I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting.

I don't have a higher degree because I

got sick of going to school. I didn't want to play the gallery game, either. But I
think I am an adequate draftsman. My Drawing I professor Lou Kohl-Morgan was
excellent. I also studied with John Laurent, Sigmund Abeles, Bill Scarlatto, and
John Hatch.

Materials
Here is another answer I wrote about what to buy when you're starting out:
What do I need to buy if I want to start learning how to draw?

Exercises and Study Plan

When I was studying art in college, we had 9 hours of class time each week and were
expected to put in at least 18 hours a week of work outside the classroom on our
assignments. Lou had us draw something really simple to see where each of us was at
before we started. She had us do it on a piece of bond paper -- in addition to the
large pad of newsprint she had us get a pad of bond paper to do more detailed work
but nothing fussy. Later on in the semester we bought special paper to do more
studied drawings. But in the beginning, you have to get physically coordinated, so
cheap paper and lots of it is what you need. The simple drawing is a baseline to
give you a sense of accomplishment later when you look back on it.

Next, you can get a collection of boxes and set them up with a timer and make
yourself do 15 minutes worth of 3-minute sketches. Place yourself in different
positions relative to the group of boxes -- looking down on them, looking up,
looking at eye level -- to get a workout with perspective. This is all warm-up.
Making art is physical and you need to stretch first.

During the exercises you are aiming to improve the connections between your
perception and how your hand conveys what you see. Speed is the essence because it
bypasses the brain's tendency to over analyze and it is the way you can draw a
scene that changes rapidly. So when you are drawing, draw like your house is on
fire.

Lou had a dress form that she brought to class for us to get used to the idea of
the human body existing in planes. Later she brought in nude models. The students
in the class were more nervous about the nudity than the model was. Nobody drew the
naughty bits in Drawing I. Not even I.

At the end of this answer is a list of books that have excellent drawing exercises.

Methods
The course would introduce several ways to tackle a drawing but you have to get
familiar with the tools first. For beginners who tend to work too tightly I
recommend working with softer pencils in the B range and charcoal. Charcoal is so
fugitive you can wipe it away rather than use an eraser. It is great for doing
gesture studies, or quick sketches of the human form in motion. There are excellent
white chalks that you can use on black paper for dramatic scenes, and sepia and
terra cotta Conte crayons you can use on buff-colored charcoal paper to begin
approaching the use of color in your work.

Hard pencils of the H classification lend a more silvery look. If you play with
paper and graphite you'll discover you can only get so black with any given pencil
and then the paper gets overloaded. You want to avoid this by choosing the right
blackest black to work with.

History
Stories about artists that the teacher conveys while the student is working are
important fuel for the new artist. Looking at art that demonstrates achievement in
an area in which you need improvement is very important in avoiding reinventing the
wheel. On the other hand, it is often very instructive to actually copy a master
drawing. At the end of Drawing I I copied a Da Vinci. While looking for the image I
copied, I found this fantastic site: Technical Art History

Composition
Here the student would learn about creating a tool to envision a composition from a
realistic scene. It is a simple window cut into a sheet of paper, held at arm's
length so you can see the scene in front of you as an image in a blank space.

I didn't study any particular theory of composition but let nature teach me and
probably picked up some theory from books I read several decades ago. If you make
the eye go to the upper right corner, it gives your picture "speed" because the
natural inclination for the symbol-trained eye is to go to the right. It has to do
with handedness, I believe, as well. If the composition is oriented to the left, it
tends to have more tension.

Composition goes beyond arranging items in a scene on the picture plane. It

involves how the artist uses tone, line, and mark making to move the viewer's eye
around the image. Color is also a composition element but when you're beginning to
draw it is best to limit yourself to the few colors I mentioned here to avoid
getting overwhelmed.

Perspective
When doing representational art, perspective is key in creating a believable
atmosphere in your work. The course would explain how parallel lines converge at a
vanishing point, conveying distance and the viewer's position in relation to the
picture plane.

There is also atmospheric perspective which is easiest to observe at the beach or

on the ocean. Everything closest to you is vivid while everything in the distance
is pale by comparison.

Contour Drawing
I'd probably start a student with contour drawing. Line is so important in
composition and perspective. A classic challenge to take on is a contour drawing of
a chair. Focus on the negative space -- the "not chair" -- while drawing (contour
drawing lesson - Google Search).

Mark Making
After you've got a few contour drawings under your belt, explore mark making (mark
making - Google Search). Build a landscape with a variety of different types of
marks to practice.

Line Art
Here is a great page about drawing images using just line: Line Drawing: A Guide
for Art Students

Rendering Tone
Learn how to build tone with either soft, smooth shading technique and the right
materials, or mark making. Blending techniques.

Paper and Other Drawing Surfaces

Your choice of paper makes all the difference when creating a fine art piece. Learn
about the different materials used in paper making and how they affect the look of
a work.

Scaling Drawings
Although you can now take pictures with your phone of subjects that may interest
you as a way of taking notes for your work, you can also sketch out an idea and
decide you want to make it larger (or smaller). If you don't have a scanner and
your printer output is smaller than your final size, you need to learn how to scale
your drawing and project it onto the larger surface.

Introduction to Figure Drawing

At the end of the course we got into doing gesture drawings of the nude figure but
didn't focus so much on the nude until the next semester. It is necessary to learn
some anatomy to understand how the human body is put together. I used to have a
Gray's Anatomy but you really learn best from observing the body in action.