That's awesome, wish I could draw like that.
Thank you, Do you draw at all? Despite what some think, it is something you can usually learn.
I would have to dig up some of my old drawings from when I was in my early teens. They were terrible. But drawing from a picture reference, over time, builds your ability to see detail, and then try to put what you see. Some people try to draw without reference at first, and that is difficult because we don't have all the details of the things we see every day memorized. Eventually if you draw a lot from reference, you learn to draw without it. But that is based on all the details you have seen over time. Learning to draw is first of all learning to see. And the repetition builds up your hand dexterity.
For anyone who is interested in trying, the biggest tip I can give is to focus on what you are drawing more than on your paper. Learn to move the pen/pencil without looking at it, to follow the contours of the object your are drawing. Most people if you watch them draw from reference will look at their paper about 70-80 percent of the time. Try reversing that and looking at the object being drawn that much of the time, and just to the paper occasionally to make sure you are still in the right spot.
A second tip that helped me is to eliminate mental comments that are unhelpful. Don't think "this isn't looking the same as the picture", or "this is terrible", etc. More constructive discussion would be, "how is this line that I drew different from the original?", "Is the original convex or concave?" "How far is this element from that element?" Etc.
At first what you might do is just draw it the best you can. Then go back and study the differences between yours and the original. Mark each one. You may even redraw some of the lines to more closely match, leaving the old ones for comparison.
My daughter recently started drawing people. She was struggling with it. But by learning this method of doing her best, then comparing, then redrawing she now is doing quite well within only a few weeks. She made an agreement to draw every day over winter break. She would draw from reference a single figure. Then mark the differences, then draw it again. Then mark the differences on that one and draw it again. Usually by the fourth attempt at the same figure it was pretty good.
Another thing that can help is to turn the picture upside down and then draw it. This helps to draw just what you see, rather than reading your picture of what you think a person should look like into it. When my daughter is struggling to get things right it is usually her mental picture overriding the actual. By turning it to a different angle this short-circuits the mental picture, because we are accustomed to seeing people often, and from a certain perspective.
When starting out on a drawing it helps for me to start with one of the longer lines of an object and then use that to establish scale to other items. Then start to put in the smaller items in relation. This develops the eye's ability to judge distances and comparative lengths.
