Do you have a poseable wooden body model/ manikin? It is helpful for making poses without a live model.
These are also available for hands as well.... although I have drawn my own hands a lot. When I studied art in college, I used a lot of anatomy books to get the placement and shapes of muscles down and then applied this to drawing from live models. I found that you need to draw from a live model to get the feel for how the weight of the body and pose is affecting the muscles, fatty tissue and skin. I don't know if you are comfortable with it, but drawing nude models is really the best way to see what the body is actually doing under all the drapery of the clothes. Mastering nude drawing makes clothed subjects much easier to draw. Non muscular bodies are actually the most challenging to draw, because while the muscles will pretty much always follow what we see in anatomy books, breasts and fatty tissue can settle in more than one direction: 1) in relation to gravity, 2) structure of the bone and muscle 3) how the first two items respond to the body's pose. Are there any art studios/ classes/ drawing groups that you can join, so that you can get practice with a live model? Different body types and poses have huge variations between them....and if you can see a variety of these and make drawings and sketches, it will give you a reference point for drawing people from your imagination in the future. When I was in college, and after, some artist colleagues of mine used to have drawing groups, where we would hire a live model and split the cost... that way it was only about $10 per session. I also used to draw my brother when he was sleeping a lot... and would go to the museum and draw some of the statues of people.
In classes and drawing sessions, we started with 1 minute sketches, then 5 and 10 and 30 minutes. Then we moved on to full hour poses. We also did sketches where you would put your pencil down and start drawing, without lifting it from the paper, until you completed the whole sketch. Doing these different types of sketches allows you learn how to capture the essence of the lines, the weight of the pose, and the general composition, without getting bogged down with the fine details. It also helps you to learn perspective and foreshortening in a more intuitive way, rather than applying the mathematical rules and tricks that are taught to artists for proportion and sizing in drawings.
The Art Students' League in NYC has some online classes for figure drawing, etc. I have taken live classes there over the years, and they are awesome!
The Art Students League of New York
Check my art thread linked in my signature to see examples of my artwork.
