Hey there! I wish you the best on your journey! :) Before you even start anything it would be great if you knew what you are interested in: Do you like animation, illustration, character design, portrait art...? After that, I recommend looking for art instructors on youtube and you should also look for genres or styles you really like. For now, you should have fun, draw whatever you want to and if you are stuck, look for help on YouTube, or here on Proko :) I don't think it would be nice if you started some raw practice because it can easily discourage you.

First, if you are interested in becoming a professional, listen to the video "How to Train to become a Successful Working Artist" by Jeffrey Watts on youtube. I've listened to it four times in the past 6 years. That's how good it is. Resouces online I've used are: CGMA, Schoolism, and New Masters Academy. I'd say New Master's Academy has been the best value, with content for every skill level. Schoolism is great for advanced students, but not great for learning fundamentals of drawing. CGMA is great if you like taking classes in 8 week chunks. They have a whole foundations course on there. If price is a concern, just remember that you pay in time or you pay in cash. Mentorships can be really valuable as well. With many artists, you can either pay for an 8 week mentorship or they'll have an ongoing mentorship. It's not cheap (I pay $350/month for mine). But compared to art school, it's much more affordable...and the one-on-one environment is great

Maybe this will help you

So you can really hold your pencil in any way you want depending on what you are trying to draw and probably most importantly what medium you are using, and as Dan said: proko and drawabox are great resources to learn that from and their differences. Most of the courses on proko though are not beginner friendly. You can do the figure course but anatomy isn't worth your time yet I would say. Since you are beginning, I am guessing you are pretty excited to get started, so I would start with something 'boring' such as drawabox.com and sprinkle in a few things you are passionate about. I would do some still lifes, choosing simple object that aren't too far from basic shapes such as spheres, cylinders and boxes. Simplification is very important and doing perspective (drawabox) alongside still lifes will help make it easier to understand why you are doing it. It will also make it easier to draw from photo reference in time since you should get a better understanding of volume and form. All that said though, if you don't listen to yourself keep grinding and don't adjust what you are doing to what you want at all, you'll burn out. Remember that you are doing drawing because you want to.it shouldn't be a chore for too Long at a time, especially not in the beginning. Hope this helps and I am happy to answer questions.

Such a difficult question, with many answers... But I'll give it a go with some questions as well. - What do you want to draw? - What kind of art do you like? - Once you know the above, I would start studying some of these concepts that will help as you develop: line control, form, perspective, light & shadow (value), colour, etc. It will feel overwhelming at first! So focus on one thing at a time and practice (i.e. drawing straight lines, drawing simple circles and squares. Keep learning while you practice. It takes a long time and a lot of practice to intuitively combine perspective, proportion, lighting, gesture and line control, you'll feel like you're going backwards a lot as you're suddenly doing new things even if they're not obvious, but keep pushing. On learning, I think there are two great resources to get you going: - Drawabox (https://drawabox.com/lesson/0). This gives you structured learning of the absolute fundamentals in a clear way with exercises to follow. - Proko of course! (How to hold your pencil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMC0Cx3Uk84) If you want to get you drawing and need help with ideas, something like this could be really useful too, where you are encouraged to explore concepts and iterate on them (Scott Flanders course: https://www.proko.com/course/character-design-monster-lab/lessons). Don't worry that you won't draw awesome things, it's the practice of drawing and exploring ideas that's important. On top of this, just explore learning material that you find interesting. Learn what you can and search around for recommendations. There's no shortage of material around, so just dive in :) Depending on what you want to learn, there's plenty of great instruction on this site. For a good read with lots of fundamental stuff, get Andew Loomis' book 'Fun with Pencil' (Here: https://archive.org/details/andrewloomiscreative.illustration/Andrew%20Loomis%20-%20Fun%20WIth%20a%20Pencil/mode/2up). It's got heaps of useful info in it to get you started, don't worry that you won't be able to replicate it straight away. And.... have fun, embrace failure and don't be afraid to ask for help :)

mmm.... challenging question. I think that you should try to do what you love and fail catastrophically, but have fun doing it. That is what Scott McCloud calls the Surface Stage. Is good for you since you will discover what you like. Experiment with materials, styles, etc. Make projects that you like. Here I wrote about my experience in the learning journey https://demetriocran.wordpress.com/2020/04/14/how-to-use-scott-mcclouds-model-to-make-sense-of-your-art-journey/ godspeed!

Hi Ch0nky, The fastest way to improve is to hire a professional tutor or find a quality atelier. A good atelier will have student work to show you. It's possible to learn on your own from internet resources but it's much more difficult and time consuming. A competent teacher will be able to diagnose your mistakes and help you work past them. It will also depend on what you want to do with art. Fine art, illustration or animation for example all require different skills, though there is a lot of overlap. No matter which path you choose, try to find a community of other artist who are interested in the same thing as you. You will learn a lot and be exposed to ideas that you might not discover on your own.

Hi! The first class I took that I think helped me tremendously is a class called the Art and Science of drawing. It’s by Brent Eviston. Here’s the link to the website: https://artandscienceofdrawing.teachable.com/#:~:text=The%20Art%20%26%20Science%20of%20Drawing%20is%20a,techniques%20you%27ll%20learn%20here%20are%20rarely%20seen%20 I think it’s much cheaper if you take it on Skillshare... It’s about 7 courses on Skillshare. The first one is called Basic Skill / Getting Started (on Skillshare) it teaches you how to hold a pencil, draw different types of lines and shapes. The other courses, which you take in a specific order building on the skills learned in previous lessons, teach you things including: mark making, shapes and forms, measuring, contours and eventually shading. The teacher gives you homework to do every lesson and it was really worth it for me. Sorry this is kinda long, hope this helps!