Almost done with all skeleton + cylinder exercises (before moving to the reference one) and also being able to move on with the video/lessons.
Getting the hang of the cylinders. And getting more "lose" as well, not so afraid of just doing rough sketches instead of "perfect" lines. This helped me get the proper volume to some of the cylinders in the last pose.
I always moved my sketch away from the photo reference once i noted the differences 
. This way I would force myself to note the actual difference in angle and position. Although sometimes I had a hard time getting the hang of certain limbs, which resulted in me moving my sketch over the photo very often. But for each pose it got easier as I started to learn what I needed to think of !
The way you're tackling the skeletons so far is very smart though. I put so much time in trying to make the lines/shapes and everything in between far too detailed which has been eating away at the time it takes 
. Making them more loose, like you mentioned, lets you get more poses done which potentially lets you get better faster 
. Great job so far !
Gotcha.
It makes a lot of sense to move the lines away from the picture, this way you kinda "force your brain" to observe and hence you'll learn better. I finally finished my tracing exercises and will start the lines from reference. Will definitley try to follow the same approach as you.
And yeah! Honestly, once I stopped trying to make the perfect, "no shaky" lines, I started to finish the drawings faster. Since this is just the base for the forms and shapes, I don't think we need to be that detailed since we will, on a later stage, worry much more about the details and cleaning up the lines, than now.
Thanks for the reply!
I'm glad I could help 
!
I wish you the best of luck with your practice !
Thanks @alexandra.d.93,
The same to you
Started with the study of the proportions today. Still going with the male Since I have a "time-boxed" study time in my day, I was able to watch the full male part of the video but couldn't still reproduce in full, but was able to start at least.
Still working on the proportions. Probably will spend the full week (maybe even a bit more) to be sure I memorize this right. Overall, quite happy with the male one after I cleaned up the lines a bit. It's been very interesting to draw the female proportions, too 😊
Still drawing proportions so I can recall them from memory. This time I let the video playing in the background while trying to draw just listening to the instructions and recalling the visuals from memory. It's not terrible.... (I think.... 😅)
One more to the cookie jar 🍪
Slowly getting the hang of things. It was easier to recall from memory where each reference mark needed to be.
Also got a bit curious to see how things would look like without the grid lines:
These proportions are turning out great !
I can clearly see that you're picking up on the measurements for each try.
Great job, really inspirational !
Thanks @alexandra.d.93! Really appreciate it
The lower parts of the body are still a bit of a challenge, but since this is more about the proportions themselves instead of getting every muscle or shape right, I'm trying "to be cool" about it and move on 😅
Alright, here we go:
Somebody HELP ME, please!
Damn, this exercise of measuring proportions is hard. I'm trying to follow the lesson and do it at the same time, but the part where Mark finds out about the center line and middle line + the boundaries of the drawing and then spotting the joints happens too fast and is hard to understand "the logic" behind it.
I confess that I ended up "cheating" a lot, because I was constantly putting the drawing on top of the reference, and was doing that back and forth to get the placements right, but one of the very first few rounds was a complete disaster.
I'm using a Wacom Intuos Pro 4 to do it straight in Photoshop, but I'm missing something.
When I think about it, it felt like I got the center (vertical) line wrong, and with that, the entire drawing collapsed, but I'm not sure if it's even that or something else.
Any help/knowledge sharing will be much appreciated 😄👍
Thanks!
Hey!
I think a point of this whole grid is to help you compare angles and relations of body parts and negative space between them.
When you drawing from a reference and you want to achieve likeness you have to constantly compare your drawing to your reference.
Example:
Let's look at legs that you drew. Negative space between them is very wide in comparison to the reference.
And in terms of angles... his left arm (right one to us if we look at him), around this armpit area.. his arm and his torso together create a sharp angle of 45 degrees or so. And you compare that too.
Etc etc
It just takes a lot of time and patience in the begining always.
As for finding middle line, boundaries of the drawing - you literally divide your drawing into smaller sections which helps you notice things that you have to compare to achieve likeness.
Same for joints, u sort of eyeball it to lay down your first raw "skeleton" and once it's done u start comparing areas, negative spaces, angles etc
Idk if i explained ok
Hope it helps ^^'
