Learning 2 Art: The First Step When Learning To Draw An Illustration

One of my latest drawings.
Not perfect but it was a lot of fun!

You know those moments in life where you get a really good idea and you think, "You know what? I think I can draw that....yeah...yeah I can totally draw that!" And then you draw it and suddenly it turns in to,"HOLY swearwords what is that? Literally nothing in this sketch is working! How did that even happen?!" Well my friends you are not alone. When I decided I was going to switch from learning how to do realistic portraits to illustration that was the conversation I had with myself EVERY time I started to draw. I would get unbelievably frustrated, swear off drawing forever, watch T.V., get another good idea and start again. SO FRUSTRATING. Well after practicing, and practicing, and practicing I found I wasn't getting any better.

After a few months (yes unfortunately I said months) of illustrating only a handful of decent pictures I finally opened my mind up to the duh factor. If you, like me, want your illustrations to have a clean somewhat realistic feel to them you need to understand a few things: 1. Anatomy of the human (if you like to draw people like I do) 2. Proportions. Good laws proportions are the worst of the two. I felt like I could never get my eyes right, or my nose correct, or the mouth right when my cartoon is angled. The more I tried, it seemed, the worse it got.
Cue in my second duh factor...reference photo's. I have this real complex when I look at a reference photo. I feel that looking at an image is copying and makes me less "artsy". What a dumb thought! If you are ready to take your first step in drawing illustration the best way (the only way in my opinion) to learn is to study reference photos. Study anatomy, proportions, angles, all of it. I have started pinning a million reference photo's to help me understand how to better draw people. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Noses. You would think that noses wouldn't be that big of a deal, but they make a huge, huge difference! They can help make your character look younger (if the nose is shorter and more round), more feminine, masculine, snobbish, etc. These are just a few I like to look at as a general reference:

Devian Art Batcii

2. Faces. Drawing a character that is angled gets so frustrating for me. I can't ever figure out how to do that back eye! They always end up looking like a modern fail of a Picasso piece. These references help a ton with that issue!