I peeked at your page following your faving "Mountain Bike Mud Bogging" and saw this journal. (I always look at the userpages of unfamiliar names appearing in my Inbox.)

Artwork: Try this series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/lovelifedrawing

Pay attention to the intro video on the channel, then watch the series that follows it. Why this particular series? You'll see the answer right around 1:10 in.

This'll give you the basics (you can also look at the other videos there as his entire channel is devoted to learning this stuff) -- but remember what he says about the amount of time needed to learn a technique vs the time needed to master it. It's not necessary to go all the way to full-blown superhero-comics-grade human drawing, you just need enough to get bodies looking reasonably okay (which will still take lots of practice time like the videos point out), then start adding the furry stuff.

Digital drawing applications (free): I often use Krita (https://www.krita.org). If that one looks overwhelming, there's MyPaint (http://mypaint.org/about/). When you feel ready for more power, MyPaint's default file format, Open Raster (.ORA) can be opened in Krita. Both of these applications have extensive tutorial videos on YouTube...moreso with the better-known Krita. (many people also recommend GIMP, but I don't have experience with it--it's more for photo editing than straight-up drawing). Also remember that most artists don't actually use most of what any of these programs are capable of.

Tablets: Look at low-end Wacoms. It's not necessary to get a screen-tablet right off the bat, especially since they're expensive if Wacom, and prone to misbehaving when they're Wacom's competition. You can often find secondhand ones on Ebay, as a lot of people upgrade to bigger/more sophisticated tablets, and selling off their old ones.

This artist made a video that has useful advice for beginner digital artists. Don't forget that you can take an intermediate step of simply scanning drawings on paper, then inking and coloring them digitally (that's what I did for years before doing full-digital art, and I still draw a lot of stuff on paper)

A lot of people have trouble managing the disconnect between where you're drawing and what you're looking at, so remember two things:
1: Notice that you don't have to look at your mouse when using it for normal computer stuff.
2: You can use the tablet like a mouse when outside of a drawing application. You can try using it as a regular pointing device in order to get used to using it without looking at it (you might even start to prefer it since you can reach all parts of the monitor without running out of room to move the stylus the way you sometimes have to do with a regular mouse.

Hope this helps.

I wanna suggest https://www.youtube.com/user/sycra
They've got a ton of videos geared towards all kinds of skill levels.