I was asked about some of my tricks. How I draw. Some people appreciate my pics and I very thankful to them. I don't think I already reached the level at which I may do 'tutorials'. But I'm ready to share my experience, and I'll be very happy if this can help anybody in improvement of their skills.

Here I answer the three questions I got for today.

1. how do you draw the hair?

There are not so many tricks with the hair that I mastered. Usually I draw the contour of a bald head and then roughly draw the contour of the hair. Depending on the character, I add more or less volume to the hair, and take into account if the hair is supposed to be more elastic or more soft. The hair has weight, the hair may be rumpled by the wind. There is virtually no common rules. The slightly curly hair is easier to draw, the straight hair should be drawn carefully or they may look too solid. I still can't draw very curly hair.

When I draw the hair with pencil I add many strokes along the hair, and this make them look more realistic. The shadowing is a hard task with the hair. When I work in greyscale (with pencil or in a CG program) I often narrow my eyes to see only a rough volume and not to see details - to check if the volume looks realistic. If I work in color (what happens only in CG program), I also often switch to greyscale to check the lights and shadows (the color sometimes makes it more difficult to understand if everything is OK.

The coloring is a hard task and I can't say I'm quite satisfied with how I succeed in it. What I usually do is I choose two colors (light and dark), fill the area with one of the colors and then add strokes of the second color where they are needed to represent the volume of the hair. (I used to fill the area with the light color and then add the strokes of the dark one, but recently I discovered that I achieve better results when I fill with the dark color... Or maybe it depends on the color.) Then I usually use smudge tool ("finger") to smear the strokes along the hair. Then I take either a very thin hard brush, or special brush that makes very hard strokes, and repeat adding strokes and smearing them several times until I achieve the desired effect. Usually after that I also add some light spots with small hard strokes of white color, and sometimes add deep shadows with very dark color.

2. how to draw people at an angle?

Oh, that's just practice and your own taste. Some people like exaggerated perspective (like you see a huge foot near you, then big leg, small body, and tiny head somewhere on the background). Other people don't like that. (I don't like).

What is needed for the practice is available at DeviantArt - the photos of models in various poses and from various points of view. Here are a lot of so-called 'stocks' with images specially offered for such purpose (and even for tracing and photomanipulation). Of course, check the rules of usage. Some photographers and/or models demand credits if you use their photos even if you just look at them and draw. In this case you can just say "F you" and look for another photo... or not, because what you'll create will probably be very very different from the original photo. I also used to pick up photos from adult sites (which you can use without crediting the model and the photographer) and art galleries.

Do not trace! I seriously disagree with people who can't stop the fight against tracing here, I don't support the new rules of Deviantart that prohibit tracing, but I think that tracing just will not help much in learning.

Do not learn anatomy from anime or cartoon pictures. Especially if the character is shown at an angle. Many (if not all) anime pictures are bad references. Not to say about cartoons. Draw looking at the photos of the real people. (It's even better to draw real models, not the photos, but...) Well, to be honest... Classical comic books may help. The characters are rather realistic there (and I'm sure, in many cases they are traced from the photographs).

3. how did you turn the sketch to graphics, I've tried photoshop, picasa and loads more stuff, but I cant work it out?

I scan my sketch. Open it in Photoshop or SAI. Add new layer. Draw (ha-ha, I trace) the contour on the new layer. In SAI I use pen tool or (better) ink pen tool, in Photoshop I use the brush with the diameter of 3 pixels and (important!) flow of 100%. Even with 100% flow the brush in Photoshop makes more transparent and more blurred lines than ink pen in SAI. But I got used to Photoshop and always return to it. Pen tool in Photoshop is very different thing, it's a long story how to use it (not this time).

OK, a little detail. I add two layers between the sketch and the contour, both filled with white, one is 100% opaque, the other is 60-80% (depending on the thickness of the sketch). The 60% layer is always visible, it lightens your sketch and makes it easier to trace it. The opaque layer you make visible to completely hide your sketch and to check and correct the contour.

Well, after I have the good contour I add several layers of colors under the contour. But this is a long and different story of 'How I color my pictures'

That's it for now,
Good luck!