No such thing as horrible! Just the start of your journey, and you're doing really well so far! Please don't be too hard on yourself, we all had to start learning the basics and practice. Just showing up and trying is worth a 10 out of 10, no matter how 'good' the outcome is.
As you're new to this, I would like to suggest a few things to focus on (but feel free to narrow it down to 1 thing at a time because it can be super overwhelming):
1. There's nothing wrong with using pens to draw and sketch with, but pens like this only have one shade of opacity, which leaves no room for underlying sketches. Pencils allow you to sketch with a lighter and heavier hand as needed, which can really help a lot to lay down basic shapes and then draw on top of them. Consider getting an inexpensive set of graphite pencils (preferably some in the B range and some in the H range) to practice with, though any HB pencil will do.
2. We have a series of helpful tutorials that show how to practice figure studies. The first one can be found here: https://line-of-action.com/article/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action (Although I notice there are some images not loading at this time, I'll let Kim know and we'll fix it up ASAP. The text should still be helpful though!)
Your sketches here don't show the line of action and focus on the silhouette/outline of a figure only, which is one way of getting familiar with gesture studies, but it also makes us more prone to not understanding the underlying anatomy. Try to start with a line of action, and then build your figure around that with simple shapes instead of focusing on getting the figure down correctly from the beginning. Think of it like laying the foundation before building the house on top of it, that's what your goal is with figure studies as well.
3. It can be really good practice to avoid 'scratchy' sketching. Scratchy sketching here means drawing over a spot several times to get a single line. There's a big difference between that, and trying to draw confident lines with a single stroke of the pen. It can feel daunting because we want it to be perfect, and small, scratchy lines feel like taking small steps 'to get it right' whereas big singular strokes can feel like leaping and not knowing where you'll land.
I'm certainly not free of doing the scratchy sketching thing myself, but when I consciously try to apply it, I feel it makes a big difference in my end result. Here's an example before I tried to focus on cleaner, single strokes:
The difference is quite stark! I think your gestures may benefit from focusing on single strokes in many places as well. Sometimes people like to give themselves a 'budget' of 10 strokes for a gesture. So, only 10 lines on paper to get the essentials of a pose down. It's recommended to take your time if you do this and think carefully about where you want a line to be placed. This may also be more suitable for more advanced practice sessions down the line, so my recommendation right now is limited to: try to use less scratchiness to put your figures down on paper, make confident single strokes. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it'll help you out a lot to get more confident and progress your skill!
Thank you so much for going in-depth with me. Now I understand why it's important to use the line of action before trying to draw the figure first. Again thank you so much now I understand it now.
As you're new to this, I would like to suggest a few things to focus on (but feel free to narrow it down to 1 thing at a time because it can be super overwhelming):
1. There's nothing wrong with using pens to draw and sketch with, but pens like this only have one shade of opacity, which leaves no room for underlying sketches. Pencils allow you to sketch with a lighter and heavier hand as needed, which can really help a lot to lay down basic shapes and then draw on top of them. Consider getting an inexpensive set of graphite pencils (preferably some in the B range and some in the H range) to practice with, though any HB pencil will do.
2. We have a series of helpful tutorials that show how to practice figure studies. The first one can be found here: https://line-of-action.com/article/gesture-basics-1-line-of-action (Although I notice there are some images not loading at this time, I'll let Kim know and we'll fix it up ASAP. The text should still be helpful though!)
Your sketches here don't show the line of action and focus on the silhouette/outline of a figure only, which is one way of getting familiar with gesture studies, but it also makes us more prone to not understanding the underlying anatomy. Try to start with a line of action, and then build your figure around that with simple shapes instead of focusing on getting the figure down correctly from the beginning. Think of it like laying the foundation before building the house on top of it, that's what your goal is with figure studies as well.
3. It can be really good practice to avoid 'scratchy' sketching. Scratchy sketching here means drawing over a spot several times to get a single line. There's a big difference between that, and trying to draw confident lines with a single stroke of the pen. It can feel daunting because we want it to be perfect, and small, scratchy lines feel like taking small steps 'to get it right' whereas big singular strokes can feel like leaping and not knowing where you'll land.
I'm certainly not free of doing the scratchy sketching thing myself, but when I consciously try to apply it, I feel it makes a big difference in my end result. Here's an example before I tried to focus on cleaner, single strokes:
60 second animals - Sept 9 by Sanne
And here's an example of a session I did shortly after where I tried to minimize the number of strokes I put down:
Equines are hard by Sanne
The difference is quite stark! I think your gestures may benefit from focusing on single strokes in many places as well. Sometimes people like to give themselves a 'budget' of 10 strokes for a gesture. So, only 10 lines on paper to get the essentials of a pose down. It's recommended to take your time if you do this and think carefully about where you want a line to be placed. This may also be more suitable for more advanced practice sessions down the line, so my recommendation right now is limited to: try to use less scratchiness to put your figures down on paper, make confident single strokes. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it'll help you out a lot to get more confident and progress your skill!