These are looking good so far. I have two critiques for the back poses. So in both of your drawings you have the scapula doing nearly the same thing. On the one where he is lifting upwards the blade of the scapula is going to be at more of an angle with the bottom pointing away from the spine. You can see it slightly as a line near the trapezius muscle. For the second image you have a similar problem with the scapula, except in the opposite direction. The scapula are being pulled in, which you do have in your drawing. I would just chance the angle of the shoulder blades to be more down, and straighten the out as well. The second thing with the back poses is slight, but it is the angle of the pelvis itself. You have the pelvis on both of them going at an angle, similar to the shoulders. But you can see in the reference that the hips are almost straight up. By straightening up the hips it gives more contrast to the shoulders. As for the front, it is looking GOOD. The only major thing is that you are missing a very important landmark, and that is the ASIS points of the iliac crest on the pelvis. Those are important landmarks that will tell you the direction and tilt of the hips. I hope any of this we useful. Keep up the solid work.

Hey Shane I think have some advise that may help. Looking at your drawings there is some nice stuff. You are simplifying and not focusing on the contours that much. Motion comes from the relationship of one part of the body to the next. For example in the attached photo you can see that the head sits farther to the left of the pelvis, even going a little past the left shoulder. In your drawing it is having a latter effect where all the parts of the body are fairly straight up and down with one another. If you have those photos available to breakdown I would recommend you put them in your software of choice, or print them out, and drawing straight lines from different parts of the body to see where they hit other body parts, or don't hit. I would also recommend that you start paying attention to the pelvis and the direction it is going. Many dynamic drawings have the shoulders going one way and the hips going another. You can see in the breakdown of the photo that her let shoulder is going and her right is going up, which you did capture (I would push the angle of the a little farther to really sell the that action). Now with the pelvis, I am not getting that it is facing a completely different direction than the shoulders in your drawing. I see you tried to indicate it with the contour lines, but I would do what you did for the shoulders to the hips as well. It will better sell the twist. I know I threw a lot at you, but these are looking promising. The last thing I would recommend if you can afford it is to check out Drawn to Life by Walt Stanchfield. It is like the bible of gesture drawing. I hope this helped, good luck!

These are a really good attempt. I believe your biggest problem is that you are focusing to much on the contours of the figures and not on the Gesture its self. The Gesture should flow through the body and depict the action. You may be able to see from simple draw through that the angles of the shoulders and hips were miss placed. When one side of the shoulder lowers than the hips will do the opposite. I have also added a simple gesture by Glenn Vilppu depicting the flow through the body. In the beginning just try to focus on the different angles of the shoulders and hips and try to flow the lines through the body. Also notice the clothing on the subject. The clothes can show what direction the body is pointing. Like with the runner, her left thigh is lifted up and towards the camera. So we we look at the thigh we can see the shorts wrapping around the thigh and almost make cylinder. Remember that the gesture does not have to look pretty, for it is not going to be the final drawing. It is the lay in work to capture the action and emotion of your subject/character for you to come back to it later and add the simple forms as well.