A digital drawing example

This tutorial is a rather general one, it's aimed at describing the steps I usually take when creating artwork. I'll be making a drawing from scratch, digitally, but most of the steps can be made on paper as well.
I used Adobe Photoshop and a Wacom Intuos graphics tablet. I think both of them provide a somewhat comfortable way of drawing digitally. In Photoshop, I used the Paintbrush tool with opacity and size set to tablet pressure.

The idea

The inital idea I had was a picture of a standing boy from a country, the mood was warm and sunny. The finished picture differs from this in many ways. That's one of the advantages of working digitally - you can change the picture radically even if you got quite far with the original plan. It might also be a disadvantage, it depends on how you look at it.

So I wanted a standing boy from a 3/4 view with some simple clothes. I had no details in my mind, I was going to decide while drawing.

Getting the right proportions

Before you can really start drawing, you have to bring in the correct proportions. A stick figure can help you when trying ro get the right proportions and pose for your character. The whole character consists only of straight lines, each line representing a part of the body, a limb etc. If you draw on paper, draw the lines lightly so that you can erase them later. I usually start with the torso and then pose the limbs. If some proportions seem wrong, erase that part and try again. It's important to get it right now, it will be harder later, especially on paper.

When you're halfways happy with the lines, draw eliptical "blocks" around the lines which show the body in a volumetric way, so that you can handle the foreshortening and get a rough outline of the drawing. I draw the shape of each of the blocks a little different, depending on which part of the body it represents.

It sometimes happens, especially in the beginning, that no matter what you do, the shapes don't seem right. You change one thing and something different seems wrong, you take a short break and afterwards the picture looks all wrong etc. Don'l let it hit you, it happens to everyone. The only remedy is practice - study other pictures and copy them. When you work more, you'll see that you remember more shapes, you draw faster and your pictures will show more life than before.
There are certain proportion rules that can help in the beginning, however I always found studying other pictures and remembering them more interesting. Soon, you'll see that you draw automatically without thinking about exact proportions or making stick and block figures, you just do a rough sketch and refine it.

Adding detail

When you have this rough drawing, start redrawing the picture and adding detail. On paper, try to make thinner and cleaner lines after erasing the help lines. Digitally, you can use a thinner brush or increase the size of the drawing.
Sometimes I redraw the pic more times if I want high detail.

As I wrote before, I had no real idea about the clothes, I just did some generic design. Again, the more you practice, the easier this will seem.

Changing my mind

This is a step difficult on paper but easy when working digitally. I changed my mind and want to do a detail of the head and the shoulders. What I do digitally is simply increasing the image and cropping the uneeded part. Then, again, I use the original drawing as a guide. On paper I'd probably have to start again.

I decided on a pure-line, black&white drawing. The way you shade depends 100% on your personal style and preference, I usually shade only with parallel lines, most people use crosshatching.

When crosshatching, you make a group of parallel lines, called a set. Then, you draw another set over the first one, but the lines are rotated a bit, so that they cross with the lines of the first set. You can vary the line length, angle and number of sets to change the resulting effect.

After redrawing.

Finishing touches

After finishing the picture, I noticed that I made the shoulders too light. Correcting this on computer is quite easy. I usually select the part I want darker with the Lasso tool with feather turned on. Then, I copy and paste it into a different layer and position it exactly over the original. You'll see that the place you copied it will be darker. If you need it lighter, reduce the opacity of the top layer, if darker, create another layer the same way.

Here's the finished picture in full size (~1200x1200px, 180kB)