also have a few others but they are not that great. also please note that those are my 2nd and 3rd try @ realism and i’ve never taken an art class. But since I visited Art insititue of California in san diego i’ve taken their advice to step away from anime
One thing to remember when drawing from life or photographs: Do not get too caught up in trying to draw THINGS. Instead, you should focus on shapes. Look for the shapes of the shadows around a nose, rather than trying to look at the nose itself. The same goes with everything else. Measuring with your pencil/brush will help with the relationships of the shapes. This will work with anything you draw–period. A good beginning excercise is to simply concentrate on drawing the shadows you see in a figure–and nothing else.
One thing that will really help your life-drawing skills is practicing them in the company of others. If you have time, you could probably sit in on some life drawing classes at a local school. One thing I did with some of my fellow students was to pool our money and pay a model to sit for us every week or two (depends on your fundage$$$). Anyone who wanted to pitch in was welcome (and some who were too broke to pitch in).
I wouldn’t step too far away from your anime, either. Drawing that takes a leap of imagination and style that you may not be able to explore when drawing from life.
um… the second one looks sorta retarded, the mouth is off, and way to big.
P.S. its better than i could do… WAY BETTER, soo dont take it harshly
Nice, need to work on the proportions though, like skeletor said, but they are looking nice.
Q: why get away from anime style? 
Move away from anime because anime is a cheat.
Its a cheat because their propotions are never right, you see a guy running and his legs snap back in forth, their boobs never move and do its way too much same for hair. All the efect you like in anime is mostly to save costs in animations, they use less material. Mostly all anime girls are skinny and have no stomach, so in real like can cant even bendover to touch their feet yet in anime that can twist turn and scretch. Anyone can draw anime, so people dont look for that they want to see realism because if you can draw that then you can draw anything.
Oh… i see… guess you’re right…
i know it’s a cheat… but I still like it… 
[now I will keep trying to sketch REAL people 
, never been too succesful though… or is it that I am a perfectionist? :-? ]
Post your work and we’ll let you know. 
Actually, if you can write your name, you already have all the drawing skill you need. Writing your name is a much more complicated process than say, drawing someone’s face. This may sound like baloney, but we all write our names so many times that it becomes reflex, and we forget how hard it was to make a pencil do that when we were little.
The problem is in how you see what you’re drawing, not in putting lines on a piece of paper.
The proportions on these two sketches are off because of your approach–you were drawing faces. But drawing faces limits you because you have an expectation of what a face looks like (in effect, your memory interferes with your eyes). This changes the way you see your subject, and it greatly affects your drawing.
Just look at the shapes that make the face, one at a time. Then measure the shapes, measure their relationships with each other (size, placement, angles), and draw those.
It’s like when Chiun said to Remo, “If you don’t breath correctly, you won’t move correctly”. Same thing here: If you don’t see correctly, you won’t draw correctly.
And it’s true, if you can see and draw this way, you will be able to draw anything–period.
Sutabi, do not judge a style from seeing one part of it.
to draw more serious eastern style drawings you’ll have to know your human body drawing techniques, because in most cases they’ll actually have realistic bodies from the neck and down.