How should I be holding my pencil and how should my arm/hand

There isn't a "right" way to hold a pencil other than what feels most comfortable. When drawing you do however want to use as most of your arm as possible so that your lines are fluid and loose. If you hold the pencil very close to the tip and draw with your fingers or with your wrist you end up with a lot of chicken scratch.

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>>3050518
>How should I be holding my pencil
As long as you're comfortable and don't cause any long lasting damage, you're fine.

Also, just do the trick where you put your finger down and spin the paper(human compass technique), it's more accurate than actually trying to draw the circle.

>>3050518
i think practicing lines is worth it, i did it a lot when i was starting out and i think it helped. though if i were to do it again i would probably copy line drawings rather than just drawing lines.

basically the way to move your arm is that you priorities your shoulder, then your wrist (elbow takes care of itself). the shoulder because it can move on more axes, and it moves more smoothly and over greater distances, but your wrist does fine adjustments, and with certain things just the wrist by itself is useful, one of those things is writing which is why most people will tell someone new to 'draw from their shoulder,' they're not saying you're not allowed to move your wrist or anything like that, just that drawing isn't primarily a wrist thing like writing.

hold your pencil however you like, but again remember you're not writing so you don't want to only use the tip, you want to be able to make all sorts of marks.

another good tip is to draw on a slanted surface, it's much more comfortable, doesn't need to be much, even 30 degrees is better than 0.

>>3050550
prioritize*