some of the things I’ve learned about making art recently:
you should make your art in stages, trying to do all the parts as you go will make it way harder to get a good looking image and tends to make things messy
shaping, make a bunch of ovals or other simple shapes to outline the general shape of what you want to draw
outlining, draw the outline of the main parts of the thing you’re drawing, unless you need to make a really long straight line, avoid using the line tool and mainly use the pencil
coloring, add the base colors of the different parts of your drawing, and stick to some kind of pallette, throwing in a bunch of random colors usually doesn’t look good
detailing, add the smaller parts and details to your drawing
shading, add shadows to the drawing, the lighting should come from off page unless you have a light source in the drawing, light coming down from an angle looks much better than just straight down
using good references can help a ton, as they can help you correct your mistakes, just avoid tracing because then you’re just copying someone else’s art.
this definitely isn’t perfect advice, but I find that these can help a lot and I hope it can help other people who want to improve at art too.