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copied!<p>Most of artistic talent comes from putting in the time. However, as in most skills, practicing bad habits doesn't help you progress.</p> <p>You need to learn basic drawing skills (form, mainly) and practice doing them well and right (which means slowly). As you practice correctly, you'll improve much faster.</p> <p>This is the kind of thing that changes you from a person who says, "It doesn't look right, but I can't tell why - it's just 'off' somehow" to a person who says, "Oops, the arm is a bit long. If I shorten the elbow end it'll change the piece in this way, if I shorten the hand end it'll change the piece this way..."</p> <p>So you've got to study the forms you intend to draw, and recognize their internally related parts (the body height is generally X times the size of the head, the arms and legs are related in size but vary from the torso, etc). Same thing with buildings, physical objects, etc.</p> <p>Another thing that will really help you is understanding light and shadow - humans pick up on shape relationships based on outlines and based on shadows.</p> <p>Color theory is something that will make your designs attractive, or evoke certain responses and emotions, but until you get the form and lighting right the colors are not something you should stress. One reason why art books and classes focus so much on monochrome drawings.</p> <p>There are books and classes out there for these subjects - I could recommend some, but what you really need is to look at them yourself and pick the ones that appeal to you. You won't want to learn if you don't like drawing fruit bowls, and that's all your book does. Though you shouldn't avoid what you don't like, given that you're going the self taught route you should make it easy in the beginning, and then force yourself to draw the uninteresting and bland once you've got a bit of confidence and speed so you can go through those barriers more quickly.</p> <p>Good luck!</p> <p>-Adam</p>

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