>>77740>>77781if you're like me and don't have a lot of patience for theory or grinding anatomy parts from references and just wanna go with a hands on approach right off the bat, I recommend picking up a pencil and paper, pulling your favorite images from your favorite artists on the screen and then just start copying. never trace, tracing stunts your growth and it leads to an artistic dead end, it's acceptable for some background drawing but not much else
as you draw on the paper from these references, observe and pay very close attention to how the artist did each detail, hands, ears, eyes, hairstyles, etc. try finding patterns and stylistic choices that you might be interested in replicating and incorporating into your own visual library and personal style
when you feel like moving on to something grindier, look up real life reference photos for figures and anatomy and try drawing those, this'll improve you quickly and effectively. every once in a while you can try improvising and stylizing some feature if you feel like it, I'd usually do that for faces when I was starting out
drawing basic 3D shapes (and combining/bending them) is also extremely helpful, it creates a strong foundation because -anything- can be constructed to look decent if you get good at these
after doing this stuff for a while, eventually you will reach a point where -you- have to be the one to guide yourself and decide what aspect you'll start looking into and improving next. the amount of options seems absolutely overwhelming at first since you suck at everything. but an artist is self selected and self taught, asking for advice on some very specific things is valuable but you shouldn't go asking around for opinions on the next move on your artistic development journey because the answer will always be biased around the instructor's own experience and journey which vary heavily from artist to artist
I haven't read any of the resources that
>>77763 linked but there's probably good stuff in there. and I agree that youtube guide videos are massively helpful for quickly finding answers to specific things that you struggle with
deciding what to practice becomes much easier after you start developing your own style and begin to clearly see your strong suites and shortcomings. also, studying art works similarly to studying music, even when you feel like you're just practicing one very tiny and marginal aspect, it's actually improving so many other aspects of your art which you don't realize until later
also, don't put too much emphasis to just waiting on 'inspiration'. you gotta have the mindset of a gym goer. the artists who are most inspired are the ones who also do it when they don't 100% feel like it all the time, inspiration is something you can cultivate
also, when it comes time to color, my personal pro tip is to look into color theory at least very briefly. just half an hour is enough for you to learn some ridiculously valuable and simple to implement things
gl anon