Need help with shading/drawing in general

[prince_freeza]

I've given your advice a try ( this time on paper ) and I took a closer look at how people outline their work
I guess it still look a bit stiff and stuff.

it does, but that's nothing unusual just keep practicing and you will get better with time.

Also I want to know : So when you draw do you usually just do it from scratch just with your imagination or do you take other pictures as reference ?
I always feel like if you don't do it from just your imagination you don't really get anything out of it if you just copy a drawing and try to imitate it.
But I guess thats how most of people learn - by imitating and then adding their own style to it until they know how it works.

well if i have a certain posture or pose in mind that i want to achieve i usually do a base template before anything else, you can use pictures as references or even your self if you try to assume the pose you want.
example:

see before starting on any outline you want to get correct proportions by doing that template, and if you have any sort of trouble drawing certain parts (eyes,hands,feet..etc) you can always look at other pictures as a reference or even yourself/others in real life.

It feels like cheating because if I look at for example Anime Series then 90% of the time the charatcers consist of mainly 2 colors or maaaaaayyyybe 3.
The style you suggested me to learn first by only having 2 colors for each part.
And if I use the blur smudge tool it just does not really look right to me.

If I try to shade it with only 2 colors without the smudge or blur it look really awkward too x.x or maybe I just have the wrong settings.

well this is the thing, you have to know when to use or not use the blur/smudge tool depending on what kind of shading texture you want to achieve. i suggest you don't rely your self on the blur/smudge tool too much for shading you did say you have a tablet(?) so instead you can shade using a brush with low opacity if you want a better looking shading for your character.

a quick example:



on the right one: 2 color default brush shading.
on the left: 50% opacity soft brush shading.