Pie -
Drawing takes a lot of practice. And the more serious you are about it, the better. If you seriously want to learn art then grab yourself pencil and paper and buckle down. It'll be a skill/hobby that will cause you great frustration and even greater freedom.
There are a few good sayings out there. I'm quoting a lot because I'm trying to convey something to you. The bolding is my own.
Quote:
Draw, as much and as often as you can. When drawing lies fallow, the skill diminishes. (Gene Black)
Do not fail, as you go on, to draw something every day, for no matter how little it is, it will be well worth while, and it will do you a world of good. (Cennino Cennini)
Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad. (Robert Henri)
Before you are able to draw, you have to learn to see, and you learn to see by drawing. (Mick Maslen)
We all have at least 100,000 bad drawings inside of us. The sooner we get them out and onto paper, the sooner we'll get to the good ones buried deep within. (unknown)
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In three months, you are genuinely not likely to be any better than you were before unless you're taking serious classes and studying under someone directly.
If you're practicing from tutorials -
practice what they teach. Don't just read them over and expect to be better for having looked at them.
You may not have the situation to go to life drawing classes with nude models (I haven't and never intend to do it, honestly - I've heard enough stories about nude life drawing sessions to be completely uninterested), but that doesn't mean you can't draw from life. You've got some great things attached to your body.
Draw your hands. Seriously. If you're left-handed, draw your right hand; and the opposite if you're a right-handed person. You can get the life-drawing experience that is genuinely going to help you without having to look at anything that will trouble your parents. Here are some scans I did from a few years ago of my own hand-drawings.
HANDSy. I was challenged to draw 100 hands. I think I got to around 80 before I got distracted and stopped. If you look at the numbers, you can see how I progressed from the first hand I drew to the 50th hand I drew. I could see a visible and marked improvement just from doing those practices. I've had fewer problems drawing hands since then.
All I needed was a pencil and paper.
That's really
all you need. Photoshop (or Sai or Painter or OpenCanvas or...) won't improve your skills. It'll just give you something new to work with. It's like being given oil paints when you've been working with colored pencils. There are entirely different sets of things to learn. And it's not necessarily worth learning what Photoshop can do for you until you've got at least some of the basics down.
Once you've drawn your 100 hands from life, draw 100 feet. Or 100 pictures of your dog/cat/parakeet/fish. Or go to a public area and draw the people you see there. (If they keep moving on, then draw something else.)*
And don't forget still life drawings. Set yourself up a pile of fruit and draw them. Or draw a handful of thumbtacks or Cheerios. Draw a tree you see in your backyard. Or the birdbath in your front yard. Draw what you see and try to replicate it as close to 100% as possible.
No... This won't make you be able to draw an anime/comic styled drawing right away - but it'll teach you the basics. Give you a foundation. So when you want to draw your comic/manga styled artwork (or invent your own style - whatever), you'll know enough about form and substance to be able to exaggerate or minimize things to keep the essence of something but still be to your tastes. So the mistakes you make are ones you want.
I say all this not because I'm trying to discourage or talk down to you - but because I genuinely want to help you. I don't want you to get the mistaken idea that a program will improve your artwork. Or that three months without improving means you're a bad artist. The programs are just tools. Three months is nothing. And, to me, art is worth all the time I invested in it and made me a more confident person.
*
I will note that I haven't done this one yet. I've just heard it recommended to me.
