I think you are on the right track! It looks like you have a rhythm going when you're building up your gestures. Don't neglect the arms though! They're pretty similar in anatomy to the legs. Get those main curves in there like the bicep and the outer curve of the forearm and you've got a solid gesture for the arms :) It's kinda like how the legs have the curves of the thigh and the calf muscles.

These look great Leonie. Learning to hold the pencil in different orientations and drawing with your shoulder really pays off in time. It can feel really strange at first though. One thing I do whenever I sit down to draw is to just make big shapes on the page, drawing with just my shoulder and elbow. Squares, circles. Getting the cobwebs off by doing this goes a long way to helping with fluidity. Also, having your pad more vertical helps too. Good stuff!

Hi! I think your gestures look great, especially for your first time. If I had to give a few suggestions, it would be on your line weight and posing. I think the harshness of your lines kind of adds an artificial stiffness to your otherwise dynamic poses. I think building on lighter lines can help keep that fluidity. Also, for a gesture, I would suggest pushing the poses a bit more. A lot are very dynamic, but for the more stationary poses, I think exaggerating the curves and shapes can keep it interesting. I also wouldn't keep drawing those horizontal lines between the different body parts, as it takes time and focus away from the more important, basic principles this exercise is trying to teach. Hope at least some of this is useful.

Time really does fly, lol! I'd suggest making sure the line of action follows through the entire form of the subject you're drawing. In some of these, you have it and then it stops around the waist. Letting the line follow through will help with building the gesture around it and keeping the energy and flow. Nice work!!

Nice work identifying line of action in these!

Hey Richard, I made some notes for you below! You expressed the overall gesture lines throughout these drawings very well. One thing I noticed as a common theme is that you could exaggerate the poses just a bit more without going too far with it. One way you could do this is to push the pinch & stretch of the torso. I did a couple of draw-overs below as an example. Another thing to mention is the contours; overall you did a good job simplifying to CSI, but for example, the back of the arm in 006 could be represented by one C curve instead of the two c curves. It keeps the flow without the detail of the muscles, which would be necessary to include in a longer drawing but not so important for a quick drawing. One last thing that may help you is to recall the gestural torso box assignment from the drawing basics course. You don't have much time to analyze the figure when you're doing quick poses; using the box is a quick way to simplify the shape and identify twists. For example, in 006, her shoulders are twisting slightly back to the left and her hips are facing forward. In my box, I exaggerated the pose even more to give her hips a slight twist back to the right using the box as a mental guide. Hope you find this helpful. Again, really nice job here 👍