IH tries to draw digital!

Tommy's made a good point, you can't expect to learn to draw realistically very quickly. Tutorials are all fine and dandy, but they only show you how something can be done, they don't automatically give you the skills to do it.

Sort of like driving a car - a person can explain to you how they do it, and you can understand the theory perfectly, but when you're actually behind the wheel the whole thing is suddenly so much harder. The only way you're going to learn how to drive is to go for it, and hope that you don't crash into anything while doing so.

Most image tutorials work by showing a step-by-step of the process. Carefully study what the difference is in each step, then try to figure out what the artist has done to achieve that. I find that videos are actually harder to follow sometimes, because the artists work really quickly, and there aren't explanations about what kind of brushes they used, or why they did what they did.

Anyhow, a quick Google for video tutorials gave up these three.
Not sure if they'll help. The 2nd one shows nicely the kind of brush strokes you should use when drawing hair (flowing, easy strokes that go in the direction of the hair strands) and they have some nice techniques for using smudge tool for realistic hair, but eh. It's all about preference anyway, I don't use the smudge tool at all, and I still get pretty good results for hair.
I'd suggest looking at videos that show the whole process of painting, because then you'll start to get a feel of how it works. Don't forget that videos and tutorials are just rough guidelines, what works for one artist won't necessarily work for you, especially since you're just starting out and your hand-eye-mind coordination is not at the same level.

Most importantly, don't set too high goals for yourself right from the beginning. You'll just start feeling disheartened. Learning to paint and draw takes time and patience, and the best way to do it is to just experiment things. Don't be afraid of making mistakes. Don't try to make every single drawing you do an absolute masterpiece - sometimes things click into place and you get something beautiful, but most times they turn out less than that. Even top artists are rarely satisfied with every single work they make. :P

Perynne: Do you know any good videos about the whole painting process? I'm still quite bad with that. Cell-shading, sure, painting? Not at all... >_<

(sorry for hijacking your thread IH)

Everyone's advise are good! I also want to add that you can also use the divide and conquer method. I am also very prone to frustrations. When that happens I just sit back, take a break and maybe re-think the way I approach my art. Sometimes I end up redoing the whole thing or continuing what I started.

Focus on learning one thing at a time. I did not consciously do it when I started digital drawing this year but, somehow, my natural tendency to have tunnel vision kinda made me approach learning that way.

Below is my progress for this year. You've prolly seen that in my DA account but thought I'd point out how I initially just focused on learning how to color and the tool I use to color. My anatomy was way off, my finished drawing was unpolished (well they still look unpolished these days but it was worse back then lol). Funny thing was that I thought they looked pretty good back then. I aimed to get my drawing colored and see it colored and I was like 'YAY!' lol. Reason for this was that I only mostly sketched before I got to digital. So I got excited when I finally get to color something

As I went along learning how to shade, render, blahblah, I started to see the other flaws in my drawing. I took some advise and I was told that although my art looks pretty good but I still need learn the basics. (That's the part where the lack of formal art training kinda bit me lol). If you look at my meme, it took me 7 months to realize that. July is when i started focusing on anatomy.

Decided I wanted to improve my anatomy so I focused on that and currently still working it.

My process is kinda reversed though because I was just winging it yet somehow realized that there was some method to my madness...In hindsight I should've learned anatomy (basics) first.

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