Hey Émily I'm also a beginner, but I would say when it comes to gesture drawing try to do several poses at once and try not to linger too long on any one pose. You can always revisit the same poses in different drawing sessions but I've found when I linger on any one pose my drawings get stiffer rather than looser over time. I would also find some more dynamic poses to practice gesture with. You gave yourself a real challenge by choosing those last two photos as a reference.

So, the timer can be a crutch when you first start. The problem is that you may begin practicing things that are not helpful. When you do that, you end up hurting your progress. It would be better to slow the timer down to five minutes and then deliberately begin your practice. Step 1: Look at the model (real-life and photo). Spend some time in this step and think about what you want to draw. Plan in your mind what components of the figure cause interest. Step 2: Loosely find the extents of the figure (horizontal, vertical, and possibly z-axis foreshortening). Don't stress about these bounds; try to get them right. I find that keeping my measurements 1:1 is much easier than transposing them. I use a Derwent proportional divider. I set the divider so that one side is 1/2 and the other is full-size. That lets me instantly double whatever I'm trying to draw. Step 3: Find that gesture. Instead of one flowing line, it might be better to draw two or three. Split the figure in 1/2 on your paper and find the motion from the head to the hollow of the neck, then from there down the sternum to the xiphoid process. Then from the xiphoidal to the belly button and so forth. Step 4: Reinforce the lines with long flowing lines (using the force method). Step 5: Try to work out the volumes and proportions but keep them loose. You're not trying to create a finished drawing. Note that the contour is not symmetrical. Step 6: Always get in the habit of throwing your first drawing away. It will distance you from your work and give you constructive criticism. It will also give you the ability to receive the same. Step 7: Repeat about 100,000 times. As you get better, shorten the speed of your poses. I like to warm up with 60 to 120-second poses. My extended drawings are always better if I start with a warmup. This info was for Emily and John B. I hope it helped JohnsterMonster

Learning gesture drawing was pretty difficult for me, so using a 2-5 minute timer is what I do now. That way I don't spend a ton of time on a pose or getting in to the details, but it still gives me enough time to 'analyze' it as long as I need to find the gesture. The point of gesture drawing is to get the flow or motion of the pose down as simply as you can, usually exaggerating any motion you see, and the timer is a sort-of helper to make sure you don't spend too much time being distracted by details - it's not about how 'good' your drawing looks at the end. What you're trying to do is teach your eye to instantly (or more quickly) identify the major points of interest or flow of a figure. I don't think re-drawing a pose is particularly helpful for gesture drawing, especially if you get caught up on trying to make the details right, since that is not the goal of gesture drawing. However, a lot of art and study exercises do involve redrawing a pose and finding the mistakes you've made, so I don't think it's doing you any harm if you enjoy studying this way. Maybe for the gesture studies, when you re-draw it you should try to take details out each time, getting it more and more simple (almost like a stick figure), so that it forces you to go down to the bare gesture (no details). Or simply use re-drawing and gesture as two different study exercises.