Oh man, Glenn is a treasure. It's really worth watching him work as he explains his process because everyone teaches gesture and rhythm a little differently which is what makes it a difficult concept to grasp. https://youtu.be/pa_2rL1K1mg?si=0uRRQn-BLdgbcnV4 Glenn's explanation of rhythm here is really interesting, and somewhat unique. Something worth noting is how he works from one side of the drawing to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Almost hypnotic as he puts it. When he lays a line down on one side, he moves to the other side of the figure to complete the "bracket." The literal back and forth "rhythm" is worth noting, because it informs the metaphoric rhythmic flow and direction of his lines. Stan's Basics course was the first time rhythm and gesture really clicked for me. Thinking of rhythms as connections through the body. Looking for the longest lasting lines helps keep things linked and working together as one. Robert Henri said "Don't stop a line unless you have to." That too has helped me a bit with gesture. Looking for how everything connects even if we cant see it on the surface. https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/draw-any-pose-from-any-angle-rhythms Another quote that really stuck with me about gesture Michael Hampton says in his Gesture course... "[Gesture] is only for YOU. It's just the foundation of the drawing from which you will build on top." So when I hear people talk about the idea of "mastering" gesture it seems kinda funny to me. It's really just a stage of the drawing process that should evolve and develop as we do as artists. It's just another tool to communicate a larger idea. https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/what-you-need-to-know-about-gesture Time constraint or level of finish is rarely, if ever, the focus. The timed gesture format is just to keep us from fiddling with a pose we're trying to "nail" and ultimately killing it in the process. Gestures are just the start of a longer drawing, so the timer keeps us focused on just the start so we can move on to another problem to solve. It's about getting more mileage in for the beginning stages. Rendering is just sweat equity. If your framework isn't saying what you want it to, your rendering won't say it for you. Another abbreviated pearl of wisdom from Hampton's Gesture course that stuck is "We're never drawing the thing we see. We're interpreting it." Even if photorealism is our goal (good on you if it is!) our drawing will NEVER be the thing we see in front of us, so if we can separate that notion from our goals and ask ourselves "what are we trying to communicate with this drawing" we can start to design a pose to our purpose, rather than attempt to replicate what we see as it is. It's somewhat freeing. When we see people like Jeff Watts throw down a 1-2 minute gesture or a 5 minute quick sketch, our collective jaws hit the floor as we see the nearly unattainable apex of the craft, but we need to remember where he is on the journey, hundreds of thousands of hours ahead of us. So we have a high water mark to look toward and aim our aspirations, but don't let it force you into bad habits of quickly throwing down as many lines as you can in a short amount of time. That's not what it's about. Watt's also says of seasoned artists that "quick sketch almost becomes slow sketch the more you do it." Beginners look at the time constraint, panic, and then flail as many lines down as they can until the next pose. When more seasoned artists face a 60 second pose, they may take 5-10 seconds to observe before starting. If they make it to the floor (of a head to toe pose) great, if not, no biggie, try again on the next one. Hampton focuses on 16 lines per figure in the gesture phase. If you're only responsible for 16 lines in 60 seconds, you have approximately 4 seconds per line. Still that's a lot to analyze and produce in 4 seconds, but again, it's a goal to work toward. Start with more time until you're comfortable and then start to whittle it down if you're getting too fiddly too soon. https://www.youtube.com/live/zKfsZaNrmzM?si=9qn9rpb9lnx3uKix Great advice from @aaron_w about the legs being half of the figure. That was a game changer for me too, it's so much easier to work proportionally in quick sketch, or gesture drawing. Another nod toward Hampton's Gesture course which starts with a great proportional framework to bring into your gesture drawing. Of your Master studies, I'd say it looks like you might be working from the wrist, rather than from the shoulder? Do you use a tripod grip, or overhand? Overhand took a long time for me to come around to using, but I've found the more I practice overhand it's actually informed and improved how I work when using tripod grip. I like to physically stretch and open up my shoulders before gesture drawing. Arm circles, and shoulder stretches are a big help for reminding me to work from the shoulder. That, and starting with a nice page of "Clangers" as Patrick Jones calls them. The first few gestures of the day are always a bit rough, so just take a deep breath and get the clangers out of your system so you can get on to the next page. Hope this helps, looking forward to seeing your figure drawing progress!

I just don't get gesture beyond a quick framework to work off of. A line showing the main flow of the figure fingers to toes, another for the center of the torso, cross bars for the hips / shoulders, and a ball for the head. In class there were people who had something actually resembling a figure on the 2 and 5 minute poses. On the 2 minute poses I had a stick figure, on the 5 minute poses I had a fat stick figure. It was only on the 10 and 20 minute poses that I started to have something that resembled a person. Gesture is a helpful first step I use to get the general placement of key features, and proportions but beyond that gesture drawings baffle me so I'm afraid I'm probably not of much help. Two helpful things I took from my figure drawing class were: The legs should be half the height. In our day to day life legs and feet are "down there" so they often appear smaller to us (foreshortened) than they really are and as a result drawing legs too short is a very common error. So much so that having the legs take up half the body was the main focus in our drawings the first few weeks of class. The other was that the shoulders and hips tilt in opposite directions, usually more than we think. A particular issue I run into is torso width, I tend to get the first side I do down pretty well, but then I end up with the two sides too far apart leaving a super broad torso. I guess that wouldn't be that big a deal if I worked digitally, but cut and paste is a lot harder with pencil.

Wish I could help, but same boat as you. More success doing studies than my actual timed practice... I've been forcing myself to do 30 second rounds for ten minutes at a time so that I have to leave all the detail on the table. Early on, I was especially preoccupied with getting the breasts and buttocks correct. Go figure!