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Description
Something I made for someone asking about drawing characters consistently. Maybe it'll help someone else.

My original comment:
"Another tip that helped me when I was younger (and occasionally does now) is laying down extra lines on my references, even if those references are just the original character drawing, to communicate proportions. You’ll probably notice the line running down the center of Gin’s face in the first image, which is typically all I need, but it might be useful to someone else to draw him with three lines running down the center of his face to understand where to put his eyes.
This grid-looking Gin can be helpful. The three lines in the middle of his face, fore example, run through both his eyes and his nose. The line extending from his browline runs to the edge of his ear. He has a line immediately over his eyes and one immediately under them. That can help you align some of his features. The paranoid looking Gin was draw freehanded, not traced, and though it’s not perfectly exact, it’s fairly accurate to the original’s proportions.
Something I didn’t illustrate here is how I quickly “measure” different body parts while drawing them. Ever seen a characiture of an artist holding up a paintbrush? That’s a real technique used to see how something in the reference image measures up to something on the page. I typically do this in my head by approximating, like “Hmm, if I say the eyeball is 1, then the ear is 2 eyeballs long” or something similar.
Don’t be embarrassed of using a lot of guidelines if you’re getting into the swing of things. Nobody will need to see your sketch anyway, especially with digital lineart, or you can erase away the mess later if you need to. All that matters is understanding your subject."

EDIT 3/15/2022: helpful??

Description
Something I made for someone asking about drawing characters consistently. Maybe it'll help someone else.

My original comment:
"Another tip that helped me when I was younger (and occasionally does now) is laying down extra lines on my references, even if those references are just the original character drawing, to communicate proportions. You’ll probably notice the line running down the center of Gin’s face in the first image, which is typically all I need, but it might be useful to someone else to draw him with three lines running down the center of his face to understand where to put his eyes.
This grid-looking Gin can be helpful. The three lines in the middle of his face, fore example, run through both his eyes and his nose. The line extending from his browline runs to the edge of his ear. He has a line immediately over his eyes and one immediately under them. That can help you align some of his features. The paranoid looking Gin was draw freehanded, not traced, and though it’s not perfectly exact, it’s fairly accurate to the original’s proportions.
Something I didn’t illustrate here is how I quickly “measure” different body parts while drawing them. Ever seen a characiture of an artist holding up a paintbrush? That’s a real technique used to see how something in the reference image measures up to something on the page. I typically do this in my head by approximating, like “Hmm, if I say the eyeball is 1, then the ear is 2 eyeballs long” or something similar.
Don’t be embarrassed of using a lot of guidelines if you’re getting into the swing of things. Nobody will need to see your sketch anyway, especially with digital lineart, or you can erase away the mess later if you need to. All that matters is understanding your subject."

EDIT 3/15/2022: helpful??