observation and imagination

TL;DR: Learn by drawing from real life, so you can more convincingly, creatively and beautifully draw from your imagination (and/or from life).

Beginner artists often obsess about being unable to draw well from imagination. If you try to improve your art skills only by drawing from imagination, it may take you in some very interesting (or possibly frustrating) directions. If you want to draw realistically from your imagination, you should probably start your journey with many many hours of drawing from real life (and to a lesser degree photos and other resources.)

Artists who are searching for advice, sometimes regard the suggestions "practice" and "draw from life" as too simple, too boring, too vague, or somehow insulting or dismissive. However, for more experienced artists who are giving this advice, it may simply be the clearest and most obvious path to improvement. More specific guidance may not be be possible when what you need to improve is "everything". If you are going to draw from life, you can start with hands or feet or faces or any other thing you wish to improve. Draw EVERYTHING! Find something interesting in something that seems boring. Focus on perspective, focus on anatomy, focus on shading. Eventually you will learn to focus on multiple skills at the same time. You will always have room for improvement, so you will find yourself practicing and studying the same topics repeatedly over the years.

The more we practice, study, research, and brainstorm about art, the more we progress toward being the best artist we can be. Some types of practice are more efficient than others. There is a reason why many art courses include life drawing and still life drawing. Practicing by drawing what we see around us (life drawing and still life drawing) usually helps us improve more than drawing things out of our imagination or copying other drawings.

When we draw what we see in real life for many many hours, we train our brains to correctly observe and accurately translate 3 dimensional objects and people into a 2 dimensional illustrations, and we build sort of a mental library of the way things look and the way we can draw them believably. But when we draw a person out of our imagination, we guess (often incorrectly) about many of the details, anatomy, and proportions. so each time we practice from imagination or copying drawings, we may be reinforcing our own bad guesswork or possibly exaggerating minor mistakes into larger mistakes. The more we practice drawing real people and things, the more accurate and useful information our brains will retain so that we can later draw people or things more believably from our imagination. That's not to say that copying, tracing or drawing from imagination has no training value. Pretty much all drawing or doodling or writing can contribute to your hand-eye coordination, line control and some other skills. However, life drawing practice is a more effective way to improve more skills in less time.

If you have access to public life drawing sessions, they may be particularly helpful. The challenge of drawing in a classroom with a peer group may provide added incentive and focus. Feedback from peers and teachers, can be useful in assessing our strengths and weaknesses, and the best course of study. You can also draw yourself in a mirror or draw your hands, feet and other body parts in various poses. The feedback threads stickied at the top of various DA forum folders are a useful resource, if we are willing to objectively receive the feedback of more experienced artists. Some artists become defensive when instructed to change their study habits. As artists, it is important that we be receptive to methods of improvement. An observation about our study habits is not a personal attack. A suggestion about the best way to proceed is not a judgement about our worth as a human being. clinging to bad habits and fabricating justifications to defend our mistakes and weaknesses will only hold us back. Make your mistakes, recognize them, learn from them and move forward.

Keep practicing to keep improving.