Am i doing gesture drawing correctly?

hi everyone. ive been doing gesture drawings for a few weeks now, and recently i have been wondering if im going about this the right way. i feel like im focusing too much on just copy the images, rather than relying on my own knowledge of anatomy and form. i start out with an almost skeletal gesture first (which you can see in the images i have sent), until i feel it captures the movement nicely, then i flesh the rest of it out, but it is on this part where i feel like i am using the reference too much.

is it ok for the figure to not look exactly like the reference image? as long as it captures the gesture that should be enough right? Also the skeletal drawings are how i do my 60 second warm up drawings, but i see some other people flesh the body out more even on 30 second ones, am i doing this wrong also? sorry for all the questions. http://is66.deviantart.com/gallery/?catpath=scraps

I don't know if you are doing it "wrong". I am not sure if there even is a wrong way to draw. But I think there are a lot of things you could try to make your drawings more successful visually.

Forget about things like copying and anatomy knowledge if you can. Focus on what exactly is in front of you instead. Doesn't matter if it's a tree or a figure or a truck or whatever it may be. Start with a strong line of action. What may help is working more from the inside of the subject and working out. Right now I am seeing a lot of relying on the outline of the figure in your drawings, especially the 10 minute ones. Flesh out the form, don't outline so much. Right now I see heavy outlines and light shading, making your drawings look clumpy.

Look at basic concepts like form, negative space, foreshortening, etc.. Tackle them one by one if necessary, keep at it and eventually you will not really need to consciously think about them one by one. It will all swirl around in your head while you draw.

Most importantly is keep at it, learn, and have some fun with it.

A teacher in the past also told me i focus too much on the outline and should add more detail, but i thought by adding in shadows to indicate things such as the abdominals and rib cage that i fixed that problem. By the way i think i should have said figure drawing instead of gesture drawing, i confused the two sorry about that, but thanks for the reply =)