Day 2

I think it would be great for you to use more references. If you are an absolute beginner, you should use all the references you can, and study some anatomy. Remember, that it's not cheating to use reference. Especially when you're just starting out!

So my tip for you: Study anatomy and learn how the body works^^

Keep going, you will improve and you are getting there. I hope you stick to it.

Hey Brianna, congratulations on beginning your journey to becoming an awesome artist! I'm Siv, and I am also just starting out, so please please take all of my advice with a grain of salt.

Doing timed practice poses is a great tool to increase your skillset. However, I would definitely advise that you think a lot more about the geometry involved in the body, instead of just trying to put down an outline. You might also want to consider trying to draw some basic shapes (boxes, cylinders, cones, etc) before you start in on the human body, just to get you thinking in 3d. The skill that drawing poses is going to improve the most is how the different shapes of the body relate to eachother in space, but if you don't have a good foundation of drawing the shapes themselves, it can be difficult to see how those shapes interact. Once you understand how shapes look, (especially cylinders) you can begin thinking about gesture and the form of the body. Try to find the main lines of the body (spine, shoulders, hips, neck, legs, arms, etc). Once you understand where to put those lines, you can begin to build your shapes (mostly distorted cylinders) around them, but that can take a while to get used to. I would go for shorter timed poses (probably around a minute) and focus on getting a sort of stick figure down on the paper. Once you get the hang of that, then you can give yourself a bit more time to add in some contours. I went ahead and numbered your figures, and made a quick commentary on each of them. You can find my numbers here. I have a few comments about each one, so here goes.

1: I like this pose, pretty simple, and it clearly shows all the anatomy. Overall it looks pretty good, but some of your geometry is a bit shaky, for example if you look at the right arm, you'll notice that it would probably extend beyond the right knee if straight, which is anatomically incorrect.

2: Hair is some weird stuff. While it can add a lot to a finished image, it doesn't really have too much useful structure to understand, so if you're studying to improve, I wouldn't worry too much about the hair. Once again the geometry is a little bit strange, the ends of the arms should fall between the hips and the knees. In this case, it looks like they would barely reach to the top of the hips, which may be partially due to the torso being a bit on the long side. When drawing think about your proportions, they are more important than your outline.

3: Learning to think in 3d is super important for an artist, so I would really encourage you to draw things that you can't see, such as the arm that is hidden by the torso. Even though you won't be able to see this arm, it will be good practice for when you begin drawing from imagination. Also your neck is a little long.

4: WHY CROSS OUT??? If you're going to take the time to put pen to paper and draw something, have the self respect and discipline to accept what you've put down, ESPECIALLY if you are unsatisfied with the result. The drawings you are unhappy with are going to be the ones you made the most mistakes on, and thus have the most to learn from. Don't throw all those learning opportunities away by just putting an x through it and saying 'it was just a bad drawing'. Also, the drawing really isn't bad. once again, the neck is abit long, and the legs aren't so well defined, but it honestly looks pretty good.

5: Not bad, torso is a bit on the long side. Once again, focus on geometry before you worry about contours.

Final thoughts: I think it's awsome that you put in the time to work on your art. I think your time might be better spent studying basic shapes for a bit, and then coming back to the body. You might also find this