Over the past few days I have participated drawn a portrait of my friend, tried and I think failed to draw a self-portrait, and participated in a figure drawing workshop hosted by The Male Form, featuring the handsome and talented model Lalo. 

Here's the portrait, which I am really happy with:

You can see why I am less happy with my self-portrait, especially by comparison, here:

The portrait of my friend really looks like her. Mine looks like a deranged beetle replaced my head. 

Here are the sketches of Lalo from the workshop, starting with the five-minute poses:

Lalo has very luxurious long hair, and in between these two poses, he let it down. I think my favorite sketch of the day is the one with his legs on the railing. 

The ten-minute sketches:

I'm still struggling a bit with head size in proportion to the body, and with making it look like the model is looking upward or downward, etc. It's exciting to know there's always more to learn, but I'm starting to get frustrated about that particular pair of issues. I have been working on them for a while now. 

Here are the fifteen-minute poses:

You can see what I mean, I think, about head sizes. In the color picture, the head is too small and the hair too big. would go in and fix the hair, but colored pencils don't erase so well, so here's the result. The head on the other picture is too big, but at least it actually looks a bit like the model. 

In that final pose, he wove his fingers into his toes in a very interesting and challenging way, which is where I spent the bulk of my time drawing. Here's a close-up of that: