Drawing References and Resources

The most obvious thing about manga is that it's basically simplified realism. Sure we play with proportions for style's sake, but the end result still reflects a good amount of realistic influence. But what people seem to have trouble doing is translating their knowledge of realism into their manga drawings. I see a lot of artists who do realistic anatomy studies, but the studies don't really show in their work because they have trouble integrating the know-how.

Just a quick basic tutorial based on a new image I'm drawing right now. This is pretty much how I draw every picture. Sometimes I draw everything just with a black pen, sometimes it looks like a ra...