Hey, @c_moon, I agree with @Steve Lenze, these are good mannequins!! I’d say stiffness or proportions don’t need to be a concern here. Often times, a successful practice session won’t mean that every aspect of the outcome will be “perfect”, or even that we will like what we get - instead, call it a success when it minimally reaches the main goal you aimed at. To make the judgment clear, make sure to understand beforehand what is that goal - and each practice session may have a different goal. In this specific case of studying the mannequin, usually the point is mainly to convey two things: the 3-dimensionality of the forms; and a sense of cohesiveness in the overall structure. I think your drawings tackle both these aspects, so I’d say your hard work paid off and this is a successful batch (and even more taking into consideration that it’s your first time doing this kind of study). To the extent you feel able, be patient with yourself - the journey of learning this stuff is long and can feel very challenging. But you’re certainly on track! If you do think the figures look stiff, perhaps this is a sign you could take some time in the future to study more about gesture; the same goes for proportions. You can take separate moments to study and practice each of these topics without the need to "nail" all at the same time. For example, when focusing on gesture, you could ignore everything else and just be aware of gesture if this will make you practice feel more focused or productive. In longer drawings (20, 30, 60 minutes…), you can focus on the different aspects at different moments of the process. For example: start with a very loose gesture; then, on a new “layer” (either digitally or on paper), a tighter gesture, maybe with some silhouette definition; then, on a new pass, just a study of the torso 3D forms; then iterate it again and expand it to the full mannequin; and, as many times as needed, new passes just to make corrections, adjustments or to clear things up. In this type of iterative approach, we get to draw the same things many times, but with a slightly different objective and focus in each “layer” of the process, slowly building up from the previous steps. Over time, you can also experiment with taking a specific practice session to make it more “open-focused” and just draw the whole figure without necessarily defining one single goal. These global practices can be a “thermometer” for you to notice how comfortable you’re feeling with handing the various aspects of the figure. Gradually, through practice and time, everything eventually will sort of start to “click”, and you’ll probably make up your own ways of connecting all these dots. To answer your question, no, you don’t need to necessarily draw the robo-bean before the mannequin - unless you feel it helps. The robo-bean is one (handy) way of simplifying the forms of the torso, but it’s not “the right” way, and certainly not the only way either. In mannequin demos, Stan shows various approaches to drawing the torso with simple forms, and using boxes, cylinders and spheres (or any combinations of these) may vary depending on the pose, the body type of the model in the reference, and even your preference in the moment. Just as an additional note, I would not recommend George Bridgman’s books for you right now as a beginner. Bridgman’s approach is certainly unique and masterful, but also advanced. Save it for later in your journey, after you’re confident enough about the basics of the figure and start to get curious about how each artist approaches anatomy differently - that’s when Bridgman could start to become really interesting. That’s all I got for now! Hope this helps. Please feel free to let me know in case you have other questions. Keep it up!

Hey c_moon, These are much better then your last ones, especially the proportions, good job. To answer your question, instead of starting with the robo bean, you should start with a good gesture drawing. Then build your mannequin on top of that. Just don't get frustrated, because your doing better, hang in there :)

Hi, i highly recomend a book tittled "Constructive Anatomy" by George B. Bridgman, the explanations are a little bit tough to understand but the examples in this book really helped me to understand anatomy in a more dynamic way, for your drawings, I personally think it's better if you start your skeleton with 2 boxes and a line that represents the spine and simple lines to indicate the arms and legs, after it you can draw over these boxes and start making the shapes of the body.