A study sheet from a few years ago. I wish I had done this more in my youth.
I have come to believe that if one were to copy twenty comics pages, pencils and inks, the actual size original art is customarily drawn, one would be good enough to be hired.
Somebody with no talent would never make it to twenty. All the observation you'd be forced to do, the uncomfortable things you'd be forced to draw, would instruct you as well as years of art school would.
This reminds me of a Dave Gibbons story. He told it at the panel promoting his graphic novel The Originals in San Diego.
When he was nineteen, never having drawn comics, Gibbons saw nineteen-year-old Barry Smith's work at Marvel -- I believe a S.H.I.E.L.D. issue.
Well, Jesus, what one man can do another can do! And he redrew the story, every page, but (to his mind at least) better, dammit! So now he had skills and samples.
We owe Dave Gibbons' career, Watchmen, all of it, to testosterone.