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1. Drill yourself on hiragana and katakana. These are the phonetic building blocks of Japanese, think of them as equivalent to english letters. This site is a good resource in general. Once you have a solid grasp on this, DO NOT LINGER HERE; move to step 2. You will master kana later.

2. Download Anki. This is a flashcard service. They have a paid app if you’re willing to invest for it, but if not, they have a mobile website (create an account and sync it with your computer).

This is the deck you’re going to download. Import it to Anki and do this every day. I have learned the hard way (twice) that skipping this is bad. If you become overwhelmed, you can change the number of new cards and reviews by clicking the cog next to the name of the deck!

3. Cure Dolly (Youtube, grammar) + transcript. She has kind of a posh accent, you might want to turn subtitles on. Watch a few videos when you feel like it but most importantly set up 4 and 5 as soon as possible

4. Yomitan (must have) is a browser extension that functions as a pop-up dictionary. you need to install dictionaries for it to work. here are some dictionaries you can use with yomitan and explanations of what they do

5. READ. DO NOT LET YOURSELF GET STUCK BEFORE THIS STEP. JUST READ!!!! Most people who fail to learn Japanese do so because they are afraid of not being ready to move on, which is counterproductive. Just read. When you were a child did you spend years on vocab and grammar before reading? No I bet you did not. Pick something to read and learn what you don’t already know by reading in Japanese.

Jiten.moe has a list of novels and visual novels that you can read on your computer sorted by difficulty. So does jpdb. There’s also this document. There’s also this document. Hey look this website is cool too

For visual novels: download LunaHook. It “hooks” to your VN and allows you to use Yomitan on words you don’t know. Turn off the translation feature, it does nothing to help you learn

For literary texts: ttsu e-reader supports epub and htmlz files.

You can also learn Japanese by watching anime, but it’s a little more convoluted and requires a lot more patience.

For manga, utilize Mangatan, but I don’t recommend this right out the gate because when you’re first learning sentence structure you’ll want something with complete sentences.

Set your computer up for mining vocab before you start reading. Once you finish your kaishi deck, you can drill your mining cards (I didn’t do mine until after finishing kaishi because it was too much).

Most importantly: reading is going to be hard at first. It is going to piss you off. You need to muscle through with this because this is where the bulk of your learning will happen. After a while you will just feel like reading because you love reading! Try not to pick something too hard for your first read, but if you’re interested in the story you might be able to muscle through something a little tougher.

After seeing post like this 👇

And this gem 👇

As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.

Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.

📺Here is my list:

Proko (Free, mostly teaches anatomy and how to draw people. But does have art talks and teaches the basics.)

Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard and teaches you everything)

Aaron Rutten (free, tips about art, talks about art programs and the best products for digital art)

BoroCG (free, teaches a verity of art mediums from 3D modeling to digital painting. As well as some tips that can be used across styles)

Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)

Jesus Conde (free, teaches digital painting and has classes in Spanish)

Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)

Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price. Mostly teaching character designs and simple backgrounds.)

SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)

Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)

The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney. Mostly nature art)

Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)

Sinix Design (has some tips on drawing people)

Winged canvas (art school for free on a verity of mediums)

Bob Ross (just a good time, learn how to paint, as well as how too relax when doing art. "there are no mistakes only happy accidents", this channel also provides tips from another artist)

Scott Christian Sava (Inspiration and provides tips and advice)

Pikat (art advice and critiques)

Drawbox (a suggested cheap online art school, made of a community of artist)

Skillshare (A cheap learning site that has art classes ranging from traditional to digital. As well as Animation and tutorials on art programs. All under one price, in the USA it's around $34 a month)

Human anatomy for artist (not a video or teacher but the site is full of awesome refs to practice and get better at anatomy)

Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.

📚Here is my list:

The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.

"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.

"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.

"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.

"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.

"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.

"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.

"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.

"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.

Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.

📝As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. If you want to go fancy Michaels is always a good place for traditional supplies. They also get in some good sales and discounts. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are usually more expensive.

For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.

💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.

Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates. Galaxy, Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android, or Chromebook device. )

Procreate ( pay once for $9.99 usd, IPAD & IPHONE ONLY)

Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, animation and more. Free)

PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)

Krita (Free)

mypaint (free)

FireAlpaca (free)

Aseprite ($19.99 usd but has a free trail, for pixel art Windows & macOS)

Drawpile (free and for if you want to draw with others)

IbisPaint (free, phone app ONLY)

Medibang (free, IPAD, Android and PC)

NOTE: Some of these can work on almost any computer like Clip and Sai but others will require a bit stronger computer like Blender. Please check their sites for if your computer is compatible.

So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.

I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.

Hope this was helpful and have a great day.

All the photos on this tumblr ad the animal photo reference site I run is another resource available for artists to use!