Less effort, more results?

[Fenn]

Don't think about it, just do it. Your brain takes care of the rest. Confidence is something that is an absolute MUST with art, if you're not confident, nothing works.
Go for it bro, looking forward to some results.

Thx. I actually had the best scary moment of my drawing career when I worked in the workbook yesterday. I was going for the pre-instruction exercise: drawing your hand, where you just use your current skills, and I started with an outline, then froze.

I was lost.

I had no idea how to go about drawing this hand. What should I represent with a line? What should be shading? How do I interpret the folds? WHAT DO I DO! It was then that I realized that while I have been drawing manga, I've been improving with solely that subject, and my basic art skills were improving much slower. This is why I was so afraid to try anything new! While I have several years experience doing the same basic manga poses, I technically have hardly any real practice when it came to basic art skill.

Now, as I find more things I am terrible at, I'm excited rather than angry because I'm thinking "OH! Something else I hadn't thought of! Now I can try to work on this!" I'm identifying my faults now and it feels great. After I gain some confidence--like you said GunZet--I'll be able to go back to manga with a whole new perspective on art and pencil sketching!

[GunZet]

That's what makes things weird when you first start out with manga lol. Most of those artists start out with a good background with realism and traditional art. But going from manga style to realism? It's like a step back and going in reverse forwards...Basically, really hard and awkward.

I'm sure glad my HS art teacher hated anime/manga as much as she did, I wouldn't have improved much.

[ram]

if a cardboard box is the extent of what you think you can visualize in 3d space then i guess you will have to but I think you can advance much quicker that .

i wish i know how to advance much quicker than that..
in humans "yes" cardboard boxes isn't really needed but in "objects" it's difficult to figure out the perspective of it without doing that type of style... until now i'm still using the cube to know the perspective of the objects and i tried it without the cube once and i seem to always mess up... (although i'm still a beginner in drawing objects) but still that's what i see in books that most pro use..

here's an example


i have other books but it's in pdf so i can't really show ya

[Rio]

until now i'm still using the cube to know the perspective of the objects and i tried it without the cube once and i seem to always mess up...

You mess up because you have not completely learned it yet. When you've really learned something, you can usually just eye things and know the proper distance, space, and just intuitively feel if your drawing is correct or not. Keep practicing and you'll eventually get to a state where it won't be an issue... though, it's always good to go back to the basics if you want to correct or check for errors.