Am I getting the principles, now?

I feel like I'm getting a better understanding, but you tell me.

https://imgur.com/a/gesture-18-8-N7OXfJo

You are clearly getting a lot of principles. You use clean lines and big shapes, you are focusing on observing the main masses and the limbs.

You should probably continue doing it until you feel more comfortable, but when you feel ready to go on, here is o n e suggestion where you could go next, manniquinization. Here is a very, very short clip that introduces the idea and provides a set of simple 3-D forms that work well as shortcuts for the human figure. (note, i put the blank spaces into the o n e to make clear, that there are other possible ways forward.)

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A bit of a worry: You are using a rather soft graphite, which isn't bad, but, the way your lines are spread out indicates that you scan or zoom in your sketches in very high dpi or resolution. Which still isn't bad, it just makes it very likely, that your original sketches are just very small, and you are likely only using your fingertips and at most your wrist to direct the pencil. This is rather typical for someone starting with drawing, but it will become a problem if you want to develop further, because you simply will not have practiced how to use your elbow and even shoulder to produce bigger lines.

I would suggest putting in a bit of practice into that. Just use a big paper, put two points really far apart, and try to connect them with one clean straight line. Make sure neither your wrist nor your elbow rest on something (otherwise it just won't work anyways), and pay a bit attention on how much your elbow and even shoulder have to add to the control if you want long lines. These are just muscles and motor skills that will never build up if you don't specifically train them. Being able to draw actually big stuff cleanly will provide you far more leeway to add details when you feel like you want and need them.

Thank you very much, this is extremely helpful.

Yes, it's true, most of these take up no more than a quarter of a sheet of A4 (making them effectively A6, haha). I shall work on utilizing more of the space.

Your drawing are good but you can practice more to release the stiffness relax your arm and use the whole arm for quick energetic lines

something really important, if you start with a 3d mannequin you'll end up only hating yourself. It's too early to learn any of that. think about 2D first and just use curves that compensate multiple body parts sorta like this. And second personal suggestion: do not follow proko, they have the tendency to jump the important steps and so when you have genuine questions to ask you get nothing.