There is a lot of good advice here, but I just wanted to say, where you're at is a perfectly normal place to be. So don't worry about committing crimes against art... And don't feel like you have to "nail" a course before moving on. Do the exercises, spend some time to absorb the information, and move on. Keep in mind, you don't have all the information yet to create beautiful drawings. Once you've gone through everything, you'll want to circle back, and do it all over again. It gets progressively better. Keep practicing!

I think the critiques below are pointing you towards the right direction. One thing I will add is that certain area lack three dimensionality, mostly in the legs. For exemple in the first image, the legs don’t look like 3D forms because there isn’t enough information to suggest it. Maybe adding cross contour lines could help. I think it could also be the way you made the legs attach to the pelvis and then to the knee. Because we don’t see one of the cylinder’s ellipses (top or bottom plane), the form look flat. So I think learning perspective, especially ellipses, could greatly benefit you. I drew over the legs of the third image, hopefully it will be of some help!

Hello Mrinconguous, When you draw the dummy you still have to start with the gesture, otherwise you will end up with a series of very static geometric shapes. Look carefully at the reference photo, identify the main line of action, on it find the position of the shoulders and pelvis and their inclination, then insert the arms and legs. At this stage limit yourself to sketching the gesture with simple curved lines (C S I ). This is the scaffolding on which you will build your shapes, you'll find it easier to maintain proportions and perspective this way :) I also recommend that you don't use a pen but a pencil, so that if you make mistakes you can easily correct them. Choose a soft pencil, use cheap paper and do a few sketches every day, always starting with the gesture :)

You may want to start with a quick gesture, to layout what goes where, and then place your blocks? It helps to separate planning from execution.

Just to give you an idea of how you can practice mannequinization, use the shapes that I made, and practice drawing them in perspective. Remember to think of them as 3D objects with a side, top and bottom. I hope this will help :)

Don't feel guilty! Study perspective. That involves way more than I can fit in one of these comments. In order to do mannequinization effectively, you need to be able to draw boxes, spheres and cylinders from any angle out of your head. This is harder than it sounds. I recommend starting by learning how to plot those forms out in perspective. Then you can draw them freehand and use perspective to check your own work. Be patient with yourself. I teach perspective in an animation school. A lot of students still struggle with it even after an entire semester. Its going to be even harder to learn it on your own just from books. Most perspective books contain the same information and they are all generally pretty good. Find the one that makes sense to you. My personal favorite is 'The Complete Guide to Perspective' by Craig Attebery. If videos are more your thing, a Youtube channel called 'The Drawing Database' has some excellent perspective content.

Hi mrincongruous, I advise you not to use clothed poses at this stage, they make it very difficult for you to see the shapes, especially the pelvis, which you have in fact misunderstood several times (it is perfectly normal since clothes hide it). In some cases there are torsions of the torso and important foreshortening (some poses you have chosen would be problematic even without the clothes which confuse the shapes). I'm attaching a couple of very quick sketches (sorry, they're quite messy!) to show you what I mean.

I think something you need to look out for is the angle of the rib cage/shoulder and the pelvis. In most cases if the rib cage tilts one way, the pelvis tilts the other way to counter balance. This especially applies to the pose of the guy with his shirt off (a sailor, I think). You did this well with the guy with the rose, but don’t be afraid to push and exaggerate the poses. Another thing I believe would help you would be to practice drawing boxes. The perspective is a bit wonky in a few of these, especially the very foreshortened ones (ex.: the person with the skulls at his feet). Focusing on getting boxes down will help you in the long run. Hope this helps!

I think u skipped the normal bean...