I'm jealous ;n; An intuos is really expensive! And I've always wanted to use photoshop it's very professional. I don't think tools matter THAT much though. It depends..

Oh, it's literally drawing from life (or photographs), observing and practising - honing your skills based on the observation of real objects. This includes people and everything else in the world. The more you absorb and draw, the better you'll be Drawing is really learning how to 'see'. How to deconstruct and reconstruct things, learning to understand them, so you can correctly draw them. If you set simple goals, like drawing 1000 figures, from life or photographs, in pencil on some printer paper, you will see so many leaps and bounds in your skills - don't just do this with figures either, do it with -everything- you wish to understand - realise too, that '1000 drawings' is not a magic number of studies you need to do of everything to be 'good', you will need to continue learning pretty much forever XD I know I do! It's not just 'copying', either, it's really learning to understand the structure and workings of what you're drawing. It all sounds very lofty and daunting, but you will get there in time, believe me.