Use one large bowl for the rice and another large bowl for the pigeon peas, chickpeas, and lentils, which may be soaked together. Let all ingredients soak for at least 3 hours. It is especially important to soak the lentils, pigeon peas, and chickpeas until they are soft. You may need to soak them for as long as 4-5 hours. Parboiled rice is rice that has been partially boiled in the husk, then left to cool. You can buy it in most grocery stores that stock Indian ingredients. Once both ingredients are finished soaking, drain the water and combine the rice with the lentils. You can use a food processor or blender, or even a mortar and pestle if you have them. Do not grind these ingredients too finely. A coarse paste is appropriate. You may add water if necessary to make sure that the paste will not be too thick and that you will be able to spread it into a pancake. If you want your adai to have a sour flavor, cover the batter with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for three or four hours. This will allow the batter to ferment. Use a large mixing bowl and mix well. You can use your hands or a large spoon. The adai batter is now ready.
++++++++++
One-sentence summary -- Soak the rice, pigeon peas, chickpeas and lentils separately in water. Grind the soaked ingredients together with the asafoetida and chilis. Mix in the onions, grated coconut, curry leaves and salt.

Practice, practice, practice. That's the mantra of famous artists across the world, and practice is the sure-fire way to improve your drawings. Even spending a few minutes a day on sketch engages your brain with your art and helps you learn new techniques. If you always have a small notebook with you, then you open up the possibility to draw anything from people on the bus the nature scenes to awe-inspiring city skylines. You need to practice to be a better drawer, so set yourself up to practice anytime. Pencils come in a variety of ratings that tell you how hard they are and the thickness of the mark. Pencils labeled "H" get progressively harder, and leave fine, faint lines, while those labeled "B" are good for thick, darker lines. A decent set of starter pencils, available at any art store, might include a 4H, 3H, 2H, H, HB , B, 2B 3B and 4B. Play around with your new pencils to test how each one feels. Note the differences in the lines and try to incorporate different pencils into different drawings. Use a couple of pages in your sketchbook to experiment with the way your pencils lay down color, how your fingers or tissues blend colors together and how to shade simple spheres. You need to understand how your materials work to improve your drawings and use the right pencil for the right lines. Make 3-4 timelines and practice transitions. How can you use each pen to shade the line from completely black to completely white? While many young artists feel like they can teach themselves how to draw, there are a variety of techniques that can only be passed on by an experienced teacher. Spend time practicing perspective, proportions, and drawing from live models. The time spent in an art studio with an art teacher can help you find mistakes and fix them far faster than you could on your own. However, you do not need to go to classes, you can find many different classes online. So if you like to draw in the comfort of your own home, online can be cheap, expensive, or even free. Check your local art store, parks department, or community college for local drawing classes. While you should never trace another artist's work and claim it as your own, you can learn valuable techniques by copying photos or drawings you admire by hand. Since a picture is already 2-dimensional, you take away the stress of learning perspective and focus solely on the lines and angles. Practice recreating classic drawings to learn from the masters da Vinci was the king of human anatomy, and his drawings have a lot to teach you. Never trace you don't actually practice drawing, just making lines. Drawing upside down forces you to forget about trying to make the drawing look right and instead drawing what you actually see. You can get similar results by drawing through a mirror, or practicing with distorted or Photoshopped images. Drawing accurate contours requires more than simply looking up an image online. The best artists and art teachers pour over books, real-life examples, and studies to understand the lines they are making. While this depends on the type of drawing you are working on. All artists can benefit from time away from the sketchbook every now and then. If you are drawing people, invest in an illustrated book of human anatomy, or sign-up for drawing classes with a live model. If you are drawing animals, spend a day with your sketchbook at the zoo or purchase an illustrated textbook on animal anatomy. If you are drawing landscapes or city scenes, you should invest in a book about perspective to help you accurately create depth in your drawings. These small, standing puppets have a variety of joints that you can move into place and perfect human proportions. As such, they can be useful when trying to draw complex poses. Simply put the doll into the right position and use it to sketch out your drawing, adding the details of your character later. If you cannot get a model, use a skeleton from your school's biology department to learn proportions. They also make anatomically correct models of hands, heads, and the skeletal system as well, though they are often more expensive. Wooden dolls are a very useful tool for drawing, they are a great and cheap way of learning how to draw the body.
++++++++++
One-sentence summary --
Draw daily. Bring a sketchbook with you everywhere. Purchase a variety of pencils. Experiment with texture, color, and blending. Take a local art class or study art theory. Draw from pictures or other drawings. Draw upside down. Study your source material. Buy a wooden art doll.