www.amazon.com/You-Can-Draw-30-Days/dp/0738212415

only 10 days in and already i'm seeing an improvement!

day1: http://imgur.com/vqnEDgg

day9: http://imgur.com/tbwyGbc

I have a lot of respect for this one:

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

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1585429201/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1463435275&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=drawing+on+the+right+side+of+the+brain&dpPl=1&dpID=516I7mz%2BZEL&ref=plSrch

This is a good book to learn how to look at things

With that budget I'd recommend this one https://www.amazon.com/dp/B010LHRVOY/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_awd_x_KvkhybATCBNFY

I agree, a basic pen monitor is around $350 right now, you can also get a decent pen tablet pad (no monitor) for $50.

Well Stan Lee's how to draw comic book includes anatomy too.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Draw-Comics-Marvel-Way/dp/0671530771/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=draw+superheroes&qid=1567331535&s=books&sr=1-1

You can draw in 30 days by Mark Kistler:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-Can-Draw-Days-Landscapes/dp/0738212415

Staedtler Pigment Liner I believe is what is being used.

Edit: Kiket to liner.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933492732?keywords=scott%20robertson%20how%20to%20draw&qid=1458406075&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1


This one?

Here is the desktop version of your link