“Yes, a good way to learn figure drawing is to copy plates from Bridgman, Loomis, Peck, and Vanderpoel and alternate that with figure drawing from life and imagination.”
Three things to keep doing as an artist:
1. Work out of your imagination; keep a pure sketchbook that is straight out of your head.
2. Keep a second sketchbook that is full of observational drawings (people, poses, plants, animals, architecture).
3. Do copies of earlier masters -- preferably heroes that are long dead; heroes from the nineteenth-century and before.