Last week I bought a sketchpad and a pack of drawing pencils and erasers, I also started a trial with SAI, and I am uber ambitious to become a competent furry artist. But as of right now I suck, I can't get past the figure sketching phase, still in rough drafts. I am looking for any advice what so ever, how to start a drawing, what programs to use, anything you have.

Protip: Stop Sucking.

In seriousness though, you have to practice, a lot.
Drawing skill is learned, and requires built up muscle memory.
Only way to do it, is practice, over, and over, and over.

I have all summer to practice, I got fuck all to do other than try and draw furry porn.

as a musican I say the key to improvment is to just practice as much as you can in your freetime and you will find yourself getting better :)

Practice, that is the most important thing to do if you want to improve

Well, I found my flaw...

Practice.....

A lot.....

Look at other artist and see what they do that you may or may not do, then use that to "make your own style" don't trace, but you can probably get some help from various parts.
Then complain when someone compares your art to someone else's, like many other artists.
In all seriousness, see what you LIKE about other art, and develop your own style perhaps taking some of those things into account. Don't go straight for what you think others are going to like, develop what you like, then when commissions come around, you can probably start worrying about that.

Start by drawing humans, seriously. Take a figure drawing class if you can, it really helps with anatomy. Even if you end up drawing aliens later down the line, you gotta have a basic mastery over anatomy and posing.

I'll respond later, after work, but there's a good free site that'll dgive you a mock up figure drawing class. Not as good as having an instructor, but better than nothing.

While practicing, which you need to do daily, NEVER give up and say I can't do it. If it looks like crap, don't quit. Finish it and move on to the next. We all start somewhere regardless of what skill we're trying to hone, and everyone has stuff that looks terrible.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

Some say we have a thousand bad drawings to get through before we get to a good one, but you can't get to that first good one unless you stumble through all those bad ones.

Never be ashamed of your bad/older drawings. Yes, you can do better now, but were it not for those bad/older drawings, you'd never have gotten where you are. Instead, see what didn't work for you with each drawing and practice making it work.

If you ever feel discouraged, go take a look at the Moody Ferrets, Rick Griffins, Ursula Vernons, and the like. Take a look at them and remember they were like you once. Yes, even Heather Bruton stank to high heaven in the beginning, yet look where she and all those other artists are today. Where will you be in the future?

Got critics? Listen to the constructive ones and laugh at the rest. After all, if they cared enough about your art to heckle it, you must be doing something right.

Not only should you practice often but also you should practice things you arent good with already. Some people draw and draw all day and dont improve, because they always draw the same or similar scenes.

Dont draw too fast, stay calm and concentrate.

Do something every day, even if you are in a bad mood or if its just a few minutes.

I created a little book with scenes, views and studies that helped me, so i can look up somewhere if i dont know what to do.

One thing that certainly helps is to have some general idea of what direction you want to go in with what you do. Since you have an account here, I can assume you're already somewhat familiar with the oodles and boodles of different ways to drawing furry art out there. There are a number of artists who have made tutorials for their work in the past, and watching streams of artists working on furry artwork can be very beneficial as well. Practice is definitely a huge part of becoming competent, but you also have to aim that practice in some sort of direction--simply repeating the motions won't necessarily produce the results you're looking for.

If you're looking to do more naturalistic-looking furry work, I'd recommend taking a look at VeraMundis and HanMonster. The latter actually has a tumblr as well, if I remember correctly, as well as being very open to answering questions about her work and being a person that streams fairly regularly. Veramundis has...disappeared, so I'm not sure if you can expect an answer if you see fit to ask them questions.

I'm not quite as familiar with cartoony work, but if anything in that vein tickles your fancy, you could take a look at Tom Fischbach, creator of the Twokinds webcomic, Jay Naylor--whose work shows up fairly regularly here, or Wolfy Nail.

Get the Gnomon Workshop videos on human figure drawing.
Link here: http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/product/823/Dynamic-Figure-Drawing%3A-The-Body#.U55ggvldWSo
That shit reinvented me.

(Buy the DVD or somehow acquire them through less honest means.)

Another good resource is this dropbox repository of college level drawing books.
Dropbox: https://www.mediafire.com/?i44dwzkf9j9n8

You don't have to exactly learn everything, just draw and mimic what you see and then apply your knowledge and memory to made up poses. and for the love of bacon, PRACTICE!!!

peace.