My humble opinion relies heavily on the fact that you should probably use the medium you enjoy the most. I would stay away from whatever takes the fun out of the learning process.

Nice job! I think you did a good job at capturing the "feel" of the face. You drawing looks recognizable as the subject of the photo, and that can be difficult! I do think your drawing looks somewhat flat. That may be because there is not a lot of variation between the darks and lights. Squinting at the photo makes it seem like the cast shadows (from the nose, ear, lips, and under the chin) are as pretty much as dark as the hair and probably darker than the eyebrows. The highlight on the cheek is barely visible in the drawing. I think a broader range from light to dark would have give more depth to your drawing. As for training more quickly, consider how you might be able to focus your efforts. Instead of doing the entire project, select a portion to do. That might mean just doing one part of the body. That might mean doing the sketch and then copying that sketch multiple times to use as a starting point. That might mean not trying to get certain aspects entirely correct so you have time to focus on other parts (such as not worrying about proportions so that you can focus on rendering the forms). I've seen some good advice about accepting that you are going to make bad art while you practice. The point of practice is to improve your skills, not make something that looks good. You might find value in a shift in focus like that.

In today's 30-second gesture session I kept drawing as if I had two minutes.

I did another one today. I tried to pay more attention to the shapes, getting rid of some spots where my initial work felt unneeded or adding spots where help was needed deciphering the form. I also tried to keep my initial sketch and the "ink" edges much looser. My previous two images were drawn to a head-sized grid, but this one I tried to start from a more gestural approach and did a lot more relative measurements after that. I'm happy with most of it except for the right breast, which doesn't have a very clear shape. I wasn't really sure how to improve that.

These are great. Maybe thinking a little more about shape design might help it look a bit less mechanical like a Photoshop filter. I'd look at some classic comics inkers like Frank Frazetta, Al Williamson and Wally Wood, to name a few. Two spots in particular that stand out are the shadow on the bent kneecap in the first drawing, which could fit a little more smoothly with the nearby shadow, and the lower white area of the bent knee of the seated figure, which could stand to be opened just a bit more at the bend. This exercise has been on my mental list as well, and I hope I can do as well as you have when I get to it.

Based on what you described, having the feeling of grasping the ideas and understanting that each concept and exercise is something you can always look back at any moment, you are indeed ready to start practicing the next concept. You can use the feeling that you just described as an indicator of when to move to the next lesson. However, keep in mind that you shouldn't stay for more than 1 or 2 weeks in a given exercise, if you pass that period time in a lesson, move on to the next one, remenber that everything builds on top of other concepts, venturing to something a little bit more complex can help you learn better a previous concept, that's why revisitting lessons is so important. Hope that helps to your art journey!

Here is a selection of my gestures from the last 10 days. I pulled out ones that had some aspect that I was happy with. 2 minutes ones at the top of the page and 30 seconds ones at the bottom. I'm still struggling to complete the figure in 30 seconds. I have noticed a bad tendency to leave pieces "floating on their own" instead of connected to the rest of the figure. This critique video commented on this around the 42 minute mark, so I'm trying to make improvements. Part of the source of this is that once I put down one side of a limb, I struggle a little to know what to do with the other side and I'm often unhappy with the results. I'm pleased with my growth since the last set of images I posted: https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-draw-gesture/assignments#x1x My line quality is better (on average). I'm doing better at drawing the action instead of the contour. I'm starting to use darker (more confident) lines (still needs work). I would love to hear any criticism on my work and any suggestions on a good pace to focus my efforts for improvement. Encouragement of my strong points is always nice, but I'm especially interested to hear an external perspective on where my weak points are.

The first four are all from references during the course video. Some are doubled up. For those, I drew once when the reference was first shown and once after Stan showed his gesture drawing. Apologies for the low contrast. I'm still figuring out my best practices for digital work. I think I need to do my final lines a bit stronger. I was really pleased to look back and see some improvement from the first page (and older work from before the course) to the last page. I'm working to try and improve my line quality. I am happy in places with how it looks. I'm still having difficult with pulling a long line. Partly I'm still getting used to the digital pen, and partly I just need more line practice. I think I am often doing too much outlining and not enough capturing the action... particularly on the last day where I frequently found myself wanting more than my allotted 4 minutes. That said, I'm really pleased with how some of the figures on the last page turned out. I'd be thrilled to receive any feedback.