Hi guys! I'm trying to start drawing people (because I really want to be able to draw my ships LOL), and I wanted to ask if anyone had any amazing resources/tips/tricks for getting started! I've never drawn figures and have only drawn like 4 faces in the last 6 years 😅, so I'm starting completely from scratch and it's a bit daunting.

Hey!!

When I took art in high school, I absolutely loved this website to generate reference images to sketch.

You can enter a bunch of different specifications to find the exact model/pose you want. As a practice exercise, I would highly recommend trying 'gesture' sketches (you can google this for examples). Pretty much you have a photo for 30ish seconds and you focus on drawing the movement/proportions of the model. This should be super rough and sketchy, absoltuely no details. Put a lot of emphasis on getting the proportions right, no going back and erasing. This will help figure out what humans generally look like in terms of size of features and how people move.

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Once you feel confident in those, do the opposite: contour sketches. In this method, you don't lift up your pen for a period of ~5 mins and try to capture as many details as possible. Bonus points if you only look at your reference while doing this without looking at your paper. Again, no erasing, but you can go back to refine details. (Neither of these methods use any shading.) A common feature to draw for contour sketches is your own hand. Look at your hand and draw all of the lines/grooves, again focusing on details. I also really like doing flower contour sketches then you could move onto full faces/people.

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These two exercises combined help to grasp somewhere in the middle between proportions and details haha! If you're feeling super adventurous, you could try to do a gesture sketch then overlay a contour sketch.

In general though, proportions are everything. There are lots of guides about typical proportions of the human body (i.e., how many 'heads' tall someone is, how/where the face should be divided into halves...) so definitely look up some of those. Hope this helps!! <3

I absolutely feel that XD exact same reasoning i have as for learning to draw people. 100% agree with gem, in the small amount of practice i've done, proportions especially will make or break something. I really recommend watching different creators like Samdoesart to get tips/guidelines, as well as always getting a reference! It will make things so much easier when you start if you have something to base it off, from there you can stylize, play with proportions, and develop your own look! I also recommend doing studies of other artists and looking for their processes ;)