Hi all, I’ve done drawing since I was a little kid (haven’t we all?) 
and would like to improve my skills in humanoids/animals, which is something I never really got into.
Should I just start by copying to get the general form into my head and then concentrate on the other details later (eg. using H-Whatever pencil for part x, etc)?
Forget good pencil and good paper. You will need a lot of shity paper, lot of pencil or any other instrument you can sketch with and a lot (really a lot) of time, btw good exercise is to sketch with a pen or marker or anything you can’t delete.
Now for the most people that draws as job (I am) if they are smart they will say “You will learn drawing by drawing” and it is no joke, it is truly the only way. You have to study also some artistic anatomy book for your aims first but then try and try harder what you studied. Something like this:
should work.
For all the good exercises you can find around like copying upsidedown draws, blind draw and so on you can do everything of it, they are all good exercises, but the top one will stay: grab a note, a pencil and go outside sketching. And keep ask to someone that did sketches before how he did it, someone may not answer you…
Also if you seek animation sketches or draws for artwork and still art there is a difference in details you can use, but anyway the base techniques are quite the same.
There are a lot of theory and manuals you can study, just take a good look in your nearest art book store, you will find one in your city or a part of a big book store.
Good luck, I hope you will became a good artist.
Step 1. Grab a pencil. Preferably have a few spares handy.
Step 2. Draw, draw, draw. Draw people, places, cups of coffee, monsters, your dog, your family, that piece of gum stuck to your shoe. Go to life drawing classes, peer into peoples bedroom windows and draw them getting undressed, draw strangers on the bus, in class, at work, on your lunchbreak. Draw in sketchbooks, on reciepts, in the margins of library books, on pizza boxes, chalkboards, the backs of your hands and the soles of your shoes, pretend to draw by waving a pencil in the air. Draw despite how you hate the results, draw when you like the results, draw until you are tired of drawing and then draw some more because you’ve remembered that you love it.
Step 3. Repeat step 2.
Step 4. See step 3.
Step 5. Congratulations, you are now a somewhat capable artist. Now continue to do this for the rest of your life. At some point you’ll become awesome at it.
Easy peasy. Though some people (myself included) get slowed down a bit around step two. You just gotta keep trying.
On a more practical note, see the resources thread in this forum. I’ve listed a bunch of books there that are particularly suited to getting your head around drawing figures. Also set yourself up with an account on Conceptart.org and start a sketchbook thread there and post to it. Lots of people there have just the right attitude to learning to draw and whenever I’m feeling lazy I look through the amazing threads there and it usually kicks my ass into gear. Plus you’ll get good feedback on your own work that will help you improve.
If you want to see the method in action, go look at Alpgenfleger’s thread on conceptart.org. Seeing the difference between the first and later pages of that thread is just inspiring.
sketches all you see in all your free time…
I agree with the shitty materials part- I have a moleskine that I never touch because its too damn precious, I prefer cheap sketchbooks, or even cheaper yet notebooks. Find a decent #2 pencil, some are crap and break in the sharpener, I use ones made from recycled newspapers (terracycle), they are decent. Ebony pencil is a good upgrade, followed by derwent drawing pencils. I am looking into some col-erase pencils as well. Buy lots of pencils, 2 or 3 sharpeners, and a few books, and stash them everywhere, house, car, job- that way they are always at hand. I like to go to the library or a coffee shop to draw, away from distractions. But yeah, just do it a lot, and develop a critical eye. Really focus on seeing angles and the spatial relationships between objects, because your brain fools you at first.
Buy one good 0.5 mechanical pencil or 0.7 one , it is nice last longer than a pen , you can buy some replacement leads cheap and add a clipboard and buy some tops of A4 paper. And there you have the best tools in the world. And sometime when you have no clue what to draw it is better to look around you and study perpective , the way your eye sees the world , look at objects search the net for pictures even wikipedia reading and seeing new stuff can improve imagination.
Things does not come easy , but in time , ideeas forms hard but when they take form you`ll see the meaning of art.
It is more about how you see with your eyes and draw but in the end it is your mind that print it down with the pen. So relax and draw when you feel to and when you get some ideeas , drawing when you have no feel to it will not get in your skill`s but still exercise your hand and muscles
The human brain retains information best when pleasure it is involved.
So the general ideea it is HAVE FUN!
what he said, practice makes perfect… even if the expression is some what of a cliche lol.
The first thing is to study the body proportions of any man or lady. I have seen artists who draw good, but the hand is not proportional to the head or the chest whatever. So you need to study these things. Then start sketching with fine simple lines. Draw multiple lines if you wish to. Overlines are not a thing to avoid. It actually gives a shade and depth to the figure.