I took the figure drawing workshop "Re-drawing Masculinities" again today. It's once a month - very welcoming, creative, fun, and great practice! Here are a couple of my 15-minute sketches:

You can find the workshop on Facebook and Instagram.

I am still finding shorter poses difficult. My two-minute sketches look like squares and triangles arranged by a toddler. My three-minute sketches are a little bit more person-like, but at that point it becomes clear how much trouble I have getting the proportions right between leg length and torso length, etc. 

I do a little better with 10 minutes, and with 15 minutes I can usually start working on details in a way that I find useful. I need to get to that point faster, I think. Even at the longer durations, I have a lot of trouble with faces. This is no surprise, since I am terrible at faces even without a time-limited model pose. I should probably put in place a programme where I draw at least one face a week, to get that practice in.

These are my two favorite sketches from the workshop. I feel like I know what I would want to do if I were to continue working on these two. For example, I can see that I need to make the legs longer on the sitting pose, and I need to indicate somehow that the left arm is not missing just hidden behind the model. I think I would indicate that by shoulder position, but it would take actual time for me to figure out exactly how. In both images I would like to go in and work on their feet. In the standing pose, he should have arches and toes. In the sitting pose, he is wearing really exciting shoes. I spent a lot of time working on hands a couple weeks ago, and I could apply that practice here, too. 

Timed poses are not my favorite thing, I think, but I get what makes them useful. If I want to catch something quick before it flies away, before he strolls out of the room, before the wind knocks it down, etc, I need to be able to get enough information into the sketch as fast as possible, so that when the inevitable movement takes place, the image isn't lost to my memory and imagination. I want to be able to use that skill going forward, so LOTS of practice needed.