Art Styles for Beginners: Where to Actually Start Without Getting Overwhelmed

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Starting art as an adult is intimidating in ways it wasn't as a child. Children draw without caring about quality. Adults see the gap between what they can produce and what they want to produce and sometimes give up before they've given themselves time to learn. The question of where to start matters. Some starting points are genuinely better than others for building foundational skills that transfer across different styles and mediums.

Fundamentals that transfer everywhere: understanding light and shadow, basic perspective, proportion, negative space. These apply whether you're drawing portraits, landscapes, or abstract work. The medium you start in matters less than whether you're practising fundamental observation. What did you start with and what would you recommend someone beginning completely from scratch?