More Life drawing

Last time I was at my art course in London, Rachel mentioned that I should try and get some practice, so I Googled 'Life Drawing Fife' and found a 5 week course at The Steeple in Newburgh led by Bruce Shaw. Although the drive there every Wednesday has been a trek, I've really enjoyed spending time doing more life drawing and Bruce has challenged me to try new techniques and develop my drawing style further.

Every week we start with some very quick 1,3 and 5 minute sketches to warm up then we do a longer drawing. This was week 1 (unfortunately I did this in charcoal and didn't fix it so it got very smudged in my portfolio, but I've tried to clean it up a bit)...

At week 2's class Bruce encouraged us to try a different medium 'Conti' - this drawing uses brown and white conti. We were also asked to focus on light and dark areas...

At week 3's class I was faced with my first male nude and Bruce showed us how to use hatching to shade. We worked in pencil using a bamboo skewer as a measuring stick to get proportions more accurately. Here's my effort...

Week 4 was another male model, but this time clothed. I went back to using charcoal and spent a lot of time trying to get the details of the folds in the clothing...

Finally, last night was the last lesson for this block. Bruce talked about composition of a picture and the golden section. Our model was female this time and we had a reclined pose...

I've really enjoyed Bruce's classes and am looking forward to the next block starting  in November.