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hey, first of all i wanna say i acknowledge your frustration, drawing is a pain. i love it more than almost everything, but holy shit is it hard. also, never mind pretentious artists who put your work down, sounds like they're either insecure or self-centered and cruel. i've been drawing for 10 years (not consistently enough, and not really practicing in a productive manner either) and i'm not where i need to be yet. i just seriously started working on it for the past two months.

i also want to draw and illustrate graphic novels (et je suis française aussi ahaha). for sure, you need good bases to draw, an understanding of anatomy before you can stylise your human figures more. one of my favourite authors is joann sfar. his style is messy, but i'm sure it works because he understands perspective and anatomy. that being said, do you feel you're at a place where you have a sufficient understanding of these things? personally i know i'm not there, so i haven't really started stylising my drawings yet (but that doesn't mean you can't obv).

i guess what i'm trying to say is, do you think you need to learn more before moving on? do you think you could find professionals online or in person to review your art and give you tips (i know people do that on this site)? maybe this would help you figure out specifically what you need to improve, and you could then practice these things smartly. i'm saying smartly because i really did spend 10 years practicing in an inefficient manner, not practicing my anatomy, not practicing perspective or simplifying the human form etc. i essentially would just look at references and reproduce them line for line on paper. i got good at doing that, but it brought me nowhere near the competences i need to draw my graphic novels. i'm just now starting to practice in a productive manner.

this is getting long and my comment really isn't structured, but maybe we can exchange more later ahaha

yeah i've definitely heard the "practice practice practice" thing, which i'm sure is mostly true. what i've struggled with tho is practicing the right way. i think practicing straight from imagination, when we don't have the basics, is not helpful. for example right now i'm not just drawing from imagination, i almost always use a photo reference. i need the reference to properly understand where to place my lines. without the reference, it's impossible to place them correctly because i'm still learning. another example could be when you learn music, you're not just playing random notes from imagination. you're following music sheets and melodies that someone has already written, until eventually you're good enough to compose your own. idk if that example is clear ahaha, but what i'm trying to say is that it's normal to use references in order to not just make the same mistakes over and over again, as you said.

but tbh, after the "references stage" i'm not sure how to move on from that. i've been drawing using references for a long time, and these drawings look good. but as soon as i draw from imagination, nothing looks right. i don't know if i should keep drawing from references, or draw from imagination and make a lot of mistakes? probably a bit of both? i've heard some people that do it from imagination, then look at a reference of what they wanted to draw to see what went wrong, and then they re-draw their thing.

That's by far the most difficult thing for me! I can correctly draw anatomy from references and live models, but as soon as I'm lacking a reference nothing on the page looks right. I'm sure that's quite common, but I'm wondering how best to move on from there.

Just keep doing a lot of sketches using references? Should I instead do a lot of sketches WITHOUT references? Any specific thing I should focus on? Anything I'm missing?

The reason I'm looking for advice is because in the past, I've spent a LOT of time trying to get better at drawing, only to realize I had wasted literal years because I had no idea HOW to learn (and I wasn't the most consistent with practice). I really want to avoid that right now. I work full time and I'm able to fit about 3h of drawing practice a week. I would like to do more and will strive towards that, but I also want to make my practice as productive as possible.

Thank you so much for any advice!

just wanted to say i also struggle with something somewhat similar, where i kind of beat myself up for not practicing enough, and so i'm not actually getting better at something (ex., i've been drawing for 10+ years but i still haven't achieved my one main goal, which is to draw humans from imagination.. cause sometimes i can spend weeks without practicing, which is a problem). i then associate a lot of bad feelings with the practice and it becomes even harder to pick up.

a thing that helps me practice is telling myself that i'm just gonna do it for 5 minutes. like literally, if i really don't feel like doing it i put a 5 minute timer and do it. oftentimes, after the 5 minutes i want to keep going for a bit. sometimes i don't have the time or don't feel like it, and i have to tell myself that it's fine at least i sat down and tried. so that's a small trick that can maybe help with motivation/discipline, which is just setting a super achievable goal and then going from there.

but tbh i get where you're coming from, and i'm far from practicing as much as i would want to at the moment. we have to keep trying tho! that's the only way we'll get anywhere.