Hey, @toneza35800! Good to see your early steps in the Figure Drawing course! I see it’s been a while since you posted this and I’m wondering how you’ve been doing lately in the course. I know it feels tough often times, but it’s totally okay to be uncomfortable, have doubts and make mistakes - you’re still learning all this. As much as possible, give yourself some time and patience while you keep practicing regularly and your skills will evolve. Just try not to judge yourself so hard. I’m not sure what you mean when you say your drawings look different from others in the community - is it because you drew yours in color? If that’s so, it’s no problem at all. Other than that, nothing really strikes to me as “different”. As for what to practice, I’d like to make a few comments of my own to add up to what @Steve Lenze already commented, if that’s okay! It seems to me that you gave each pose a nice deal of thought and attention. But the major thing I notice when looking at the drawings is that I believe you might be focusing a bit too much on the contours. One thing you might already know is that the Landmarks are key areas on the surface of the body where the underlying bone structure shows or hints, and which we can use to think of the gesture, measure proportions or make other decisions regarding the construction of the drawing - right? With that said, there is also a bunch of other anatomical information on the surface of the body that is not so necessary or useful for this type of study - for example, outer contours, muscle volumes, bumps or furrows that don’t reveal bone structure or smaller areas of concentrated details. So my suggestion for this exercise would be that you do your best to keep it simple, ignore that excessive anatomical information and focus solely on finding the simple gesture and pointing out, on top of your gesture sketch, the bony landmarks you learned from the Landmarks lesson. If you find it helps, you can also “pre-practice” by drawing the landmarks’ placements directly on top of the photo reference before drawing it on your gesture sketch. And to make it really clear that you understand the landmarks you’re dealing with, you could take little side notes with their names and any other information you find helpful to remember about them. I’m attaching an example of my own and hopefully it can better illustrate what I mean. Speaking of which, gesture is a very key concept not only in the figure drawing course, but in figure drawing overall! Perhaps even the most important one among the basic topics. Make sure to always keep it in mind when you practice drawing the figure and even start your figure drawings with gesture for at least most of the times. Also, whenever you feel you need, you can get constant reviews on it. In fact, if possible, I’d really recommend going back to the Gesture lesson for a while, give it a review and a few extra practice sessions and get feedback on it before moving on through the rest of the course - later down the road, you’ll find it will have been helpful. By the way, I’m thinking 5 days after the start of the course seems to me like perhaps a bit too soon to be on Landmarks already. How did you go with the other initial topics? Have you posted Gesture or Bean assignments for feedback here at the community? (Sorry that I missed them in case you did!) Anyway, whenever you wanna ask for feedback, make sure to check the “help request” checkbox when you post! You might even make your post directly on the lesson’s page, under the “comments” tab (rather than creating a separate topic). And you can also feel free to tag me in your post if you would like to get feedback specifically from me, I’ll be glad to help if I can. Learning to draw the figure is a big step for every artist, and this whole stuff takes some time plus a lot of practice to sink in, so perhaps notice the pace you’re taking on the course and make sure you take enough time in each lesson to get acquainted not only with the information, but with the little bites of technique and skill you’ll be developing and growing upon. Whenever you feel you need, it’s fine to stay a little longer on a more intricate part of your learning in order to figure things out a little better. Don’t aim at perfection though, that can be a trap! :) Just keep doing your thing with passion and intention in the most caring way you can. And don’t worry if you don’t get everything right away, learning can happen in “layers” over the years as we keep growing. Whenever you feel stuck, the best thing you can do is take a break and ask for feedback. I hope this helps. Feel free to ask questions if you might have any. Best wishes and best of luck!

Hey toneza35800, This is a cool pose with lots of stuff going on that's kind subtle. To begin with, your missing the gesture of this pose. The slight bending back of the torso, the sweep of the legs and arms. If you look, your pose is straight up and down causing it to be stiff. There is also a twist in the body where the torso is facing us, but the pelvis is facing more away, this is what makes the body look slimmer. Because the pelvis is wrong, the legs don't make sense due to the pelvis placement. I did a sketch to show you what I mean, I hope it answers your questions :)

The issue im having with this lesson is that Stan's examples change so much in terms of how he approaches mannequinization... in one he'll do all tubes, and then he'll go almost to an anatomy precision level. I wish there was more of a standard on those.

Hey toneza35800, Congrats on starting the fundamental coarse, it's going to seem really hard at first, but keep with it. When it comes to landmarks, I use the ones that give me the most information. I did a sketch of one of your models and drew in black the landmarks I look for and what they tell me. These landmarks are meant to help you understand what the body is doing in space, meaning in perspective. They also help us with proportion because we can see if they are in the right spot. I hope my sketch answers some of your questions, keep on drawing :)