Life drawing session 1

Here are the results of the first life drawing session where we did several exercises revolved around drawing a large "sculpture" in the center. The first exercise was to start drawing the structure but to move every 2 minutes to the next persons eisel and continue the drawing which showed me that everyone's drawing skills are different. The second exercise was to attempt to just draw it, I usually make lots of little lines to get the right shapes but I was told to just make one line in the right angle using my arm which I a sure is quicker but I found difficult and is something I need to learn. The hardest exercise we did in my opinion was drawing just the negative space which is every where the "sculpture" wasn't which I initially found hard to figure out where the negative space was but I am confident I could do that one better next time. The easiest exercise that I found was shading with charcoal and probably produced the best result. I haven't really used charcoal before but I liked using it and will use it more often. The final exercise required us to draw the closest parts of the "sculpture with darker lines and further away parts lighter to add some depth. I have done this before with drawing landscapes by separating them in to three layers, each getting lighter the further they are away.

The skills I need to improve on which stood out to me is to draw the subject bigger to use up more space as well as scale needs to be better. Both of those will improve over time as we keep doing these sessions. I also need to get quicker at drawing to draw more of the subject, starting from more basic shapes and then building them up would help with this and the scale as well. The drawings with the darker lines came out the best so I will also invest in darker pencils.