Thanqol Learns 2 Draw: Every Step Is The First

[Silviya]

Firstly, one unique expression and one body sketch are going to be permanent additions to the schedule.

This is a good idea.

Finally, this sketching is really hard to do in long sustained bursts like I have been doing because it's just kind of tedious. Instead, I'm going to endeavour to have SAI open all the time and doodle in between other things rather than having sit down and grind sessions while I'm on sketchy conceptual stuff like this.

This also sounds like a good idea. Keeping art fun and not so much of a chore is important.

If anyone has anything to help me with expressions, I'd love to hear it. The Lackadaisy tutorial has been an astoundingly useful place to start, got any more?

Hmm, tutorials. I think I've got some expression related tutorials somewhere, but I can't seem to find them at the moment. I'll keep looking and post them when I find them.

Some general advice that I have: I recently started doing some Babylon 5 fanart for practice, working from screenshots. I've found that this is a great way to practice expressions, as it forces me to really look at what makes an expression, and I end up drawing much more complicated and realistic expressions than just plain happiness or anger or sadness etc., and I've learned a lot about how to combine different emotions without them clashing with each other.
I'd advise picking a live action TV show that you watch, finding some screen shots of some of the characters' faces (preferably more expressive ones), and draw those. You can just sketch them, or you can go into full detail. Sketching has the advantage of being a lot quicker, but you'll learn more from doing detailed drawings.

If you haven't yet, I'd suggest following the link on the last page for the dA anatomy tutorial. There's a set of links at the bottom of that page labelled "Manga to Realistic" which is mostly concerned with drawing realistic faces, assuming a cartoon-style starting point for most incoming artists. Although I don't really draw much in a manga style, the tips are pretty generically useful, and one of the later tutorials goes specifically into how the face moves in different facial expressions. There was also a neat section on thinking about how to draw different ethnicities, to break out of the Caucasian/Asian box lots of people can get stuck in.

I would link the page directly, but I'm at work and can't go link-hopping just yet >.>

Oh, also the grammar is a bit dodgy, but I think that's because the artist is ESL; the pictures tell most of the story anyway. Thought I should warn you, since I didn't know if that would trigger any of your writer buttons.

Here. I haven't read it because I don't do manga (though maybe I should read it, given what The Druid Droid said about it), but I assume this is the tutorial you're talking about?