I've watched a fair bit of artists on youtube and shading seems to be the biggest deal to making something look realistic so that's kinda what I went for, lots of shade and lots of smudging
no, all of the polishing is kinda secondary. the most important thing to learn for drawing people is a construction method. which sounds abstract, but really is just basically the 'scaffolding' inside the person which you use to get the proportions right.
sort of like skeleton, but ball for a head and cylinders for limbs and fingers and so on. because it doesn't matter how good you are at shading or details, it'll look wonky and wrong as long as your construction is not there. every face will look different without construction. it's that thing when you see someone drawing basically amazingly well, but it still somehow looks just awful. that amateurish look. where as when you see a pro even sketching it looks amazingly realistic. it's not about the shading, it's not about the detailing, it's all about the construction underneath forcing the proportions correct like a clockwork.
there's a bunch of construction methods like the Loomis construction which you can google up, but it doesn't really matter which system you use. you can even make up your own after you understand proportions. the important thing is you USE one, every time, consistently. that gives your characters consistent proportions, your perspectives will be better and before all it will be MUCH easier to get the pose right than just eyeballing it. pretty much nobody is good enough to eyeball it, there will be big errors no matter how good you are. like your ear can be an inch off and you don't see it. you just see something is off, but because of various error correction methods our brain does it will hide that error from you.
so you first lightly draw your construction in the pose you want. it doesn't have to be perfect, but the better your constructions get the better your finished characters will also be. when you have your construction, you sketch your character over it. and one of the great things about constructions is you can now adjust your lines based on construction. if the 'head' is too wide, it's much much easier to see the small adjustment from construction line than trying to get it right the first time in the middle of empty white paper. it's almost cheating, it makes drawing so much easier.
if you thing about tracing, anybody can get a pretty good result tracing over an existing image. even if they never held a pen before. similarly it's easier to use the construction as your guide.
is it boring to learn? yeah, kinda. does it take more effort? yeah absolutely. and in the beginning it'll take a lot of time. but as it becomes a second nature to you and you know the proportions by heart, you'll do it in seconds. and the truth is your characters will never look passable before your construction is right. EVERYBODY you see drawing consistent characters, no matter how abstract and stylized, first draws construction. that's why they look so solid, like drawn by a machine.
but construction is also one of those things ALL of us try to get away without doing, and your brain will constantly fight you (because we're all inherently lazy) and make up excuses why you don't need to learn it. but you do. there's just no getting around it. and if you neglect it you'll still be forced to come back later because it's just one of those mandatory foundational skills. especially when drawing people.
but also remember to have fun. don't just grind constructions because you know it's the fastest way to get better. draw those tits and pussies as much as you can, that should be all the motivation you'll need. just draw a construction first for every horny babe taking 8 cocks in 2 holes on a space station and you'll get quickly better. if you don't have fun you'll never do it. make it a point to always have something fun to draw. never draw like apples or bananas unless they're in someone's ass. if that were the way schools taught drawing everybody would be a master.
tldr: draw tits every day, but start with construction lines.
