Good morning. I think your confusion stems from the illusion of depth. Basically, the overlap that you’re confused about is meant to indicate which form is in front of the other. At about 5:48 in the video, he demonstrates the idea with the string and towel to describe the twist, but I think it helps here too. For the right tilt at 4:33, I would argue that it’s a bit arbitrary because both her torso and hips are about the same distance from the camera (neither is really closer), but the angle of her torso (generally, female spines curve slightly more because the hips sit a bit further back, so the spine curves a bit forward in the stomach area and then back again towards the shoulders for balance) and the position of the camera make it feel as though her hips are closer. In this case I see why he alluded to the hips being closer with the overlap, although I call it arbitrary because I don’t suppose there would be much difference if he overlapped it with the torso in front. Indicating the motion is more important here though, so it’s doesn’t matter too much. For the back lean (I believe it’s actually 5:14), I would almost make the same argument of being arbitrary, but I see it more from an anatomical view. The muscle that connects the arm and should to the torso actually extends a bit down into the area where shows the overlap, even though from a point of depth, the torso does feel more like it’s behind the hips (especially considering the “leaning back”). In all, I think it’s more of a subtlety you gain just with practice and study, but I figured I’d do my best to answer since you asked (good study for me too, analyzing so hard). For now, I would suggest you continue practicing as best as you can (I know it’s not the preferred answer). It might be good to try the ball and sock thing and note where the creases lie (maybe ball up some smaller socks into a big sock if you don’t have actual balls). I hope this helped. I tried 😅

Hi @anarion I think you´ve done a good job capturing the gesture! The figures feel alive, and I can sense that you´re thinking about the flow passing through the body. Knowing how long you should stay at an exercise can be tricky. In a critique to another student I wrote about how I wish I had approached the course when I started out. You can find it by following this link and scrolling down to the first post https://www.proko.com/profile/vduncombe/activity You want to find a balance between moving on and building a strong foundation. I fell into the pitfall of trying to NAIL everything before moving on. I continued to grind an exercise eventhough I was ready for the next part. The other pitfall is to move on before having a strong grasp of the exercise. For gesture I would say you should nail it, as in having a strong grasp of it, but not NAIL gesture, as in being perfect at it, believing that you won´t have to revisit the exercise. If there is any part of the course I don´t regret staying at for to long it´s gesture. It´s so important! When in doubt, the best thing to do is just to ask, like you´ve done. For you I would suggest to stay at this exercise. The gesture in your drawings is decent, but has room to improve. And I also think you need some more time to get comfortable with a pencil and drawing from you´re shoulder, which gesture quicksketch is great for. Make sure to check out Stan´s video about drawing from your shoulder, and apply what it teaches https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-hold-and-control-your-pencil/assignments Make sure you practice 30 second poses too. I would say, they are even more important than 2 min poses, since you only have time to focus on the core gesture. I hope this helps and good luck with the course! I´m rooting for you :) PS Some practice tips: How you practice is as important, or even more important than what you practice. Here are some things that helped me improve faster: STAN´S EXAMPLES For me it was invaluable to look at Stan´s example drawings, following this routine 1. Try to draw the pose myself before looking at Stan´s example 2. Look at Stan and copy his drawing 3. Try to draw like Stan did, without looking at his example I did this over and over, varying up with other poses I found on the internet, trying to bring with me the habits I learned from Stan. DELIBERATE PRACTICE Another thing that was important for me was to be on the look out for things to improve. Improving was simply a long chain of - Doing a mistake - Finding the mistake - Trying to not make the same mistake in the next drawing