How to Reference!

I've been studying a lot on how to strengthen the pose of figures. S curves, squeeze and stretch and all that jazz. Here are some sketches I've done on just that. Iterating on the reference until I find a pose that's much stronger than the photo. I believe that people should use reference more often but I feel like some don't know how. Usually, it's a problem of staying too true to the reference instead of just using it as basis for something better.

Maybe this will help someone :)