I'm a beginner in figure drawing, any advice on how i should approach it?

Hello Hello! I recently joined this site today in hopes of improving my anatomy, i've been drawing for around 7-8 years but all this time i never really practicied from IRL photos so making any flowy/dynamic pose is a bit of a struggle tbh. I want to improve my figures but so far, figure drawing has been a bit difficult. i have problems with getting the proportions right sometimes, i either end up making something way too big or way too small unintentionally- a friend suggested i use the box method to help me with the proportions but with the short time i have on my hands regarding drawing figures in general it's not enough to use that method, should i just keep practicing and see where i end up or should i pause on each drawing to help study it further? Any help is appreciated ^^;

(I also drew my proper figures from the first class tutorial i got and the line of action tutorial, i do have a struggle with the line of action as well honestly so any critiques or help is greatly appreciated)
(here's the drawings in question.)

https://sta.sh/2198uwjwbs8i?edit=1

Hello there, Blue Dovey, and welcome aboard, I'm Polyvios. How are you doing this afternoon? I just wanna say, great job on your gesture drawings and line qualities. And even so, your silhouettes of the poses and relationships of the shapes and forms.

Yet still, I'm not getting enough of the looser and zaniest energy of the lines and poses and acting of the poses and designs. Would you care to loosen up your shoulders with 5 minutes of 30 second drawings in each shoulder? As a result, your brains, eyes and shoulders will become the least stiffest and the most spontaneous and liveliest, like the sadly no longer with us Paul Coker Jr. Sorry if I said that, but I just wanted to plug in a memorial to one of the key contributing artists and cartoonists to Mad Magazine. If you don't know enough about Paul Coker, but you really should, because he's world-famous for Mad's Horrifying Cliches and Rankin-Bass's Holiday Specials of the late 1960's-1970's. For more info, please and kindly check out these tabs here. They can provide you with more inspiration about this greater cartoonist/artist. However, if you knock back his inking style, you can really see and feel his gesture drawings.

Cheers, and have a great evening.

Hey! First off, welcome to figure drawing, I hope you enjoy it! Here are two tips that could possibly help?

- quantity > quality, don't linger on making each individual drawing look nice. Especially with faster figure drawings, just focus on getting the figure on the page even if it doesn't look great. The more practice you put in, the better you become. I struggle with perfectionism so one thing that helped was drawing on cheap newsprint with some sort of vine charcoal, or drawing on a whiteboard. If the drawing doesn't look good, it's super easy to just wipe away and start again!

- contour drawings/ silhouettes practices. Focusing on the form of the figure might help it seem more flowy and dynamic. These are fun to do with quick 10 s / 30 s poses, and just help loosen up. The box method would be great on longer poses so you can really study the proportions.

Hope this helps :)

Hi hi!! tysm for the tips!! I struggle a lot with perfectionism as well but i do have more control with a tablet instead of paper ^^; i'll still try to follow your advice regardless and try to finish the poses as fast as i can!
One thing i question tho- is it ok if they end up looking like those stick figures that i practiced with the line of action tutorial ? i still cant completely grasp if i should try to doodle the full pose correctly or just stick to that line of action method and just draw a rough idea of their pose (This is in regards to those 30 secs poses that i've been practicing).

And another question- while the box method is a good idea of course, i still struggle with getting it right unless i download said picture and draw on top of it to get a rough idea of how big/small the boxes should be. What do i do in this case?

Hi hi! tysm for your advice as well and the compliments too ^^;

You're right- my poses have been really stiff since im mostly used to drawing really simple/static poses. Like someone standing while looking to the side or a simple sitting pose. I've noticed this a lot but never really figured out how to loosen it up. I'll follow your advice and try to make my drawings loosen up as much as i can during practice! Tysm for your help again! It really means a lot

If you need to learn basics I recemend “draw a box.com” it’s completely free. The only draw back to it is that it can lead to Immediate burn out but with the amount of time you have been drawing it can only help. It’s the equivalent to lifting weight for a sport.

As far as addressing proportions, I like to do drills that will directly isolate that single skill. There is a page in Roberto osti book “ basic human anatomy” that shows how to draw box’s based on the length of the head. I recemend doing that process but in reverse for the sake of developing that one skill. So draw the figure attempting to hit the measurements and then check to see how close you can get. I will see if I can post some of my old practice pages to my sketchbook but I might have run out of space this month.