Everyone will give different advice and that's the nature of art because everyone is unique, but as I've learned about things, one thing connects everything and that is depicting form, which requires an understanding of perspective and the ability to create form from imagination. This is where the whole idea of boxes stems from is because of the simple nature and the ability to easily check mistakes in the form of a cube. You can also easily perform cuts to a cube to get new form shapes and slowly start to approximate the thing you want to draw. In essence, you will eventually come to the conclusion that you're basically 3D modelling from scratch. This separation between copying the lines you see and constructing forms that you modify is the big "aha" moment as they are two distinct things. This is why exercises like cutting a person in a reference in half as if they were cut by a laser and having to draw that new form are very useful. I'm replying a bit late to this but hopefully you haven't given up by now. An important thing to keeping your motivation up is ironically keeping your drawing time strict. In the very beginning I limited myself to 2 hours and stopped no matter what, which, if I really was motivated to draw, actually made me super motivated to draw the next day since I couldn't spend all the creative energy all in one go. Insert some philosophy about pacing yourself I guess. Also make sure to use reference even when creating forms from imagination, as that's the only "answer key" you have to find mistakes in the forms you create. Doing things like trying to draw from imagination a pose you've drawn a few days ago is super helpful since you know you can easily pull up the reference for checking what you got wrong. For more tips on being able to construct forms, Scott Robertson's How To Draw has basically everything you need to know to be able to accurately construct forms in 3D space. And investing in multicolored pens or pencils to help keep track of interior vs exterior lines when constructing forms will come in handy. I hope your brain has now made the distinction between 2D copying and 3D drawing and I wish you the best of luck.

Recommended Podcasts: Art And Fear Book Review - https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/art-and-fear-draftsmen-s2e24/notes “How To Fail” - https://www.proko.com/course-lesson/how-to-fail-draftsmen-s3e21/discussions

A lot to unpack here. First, I think Stan would say, "practice makes better" there is no perfect. Thinking that something has to be "perfect" is definitely stressful because you can never achieve it. Second, good gesture drawings look simple and simple is hard. Really hard. I think art instructors start with gesture not because it is the easiest first step but because they are introducing something you can practice for the rest of your life. You will not "master" gesture before you should move to more finished products. Just keep going back to it. The time limit stressed me out at first too. Ignore it or just give yourself more time and then slowly speed up. Just make sure you don't fill the time with unnecessary detail, but focus on the gesture and try to get that right. You may also think you are not making progress, that is normal too. Give yourself credit for your little successes. You are probably doing better than you think. I like to keep all of my practice sheets and look back at them at the end of the week. I'm not good at this yet, so most of what I see is not great, often bad. But I give myself credit for the little things I did well. Maybe the arm is correct or the curve of the spine captures the gesture. Seeing these little successes motivates me to keep practicing. Good luck.

I'll probably sound harsh, but since your goal is to create your own art, here's my opinion. Learning to draw isn't just about having fun. It's a long journey of self-discovery. It's about confronting your shortcomings, overcoming obstacles and finding your way. The process can be enjoyable, yes, but it is difficult nonetheless. You cannot start this journey without being willing to take risks. Copying others' lineart the way you do it isn't a good thing. What you're actually doing is letting another artist take the risk to create something new, and then imitating the final result. It's fun because you don't have to feel any pressure at all, but you won't be able to create your own art with that state of mind. I think you shouldn't turn the timer off . On the contrary, you should set it to 30sec and practice regularly. You need to get rid of that mental block once and for all. Failure is extremely patient, it will wait as long as it needs to. But the second you decide to practice, it will be there and it will smack you really hard. If you endure the stress and keep going, you'll realize that failure is actually the most honest friend you can possibly have in this journey. It will never lie to you, it will stay close to you, and it will always encourage you to do better. And as a result, your anxiety will fade away. This is what i've learned these past 4 years.

I heard something from Patrick J Jones the other day, paraphrasing Steve Huston. Now I'm paraphrasing him: "We had a small win - we didn't get stressed, we didn't burn out. We did a small, simple drawing, and it felt good." Try to go into your gestures with this mindset. It doesn't have to be "right" - and it probably won't. Everyone who has ever done gestures has probably done hundreds of bad ones, so every time you do one and it isn't as good as you wanted it to be - pat yourself on the back. You just knocked out one of those bad ones, and that bad drawing was going to come out of you at some point, whether you stressed or not; whether you are an absolute pro, or a brand new beginner. That's one less bad gesture you have ahead of you. Some day when you're amazingly good, you're still gonna have bad drawings now and again - but not many, because you're putting most of them behind you now. Art is one of those rare things where you truly fail your way to success. As long as you keep drawing, keep learning, and take feedback, every drawing (bad or good) is part of the path. This mindset helps me avoid feeling anxious about doing something I find difficult in art, and helps me feel good when I do a bad drawing. Don't go into the gestures (or any drawing) with the mindset that you need to nail it, just go into it with the mindset that, today, you're going to take some steps on the path. Every step on the path is inevitable, and there is no end to the path because you'll be learning all your life - so relax and enjoy the walk. Second - echoing Conner's advice here - stop worrying about the time so much. It's ok to turn it off. If you find that turning it off makes you take drastically too long (20 minutes for a simple gesture etc.) then just double or triple the recommended time. The MAIN reason why gestures are kept short is to force yourself to keep it simple and not get caught up in detail - as long as you're trying to do that, the timer is just a helper, not a requirement. Finally, paraphrasing Jeff Watts here, there's absolutely no reason to just start throwing down lines like crazy when the drawing starts. Even on very short, time limited drawings, sometimes it's best to pause and take 10-30 seconds to just look at the reference and think about it a bit. Are any of the pieces of anatomy directly in a convenient line with anything else? Is there a big S or C curve you can see that will be an easy starting point? If I could make this pose only two big lines, which would I choose? etc.

I have a couple ideas! Gesture drawing used to really stress me out too. I guess it kinda all depends what you think is causing the mental block, like you mentioned that you know they aren’t supposed to look like a finished drawing. I would amend that by saying they don’t “have” to look like a finished drawing. My first tip since you said your really like copying other artists is to do just that. Play to your strengths. Find artists whose style of gesture drawing your really like and copy them. I personally really like the aesthetic of artists like Mike Mattesi, Diego Lucia and Ryan Woodward. Ryan Woodward in particular has a great little book that you can buy as a pdf that talks about his approach and his gesture drawings are absolutely beautiful. Secondly, shut off the timer for now. I think most would agree the time recommendation at least at first is more to try and help you get mileage with the process and to stop you from zoning in too much on the details. I struggled with this idea a lot at first finding the timer exacerbated the insecurity I had when trying to make choices about what lines to put down and what to avoid. I started leaving out the timer and just focusing on taking the time I needed to understand the process of gesture drawing and trying to make it second nature, only adding the timer back when I felt more comfortable overall. This also goes for mannequinizing and anatomy. Learn to do it slow before trying to do it fast. My last recommendation works well especially digitally but can also be done traditionally. Try tracing gesture over photos to get comfortable finding the gesture. I would specifically recommend doing this the way Stan recommends copying his drawings. Try it yourself first based on a photo, then trace over the photo, then look at both to see what needs to be corrected and try again on your own. Digitally, you can just lower the opacity of the photo in whatever software you use, and draw over it with something bright, or if you work traditionally sports magazines are great places to find fun dynamic poses. Sorry, the real last one. No single concept is going to make you a failure as an artist, so don’t quit because gesture drawing is stumping you. It’s a really tricky concept and you will get it if you keep working at it, but also, give yourself a break. Don’t expect to stick to gesture until you’re perfect at it. If you’re going through Stan’s figure course, practice gesture for a couple weeks or even just a week if it’s really frustrating you, and then move on. Obviously you’re gonna have to come back to it, but having a basic understanding of the process in the back of your mind will allow the other concepts to help inform your understanding and comfortability with gesture when you come back to it. Eventually, it’s a good idea to make timed gesture a part of your daily warm up, but that can come later. I hope something in there helps and I hope you don’t give up.