>>2644
I also want to draw animu grills.
I started off with what was in the wici/sticky, but since there was so much stuff I basically picked what I liked out of it.
Started off looking through Loomis's Figure Drawing, but what I saw scared me a bit so I went and read some of his Head book instead. I completely skipped Fun with a Pencil because it didn't seem to tell me anything I didn't already know, at least conceptually, though after learning the basics of the skull and going back to Figure Drawing, I found that I didn't actually have much idea of how construction worked.
One step forward one step back is pretty fun for me. I find that when I learn things this way, by explicit error, that my corrections are more ingrained than if I simply followed the whole standard regimen like some school curriculum. In the end you're always improving on something anyways - or in other words, you're always "correcting" something you thought was "right" but was "wrong". I also though perspective was the one thing I had down so I didn't get Robertson first thing, but turns out I only ever drew things in pseudo-isometric. I did have to "relearn" some things but it wasn't too difficult, since I understood what was going wrong.
I think it's about just keeping aware of what you are doing. What you are doing in particular is not as relevant.
My path so far:
Did Loomis's skull/head (various angles), Loomis's mannequin (various poses), then attempted to do hands but completely failed because I found construction too hard. Decided that each hand was too complicated to construct from palm-base up and needed to be "studied" or "boxed-in" instead, but found that I couldn't visually measure anything for shit. Did some studies, fell in love with measuring everything because it seemed like finally I'd be able to at least copy what was in front of me (straight lines, proportions, and angles are significantly easier for me to understand than "dynamic gestural curves"), then studied eyes. Got bored of eyes and wanted to draw figures again, but found that Loomis's muscle explanation severely lacking, happened to look at some guy's sketchbook and found out there were people out there that explained major muscle groups for artists, and skimmed through Hampton. Hampton was also insufficient, so I opened some anatomy books. Studied random body parts afterwards that weren't covered enough so far to my satisfaction, including feet. Then I went back to studying heads, but anime this time.
A number of the things I do are completely against the sanctioned correct-progress standards of /ic/ or /art/ so take my words with salt I guess, but I felt it was more important to overcome the "stagnation" that I was feeling than some random guy telling me "I will regret this in the future".
Maybe I will regret things, but I don't doubt I'll have to correct most of what I think I know anyways, so really it's a choice between "do what this other guy wants" or "do what I want", or "stop drawing because I don't want to anymore" and "drawing in the future i will regret drawing something in the past". Usually when I figure out a solution to a problem myself, it ends up resembling somewhat what everyone else told me. Which is great for them, they get to say "I told you so" and whatever, but this is not relevant to me. Sometimes I follow along and sometimes I don't, and when I don't it's because I couldn't figure out what the instructions meant or were getting at.
Doing something I don't understand and having other people tell me it's "correct" is worth less to me than doing something I do understand but will correct later based on improving my own understand, and be told at some indeterminate time in the future that I was at some point "wrong".
Pic is something pretty old and something pretty recent. Both cases I attempted to copy. First one ended up something that was "based off of" the original, but distinctively was not. Second one was at least recognizable as almost the original, but I feel it captured the essence.
I have no doubt I got to this point faster and better in all possible respects than if I had followed any "correct" path.