First Practice - where to go from here?

This is my first practice after not creating any art for about 5 years, and being totally new to digital art (formerly worked only in pencil; now working off of a wacom pro tablet). I could really feel the gestures starting to come back to me after a few poses, but there were times where I got so frustrated I could have screamed, haha. Something I'd really like to work on is proportions; it doesn't come naturally to me. Anything with foreshortening/strange camera angles is also a big challenge for me to represent on paper. Poses in which the subject is crouched, folded over, etc take a lot of brainpower for me to translate. Any suggestions on technique or observations about what I'm not quite getting here are most appreciated.

Also, yes, there are a few times the drawing went off the edge of the page; oops! I'll try to box in the area I'm going to draw in the future.

Hi Holytokes!

There were some strange formatting issues going on with your post, so I fixed it up for you. :)

This is a great start for your first gestures! You're doing a good job trying to find the action line and it shows. Maybe your next step can be to reduce the number of brush strokes for each gesture? I'm working on this too, the more you capture with less, the better you train your brain to see the shapes and motion and translate it into a drawing. You can get more scritchy with in-depth studies or gestures that take longer to complete, but for short timed gestures, less is more!

Hey Holytokes! For just starting out again 5 years later with DIGITAL *uff* (a personal foe of mine) I have to say bravo! I laughed when I saw your frustration at that one sitting pose - I used to do this all the time or writing "Poop" next to them just to emphasize I thought it was poop to the universe ^^. But I later realized it's when we look at our bad drawings and recognize what is wrong we understand where we are weak, so when you do a shitty pose - save it! :-) Other than that I think Sanne already mentioned to use fewer strokes, oh and check out opposing curves - there might be some video on youtube on it (who am I kidding there is ALWAYS things about things on youtube!) Hope I helped!

looks great! your poses are really fluid and energetic, which is awesome!

I would try to do longer studies, do the quick lines to make sure you know where you're going, then render render render till your arm falls off! the 30 min class type can help ease you into the longer ones. I know it's difficult, and really frustrating but the more you push through that frustration the better your art will be! Try not to skip photos you don't want to draw, and tell yourself to just get it down, doesn't matter if it's good or bad.

for perspective and crouched poses, it helps me to think that there's no "simple" or "complex" poses, just angles and shapes to copy. Everything you need is right there in the photo. Try not to "build" things in your head, just copy lines and try not to think about anything but making sure they intersect at the right angle.

sorry if that got too wordy! i hope some of it helped!