Re: MYAAR?
If you're still having trouble with the face, try isolating the features that are giving you the most trouble -- the nose, the eyes, the mouth, etc. Do some practice drawings from reference, then try some on your own to see if you have a feel for it.
eg)
I don't think that you need to distinguish the apples of her cheeks with lines, though they are a prominent part of her face, especially when she's smiling. That's the sort of thing that you would go in with afterwards with light and shade, or smoother pencil shading if you weren't planning on colouring it.
Generally, it's good to have an undersketch before moving on to the finished linework; I think I can see faint traces of that in your images, but I think that doing some more research on body shape would really help! Doing stick-figure skeletons to ensure that the arm lengths match up even if one is tilted a certain way will help. In picture two, the reposing figure definitely needs some reference to back it up -- the body doesn't look as realistic as you've been drawing the faces so it looks off.
For reference and general practice, I'd suggest taking some time out of drawing specific figures by doing quick gesture drawings -- spending thirty seconds a pop on a nude figure. The end images aren't really pretty, and you can scrap them later if you want, but the process of quickly analyzing and trying to put to paper the shapes of the body will help you to internalize those shapes, and allow you to have a sort of muscle memory that will definitely help later down the road!
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is helpful for this!
Other reference that might help:
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for a variety of photosets. Essentially, what you would be looking for is a couple of different images from here or elsewhere on the web to combine -- by doing so, you're avoiding copyright infringement because you're taking inspiration from the poses and not outright copying someone's idea. You'd use reference of the gal's face to make a character with similar features, and another reference that has the lighting and colours you want when you started to colour.
As with everything else, doing rough, quick sketches or thumbnail-sized images to get an idea of the pose and lighting is really helpful. Practicing drawing in blocks of shape rather than lines (say, getting a fat marker or a brush pen) can really help to hone your understanding of how the body works, too. Varied line thickness adds a dynamic look to the image... it's something that you don't see much in anime because they're obsessed with the ultra-thin line.
And a
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in different areas, some of which you might find handy!
I know that this is really generalized, but the last thing I can suggest is this: try to consider each line that you're drawing. Does it look nice, or did you do it really quickly just to get it done? Every line in an image should have a kind of beauty. Hair lines shouldn't be scribbly unless it adds to the aesthetic of the image. (On the other hand, you can scrap that idea, just so long as you're conscious that you're saying "FU!" to the rules and tossing them out the window!) If you consider your lines as you're drawing them, and how they fit into the image as a whole, I found that I levelled up over time from before I went to art school to afterwards. Once you do the other practice, this one starts to make more sense, I guess!