Quote by PearceSheaI took some art classes in college, but I couldn't really afford (tried to double major in other things) to take much more but I spend quite a lot of time drawing. Now I make my walking around money by selling the stuff I draw and paint in my free time. A lot of the advice given already I'm going to repeat:

1. Practice. This is probably easy for you; I mean, you like to draw right? Art is one of those things that you improve by doing.

2. Study up. As you practice you will notice things that are "off" in your art and your weak spots. Look at what other artists have done and try to figure out how they did it. Whether or not you can figure out what they did is inconsequential to this exercise: the point is to use other people's art to help you come up with a creative solution.

3. Push yourself. This is the hardest part, I think. For everything that I draw well, I could do something else better. I pick out those things and practice doing them over and over. Often I see little improvement, but part of the issue here is confidence: I can't draw well what I have had trouble with in the past because I feel uncertain as to whether or not I can pull it off this time. Also, draw things you normally wouldn't. Draw your toothbrush. Try and draw your shoelace in an extreme close up. These are probably things you might never actually include, but figuring out how to draw the bristles on the brush (knowing what to draw so that you get the suggestion of bristles instead of drawing every single one; or trying to draw every single one and see what that looks like), or get the curve of the handle in perspective right _is_ something that will improve you.

merged: 12-28-2007 ~ 06:18am
Oh and:

The point of drawing manga/comics or art related thereto is to draw something as realistically (even if it's not something that's real we are trying to evoke something real; that is, we may be drawing a giant robot or an alien, but it doesn't "work" if it seems fake) and efficiently as possible. One of your finished peices may not ever contain a close up of a shoelace but the things you learned while drawing a shoelace (how to draw cloth material close up, how to show weight and detail in a pattern without the thing looking to heavy) will help you because it improves your "vocabulary;" that is, the more you draw random stuff, the faster (ie more efficiently) you can draw something (no pausing to figure out how to draw a certain pattern).

merged: 12-28-2007 ~ 06:21am
Oh! One more thing!

There is nothing wrong with tracing. Obviously, you can't claim credit for a work that isn't yourse, but tracing (well) can help with proportion and can help you figure out how someone might have drawn something (that is, how they got from one stroke to the next).

thats was very help full especially when you said, "the more you draw random stuff, the faster (ie more efficiently) you can draw something (no pausing to figure out how to draw a certain pattern)."

I never thought of that, thank you so much for that, no i can pass this knowledge onto others THANK YOU!