Firstly, you need some paper. If you don’t have any paper, go steal some. Your household printer usually has a steady supply. Get maybe 5 or 6 sheets, to allow for mishaps.  If you absolutely cannot find any clean paper anywhere, the back of something always works.

Then get yourself a mechanical pencil. Preferably one with an eraser. If it doesn’t have an eraser, get another pencil as a backup. Also, it’s nice to have one of those large white erasers, but not really necessary.

Once you have your drawing supplies, you need something to draw. Original art and the like are for wusses. Instead, close your eyes, and pick a random fandom. If you really don’t like the one you picked, grab a friend of yours, and bother him or her or otherwise for ideas. Usually said friend will come up with an OC or fandom.  Demand references. If you get picture refs, demand written ones as well, and vice versa. Then, be really anal and ask about every single detail left out, especially ones you don’t need to know. Ask detailed questions regarding the character’s genitalia, implying that you’re drawing the character naked.  If it’s a couple, ask about poses. If it’s one person, ask about poses. If it’s an inanimate object, ask about poses. Then tell the friend that your drawing boner died, so it will be a surprise when you actually present him or her or whatever with art.

Wait six to eight days.  You can spend the time eating, sleeping, watching television, surfing the interwebs, drawing other things that you’ve suddenly remembered you were obligated to draw, and otherwise procrastinating.  By this time, you will have forgotten what you were supposed to be drawing. In fact, you probably will have forgotten you were supposed to draw anything at all. When you finally remember, consult the copious notes that you hopefully took while gathering references, and get a general idea of what the character looks like.

Now you can start drawing. Draw a rough sketch. Erase it. Draw a tiny little detail such as an eye. Erase it. Get distracted and stare at something in the room for a couple of minutes. Finally, draw one of those annoying mannequins you saw in a drawing book once.

Now that you’ve finally accomplished something, you can relax for a bit. Turn on some music. Get something to eat. Find a better pencil. Tell your annoying parents to shut the hell up for God’s sake; you’re trying to concentrate here. Except not in those words.

Get back to your drawing already, you’ve wasted enough time. Erase your mannequin, and draw a more complicated pose. Since you’ve probably drawn it wrong, search the internet for a decent reference. When you can’t find stock of the pose you need, give up and draw it anyway. Who cares if it’s anatomically incorrect?

Ooh look, a butterfly. I think it wants to be friends. Oops, no, it flew away. Get back to your art.  

So you’ve got a mannequin. Yey. Get it over with already and draw the rest of the goddamn picture. Obsess over details. Erase too many times so there’re eraser marks all over the place, especially on the face. It now looks like your drawing has a 5 o’clock shadow. Oh well, you can get rid of that on the computer. Make all of your lines darker, erase the extra ones, and voila, you’re done.

Scanning time! If you don’t have a scanner, why did you bother to make traditional art in the first place? Use a friend’s. Anyways, scan the thing. Hopefully you have decent scanning software, and a decent scanner, so your drawing doesn’t come out with a bleeding faded line in it. Give it a once-over, and realize you missed an important line. Draw it in. Rescan. Show it to your friend. He/she/ey has a problem with it, so fix it and rescan again. Rinse and repeat several times until you have a perfect scan.

Export your scan, and open it up in Preview. If you don’t have a Mac, you’re a loser, go get one.  In the meantime, open it in whatever Windows has instead of Preview. Use the adjust color option, and play with the settings until it looks pretty. This step is especially important if you have crappy scan software/a crappy scanner.  

Next, open it up in GIMP. If you have Photoshop instead, suck it up and get GIMP. It’s free. Spend a while messing with GIMP’s settings, because you haven’t figured out how to save them yet.  Then take out your handy dandy path tool, aka the pen tool if you’re still using Photoshop for some reason. Spend about an hour making your lineart. Alternatively, skip this step and just use the pencil art, which is why you bothered to pretty it up in the first place.

If you’re a really lazy person, you can lock the transparency and tint or gradient, and be done with it. But coloring is fun! Using the selection tool, outline some part of the picture, and then fill it in.

Now you can spend a couple of hours looking for tutorials. These are pretty much useless, since most of them are badly explained, but you might get lucky and find a good one for GIMP.  Then get distracted by something on the internets, spend several more hours with that.  Finally, remember that you’re still working on art. Whoops.

Use whatever coloring method you like/found a good tutorial for. This is the fun part, so totally get caught up in it, and do it straight through to the finish. Forget about those msn conversations you’re currently having, and those dAmn chatrooms you’re in.

You’re done! Oh my god it looks hideous. Avert your eyes while submitting it to DeviantArt. Put a ‘-‘ where the keywords are, you’re too tired to think of any. Type a really short artist’s comment about how bored you were when you made this, and it was requested by so-and-so.

Tadaa! Now sit there for 4 minutes hoping 200 people will suddenly fave it. When they don’t, go to bed.