Day 3, More frustrations, looking at comments for guidance and encouragement.

So, I do have a piece of guidance I hope you may find useful. It might sound tedious but I was in your shoes once. You need to hit the books. You need to pick up textbooks and research the fundamentals of human anatomy as you practice your figure drawing. I am not saying you need to learn to draw them right away, but you should at least inform youself what muscles and bone points are where so you are aware of them. Then when you are comfortable, try sketching them now and again individually.

I can see that you are attempting to do 5 to 10 minute poses. In those poses, I can see the beginnings of understanding the bodies contours. The fundamental skills to draw people ARE there. But for now, you would do better to practice drawing more poses within the 30 second range, or up to 60 seconds. This will allow you to focus less on drawing the details and getting the basic shapes and lines right. It all begins there. You will find that the more you draw out those quick line sketches the less you think about them as you draw them out.

And these 30 second poses don't need to be stick figures. Free your hand and be messy with it. Experiment and let your hand, not your brain, do the work.

These two things will get you in the direction you are trying to go. These and repetition. It is a long road ahead, and one that I travelled. You will continue to produce pieces you aren't satisfied with but don't get discouraged! You need to make these to get better.

Hello again! Despite what you've said about feeling like you're stuck, I honestly am already seeing improvement on your technique and, either way, the fact that you're choosing to stick it out in spite of your difficulties is awesome. Learning the basics of anything, especially realism and figure drawing, usually has a really steep learning curve, so at the beginning it'll always feel impossible to get to the point you really aspire to be at. Trust me, you're not alone!

One thing I would suggest is focusing less on measuring out your proportions and instead just drawing what you see. It's a little bit counter-intuitive, but letting yourself just feel out the model will save you a lot of frustration and time, and allow you to spend more time studying the actual human body. I also highly suggest looking into some basic human anatomy- nothing crazy, but a bit of time spent on understanding the foundation of the subject you're trying to draw goes a long way.

It could also be worth your time to do more 30- to 60- second poses, so that you can get a more comfortable with the basic idea of what you're trying to do. Doing the longer studies is great, but that might be leading you to feel like you have to do more and overthink and second-guess your work. (I could be wrong, of course, but I know that I sometimes feel that way with the longer studies.) I'll link a few resources down below, hopefully you find some of them useful! Great job on your work so far, and I hope that you continue to go at it!

https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-techniques/beginner-artist/drawing-anatomy-for-beginners/

Way to go on your earliest attempts, Starcursedmass, on all of your rougher poses and pose gestures. Nice work on your great and loose line quality and consistency. Great job on all others, too!

My suggestion is that though your forces are totally and completely getting there, but them, along with your forms are not there and not organic enough yet, in terms of drawing appeal. Would you please like to loosen up your forms, forces and construcitons of the figures with a 5 minute and 2 minute poses?

The reason why you could use those time limits is because, your understanding of the basics will be the least stiffest, and the most fluidest and liveliest over time. For the most information, make sure you look into the upcoming new Posemaniacs website, and the now current Proko videos.

Good luck and happy sketching and happy drawing.

Great practice!

In my opinion you should give yourself less time, maybe 5 or even 3 minutes to do a study. In this way your studies will be looser and more lively. I understand getting caught up in details, but studies are best to be loose. And try to pay more attention to the arms. Their flow and how they connect. Try not to make them too bulky and way smaller where the elbows are. Overall great work and an amazing start.

Good luck in your art journey!