All of this is just so foreign to me :ohdear:
Sometimes you just have to run headfirst into things and go from there. I know what it's like wanting to understand what you're doing before you try doing it, but with something like drawing, there won't be any negative consequences to messing up aside from your drawing not looking how you want it to. Remember that a lot of artists started out not understanding a lot of the advice in this thread, but by attempting it, it might just "click" for you instead of having it explained. It's like how some people are more visual learners, some are more hands-on, and so forth. It seems like you have some inhibitions about drawing, and that's okay. I'm the same way, and it makes me afraid to try certain projects I'd love to do just because I'm afraid of messing them up. I'm still working on it, but what really helps is to think "Okay, screw it, I want to do this, I don't care if I don't think I'm ready, I can always try again later if I don't like it."
It helps to look for tutorials and stuff, but you can learn a lot from your mistakes, too. It's why it's a good idea to save some of your older work. I'm a hypocrite in saying that, since a lot of my old stuff has gotten pitched/thrown away, but I do keep a few things for the sake of nostalgia. Improvement might not be very apparent until you have something old to look at. With some of my older things, I can see mistakes I've made in the past, like "Oh, I made the arms too long" or things like that. Sometimes you can do that with a very recent drawing, too. I think a lot of people will finish a piece and feel really happy about having it done. When they look at it 3 days later, they see things they can improve on or what they could fix.
Taking a break from a project can be really helpful, too. When you're stuck drawing something for a long period of time without taking a proper break, you start to see
how you want the drawing to look, but not what it
really looks like. If you take the time to get your mind off of it and go do something else, you can come back to it and look with fresh eyes, and see things you might've messed up, or things you can fix. (It can help to look at things from a distance, too) Breaks can be helpful, but sometimes I get into the habit of working on and off of projects and losing interest, or I end up constantly fixing old portions instead of making any progress.
Oh and the thing about drawing from shadows means you don't rely one outlines to give an object shape, but rather, the colors, values, hightlights, shadows, etc. One of my college teachers always said that she wanted the projects to use "Value as an edge" instead of relying on outlines. If you were drawing something flat-looking or that's not meant to look 3-D it's easy, but when you try to give "body" to a 3-D object, you need to rely on highlighting and shading. I'm sure you've seen people practicing shading by drawing a ball, right? If you look at this
example, you won't see any outline, but you can tell it's a ball, and that it looks relatively realistic. There's nothing wrong with starting the project out with an outline, but you want it to be very light/subtle so once it's done, you can't see it.
It really all depends on style preferences and what you're drawing and whatnot, but it's still good practice to try the activity yourself. There's nothing wrong with outlines (some people love them and use them really effectively) but outlines can potentially ruin good pictures, or make something look a lot less realistic. Practicing different styles and drawing different things can help you get better at drawing things you want to draw in your style. It's the same with practicing different forms of media. Techniques from one medium can be transferred to a different one and produce interesting results. I took Painting 1 last year and while I was working on a project, I was thinking "Hey, maybe I can try something like this in Adobe Photoshop."
