Beginning Artist Looking for Advice

[yummy]

Because nowadays we are environmental friendly, I'd just add a special technique to Mugen's useful post: instead of using a printer because it takes some extra time to go back and forth the printing process, you can build a tracing table.
The process of tracing is to use a backlight under the paper to draw over it. I remember Deji said she even used the glass of a window once^^

It's useful because you can flip your paper and detect errors without using a PC.
It looks like this from the side (I know, I suck at ASCII art):

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|------------------\
|                   \
|         \  |   /   \
|     Light Source    \
------------------------

And you put your sheets of paper on the top. But don't use it to copy other people art since it doesn't train your hand (Plus you'd be accused of simmonsing).

[Mikan]

Any drawing trains the muscles in your hand, even tracing. TRACE AWAY OP

[Dark]

Not sure if it would help you much, but you can layout the general proportions using shapes. That way, you can still modify the way your character looks, and still have room to freestyle it.

Also, getting to know bone and muscle structure always helps

[sayuri]

Just wanted to mention that I have been practicing as much as I can and thank you very much for the suggestions. The pen thing helped a lot. I've practiced anatomy a few times but it's so messy and all over the place I can barely tell what's going on. I've also been sketching whatever during my free time. I'll just keep at it I suppose, then I'll post something. So yeah, here are a couple of my practices. They are all floating heads unfortunately.










Again, thank you to everyone who responded!

P.S Mugen, that just about blew my mind .

[Lekhaka]

Maybe change the brightness/contrast/colour of those images? It's difficult to see the lines...

[sayuri]

Whoops. Fixed, hopefully that helps.