Extreme Sports Drawing - Skateboarder

For my third entry into the blog, I decided that I would challenge myself and draw a skateboarder. This did not turn out as well as I was hoping. This drawing was mostly just of a person and drawing people is one of my weaknesses so I decided that I would try to draw it with the help of the book. This did not turn out well. The book ended up not being detailed enough for me to be able to replicate what it was shown in the book. It began as a stick figure frame, "Start with a stick figure frame of the skater, as shown." (AV2 24)

Step one of this drawing was to draw the above image, and the end product was as shown below

I was not able to replicate this with the amount of detail the book gave. I will continue to try to draw people in the future but I think that drawing people is a talent you have to be born with. My final product of my attempt to draw the above image is as follows: 

My mind could not seem to figure out how to draw the correct thing. This picture may look like I spent 10 seconds trying to draw it, but really the above image took me around 45 minutes to draw. The book only gives 8 steps to draw this image with not nearly enough detail, I think that the author could have done better. I thought that it would be a good thing to document my struggles with this project along with the good things. 

What do you guys think that I should draw next? Should I continue to try to draw people or should I stick to inanimate objects? Thank you for reading, please leave feedback.