190109

You seem to be focusing on the contours of the figures - that is, the outer lines of the shapes that make up the body. This is very tempting and what most artists are tempted to spend all of their time on, because it feels like that's what will make your work "good."

However, if your goal is to improve at drawing and general anatomy, you need to let go of making "good" finished pieces and put a lot of energy into doing exercises that aid your understanding of what's behind all those contours.

To start with, I don't see very much construction work underneath your drawings, other than the face lines. I would say start with a line that describes the general action of the post, from head to toes if possible. Usually the spine is a big chunk of that line, as a clue. This is what the 30 second poses are for helping you practice, although it should be the starting place for almost all the work you do of any length.

Then, try to put the hips and and ribcage on top of that line. Remember that both of these are 3D structures, so the "shape" that will best represent them in your 2d drawing is going to change depending on the angle you are seeing them from. Your one and two minute poses is where this will usually come in. It's okay to be wrong, just make your best guess. You will learn something either way. One thing I also like to do is to draw a line through the pelvis and the shoulders that show how those structures are tilted compared to the main line of the body.

Try to identify the major body joints and how they are connecting to the hips and ribcage. Also, what parts of the body can you NOT see? WHY can't you see them? Does one arm look particularly "short" because a hand is reaching toward you, for example? You can start to work on these questions in your 5 minute drawings.

One of the goals of under-construction is to make notes about what's going on inside of the body, to inform those contours that show us the outside of the body. This is much harder than drawing the contours, because you can't see it directly. But it will make your contours so much better and eventually enable you to draw from imagination instead of reference with relative accuracy.

It is 100% okay if these pieces don't look like anything, or if that under-construction makes your 10 minute piece look quite messy. You do not need to be making finished drawings to show off of during practice time, you need to be learning new things. :)

If you haven't seen it yet, we have an interactive tutorial about these practice techniques here that might be helpful to you: https://line-of-action.com/learn-to-draw