Any advice on practice routines? Digital artist here

[paroket]

So I'm a somewhat intermediate digital artist (a few years of non-serious experience) and I'm looking to get a lot more serious about my training, since I want to achieve professional levels of expertise.

Currently I'm working on shape manipulation and structuralization, learning to draw forms in perspective, deconstruct forms into basic shapes, but all of my efforts have felt very... Loose, I think is the word. I feel like my learning is really lacking direction and structure, despite my willingness to put in the time.

Basically, I know what to practice--I just don't know HOW to practice it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[darktiste]

Here a few pillar of self learning

Direction
Priority
Structure
Simple Repetition to Complex Repetition
Feedback

The problem of self learning is that the exercise are not the most common share topic.

The problem you have right now is you have no feedback loop if my assumption are correct you have nothing that scream at you from time to time to ''reassure you that'' there is a ''sense of direction'' and an understading and a mastery of what is practice.

Personally as long as you draw and show what you draw you should not worry right away if how it done is ''wrong'' or not. That leak of direction will show on itself and mostly likely it will be corrected through proper feedback if you have a certain degree of lucky but you can't assume everything will be gold nugget of critism.

Right now how to practice cannot be establish since you don't show anything or stated any priority or direction.

There is a structure to how thing build on top of each other. Would you learn to draw building without perspective? That would be possible but very limiting. So as we can see from this example yes there is not necessary a need to know how to order thing you can get a result but if we understand priority and structure we can get a better sense of direction that actually do not limit the outcome. Would you draw a ball in the dark? How would you know it a ball if it doesn't have value? Would it not be just a circle?

When you have no ''teacher'' you have no self correcting mechanism or ''Structure''this is why observational drawing is a pillar of learning to draw because by drawing what we know we can see how reality put structure to what we see. We no longer learn from a single source we learn from deduction and share knowledge.

In simple word the answers to your question is found mostly by doing and observing and assembling process and reproducing step that have been successful done before but that a to a certain degree depend on the intention(direction) and what information find you as you search for them.

You can't expect a well formulated answers if there is no ''data'' to extrapolate a answers that fit the question. A topic is a great start but it doesn't give use a starting point otherwise we have to assume you are at the very beginning of learning that fundamental.

[JosephCow]

I think I would one of two things. Do assignments, or structured lessons. Which for construction and perspective, there are many books and videos out there. But just doing abstract exercises, just to learn and problem solve without pressure of making something cool can give you direction and put you on a track.

Or learn by application. So if you have an idea for a bigger picture that could use what you're practicing, that can be a good way to practice and give yourself direction. For example you might want to draw the interior of a castle, and that could use a lot of perspective concepts like drawing a staircase, or measuring space. Just an example. That way you have a specific reason to WANT to figure out those things, and that can challenge you in a fun way.

Either way seems to be effective, though. Not sure there's anything else more specific to add without seeing any of your work.

[paroket]

Apologies, I shouldn't have asked for help without attaching my work. I'll share a few examples of that below.

https://imgur.com/aXjQFUa 
https://imgur.com/ixo2Azb 
https://imgur.com/cVvSq0Q 
https://imgur.com/yzAEmv1 
https://imgur.com/aFXeWoc
https://imgur.com/mIdRwUz
https://imgur.com/vsVmKs6 

I included a few of my character designs, full drawings, and also a couple recent practices i did (one being unfinished). All of this is up to date, I made sure not to include any old stuff.

I feel like a few things I'm lacking in currently are variety, perspective, and proportion.
For variety:
 - I tend to stick to a slim, average body type
 - Typically, I don't stray from humanoid creatures. I also don't draw environments very often. The environment attached in the second link is a rarity for me
For perspective:
 - I struggle to draw objects correctly from a particular perspective. This is particularly obvious when I try to draw extreme angles, dynamic poses, etc.. It doesn't look like the character is drawn the way they should be, considering the camera angle.
 - I also find it difficult to construct bodies out of the guidelines I set up sometimes. Still working on that.
For proportion:
 - Reiterating over my previous point, I find it difficult to convert guidelines, basic shapes, etc. into forms like humanoid bodies.
 - I get the proportions messed up often, especially when drawing foreshortening.

I hope this is enough! And thank you for all the tips so far :)