I have only just discovered this section of the forum. I have been planning on improving my drawing skills for a while, I have problems with shading, lighting proportions and perspective so I would really appreciate some critique and advice as I proceed on this journey.
Edit, as you can see I also have problems with hands and feet 
Welcome to the forum!
I have found this tutorial by Nebezial to be amazingly useful for inspiration and reference. The first page alone has some good tips about how to think about how shading works when working without reference.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=199&t=259286&page=1&pp=15
Hi,
to learn, one needs time and lot’s of effort, so patience and persistance are your biggest friends 
Here’s a really quick guide for the problems you mention in your first post:
[ol]
[li]shading: try the different systems you’ll find explained online (2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11 values), pick one and practice it regularly for a certain amount of time (say 6 weeks when daily practice). Stick to greyscale until you master it.[/li][li]lighting: no light means no shades, so basically I can refer to point 1 above. Color makes it much more complicated so I would advise to focus seeing and depicting form in greyscale first. This doesn’t mean you can’t use color ofcourse, merely suggesting where your focus should be ;)[/li][li]proportion: practice, practice, practice. Get all those proportions in your longterm memory (believe me, it takes years). If you can, go to life drawing sessions.[/li][li]perspective: practice, practice, practice. A good read on this is Loomis’ Successful Drawing, but all his other books (which are available on internet in pdf) are just gems of knowledge that are worth reading over and over again.[/li][/ol]
Just a small post for me to write, but a hell of a lotta work to put in practice. The great thing about it is that it’s all FUN!
One more thing… I’ve no idea how you learn best but from personal experience I learned that some structure allows me to learn faster and forget less of what I learned. I started with perspective (3 months, no shading yet, just lines), then contours, cross-contours, form through light (shading, 9 months or so) and then anatomy (2 years, first the bones and heads and bodyparts, 2nd year full body). All these things are cumulative in this sense that once you learn them, you have to keep practicing them in your future work where your focus lies different… successful drawing is a lifetime mission 
Good luck and most of all HAVE FUN!
Hey man thanks for the advice, really appreciated. I am starting to see that this will take persistence and perseverance but it will be worth it if I can improve. Do you have any links to the pdf books you where talking about?
Laziness is the enemy 
Found them right away (took me 5sec):
http://www.placidchaos.com/AM/index.php/2006/02/21/andrew_loomis
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