2 value study, I made this study to practise shape design .I do not think I did well though because I feel like some of my shapes are too complicated and similar in size Please give some feedback and some tips about how I can improve, thanks you! The flower I put in there is one of the references I use. I took that picture a few days ago. (Sorry for bad English)

Hi mii! Looks like your image example looks a bit flat compared to the others, this may happen because the value range is not very wide. I was watching Marco Bucchi's youtube tutorials and in the lighting and shape episodes, he pointed out that the light and shadow region will typically have distinct luminance. And for the lit areas, if you look at your first three example images, their "brightness" are all distinctively higher than the adjacent unlit areas. If you take bouncing light and frensel effect into account, you can get some rim-light and stuff, but they are much lower in brightness compared to direct light. But that's the topic of another day I guess... Another thing I've noticed is that the skin tone is too white against the background, making the shape hard to read at a glance. Especially when the eyes are relatively dark. Maybe you can tone down the skin a little bit and it will pop out more against the background. Also the light rim around the clothes area might be a bit too bright, try tone it down and see if it looks cleaner to you :D

Hey there! As far as I can see they are mainly using basic brushes, so that would be my first recommendation. Don't bother with several different brushes, you can achieve basically anything with the basic ones. Especially if you are painting stylized stuff, you need to learn gesture and shape language, I recommend that as one of your main stepping stones. At the moment don't bother that much with color, build up a decent understanding in lights and values first, and then the colors should come naturally. Have fun on your journey mate! :)

All of these require fairly decent construction (especially for figure) and good shape understanding. Latter two specifically you'd want to learn about composition, using a grid, and painting environments. Like others have mentioned definitely check out fundamentals, I'd specifically recommend Proko's Figure Drawing course to start, I think this would help a lot. Really make sure you've got good construction. Learn about perspective. Give yourself guidelines to help you make sure things are lined up. If your drawing program has a symmetry option you can use it for front-facing heads and bodies. Krenz Cushart is a good artist to look at, just google 'Krenz Cushart sketch', you will see he has a lot of anime styled art with good construction in mind. Also focus on the design decisions made: the shapes your favorite artists use, the proportions and how they differ from their more realistic counterparts, all of that. The underlying construction (which is just perspective and proportions primarily) will be #1 but still have to make sure you can make appealing shapes. Try to think about how these shapes would turn in space. Barring the last two pictures (the environment ones) you could focus on construction, then good line work, followed by flat colors, then use a shadow layer (you can use multiply that's a good layer type) thinking about basic lighting for a cel-shaded look. If you want to add environments in (makes it harder; I say just focus on the figures to start) then study composition (Framed Ink is a good book) and painting environments. TL;DR- Focus on figure drawing construction and study the shapes of your favorite artists. Check out Proko's Figure Drawing course and Krenz Cushart's sketches. P.S. Studying individual face features and hands will go a long way as well. Don't just study anime drawings! You can study from real life too; I drew a lot of pictures of old man eyes from Google and it helped improve my understand of drawing eyes. And I wouldn't worry too much about the brush you use right now. Hardround or a small Softround is fine.

I think the best way to start is to study values, if you have good values and edges you are already at a good point. Maybe try to pratice on really simple 3d shapes and make them look "realistic" using values only. There are really good tutorials on how to render a sphere, that's always a good exercise! Also, try to really understand why an artist you like made some particular choices and try to really understand how they achieved that. And of course... pratice, pratice, pratice :D

Hey Mii, love your piece! There's some fun texture in there and really lovely colors. It's great to see your goals and inspiration as well, that helps a lot with knowing where you're aiming with your work. My main suggestion would be to devote some time to fundamental studies: figure drawing, portrait drawing, still lifes and practicing painting light from life and photos. Art fundamentals are universal regardless of style; the best anime artists have extremely good fundamentals and can draw realism just as well as they draw anime. Their stylized work is merely an "editing" of that fundamental knowledge: choosing which parts of it to use and which parts to ignore in order to achieve both the style and the desired level of realism. Once you know how to draw and paint realistically, it becomes infinitely easier to stylize! There's a lot of fundamentals to study, so I would suggest picking one you're passionate about and just focus on that for a month or two. For instance, you could go through Proko's portrait drawing courses, do the assignments, and maybe halfway through the course and after you're finished try doing another portrait in your own style to apply what you've learned in the way you want. It may seem a little counterintuitive but I promise it'll help a lot! Feel free to reply if you have any other specific questions, happy to help. :)