Proportions: Exercise Quick Poses

I have never attempted Life Drawing so joining a class was exciting, intimidating and very challenging.  The main problem that I encountered was the lighting, it was overhead strip lighting so it was difficult to define the tone and work out where the main body of light came from.  I also had to fit my exercises around what the class had been set up to do which at times was a bit frustrating.  The hardest thing for me was the quick sketching as I am slow and to start with there was very little achieved  other than head and shoulders.  Eventually, I realised that I needed to simplify what I was looking at and began to look at angles and shapes and this was quite a turning point in my development.  I also realised the crucial importance of negative space and how that has helped me in finding proportion and form.
Quick Poses
These were two minute poses done from different positions.  These particular sketches I did with out much thinking about detail and the foreshortening was quite a revelation to me I suddenly realised when I used shape and negative space it worked.  I felt totally elated I had suddenly got it! The standing poses I tried to work out proportion and angles and used the head as a measurement.

I really enjoyed the foreshortening and on the two lying poses it was the first time that I have been sucessful in achieving this type of foreshortening I felt quite excited.
I continued with some 10min poses one or two were just over the 10mins and one was under and I have played about with various mediuns.
I started with a pen and ink drawing as I prefer this to black liner but it was quite difficult using this medium on an easel as the ink is flowing the wrong way. I used coloured ink to show tone.

I liked the simplistic effect but I feel I must be more open and freer in the drawing to make a more interesting picture.
The next sketch I did left handed and I was amazed how accurate the drawing was.  I have done one other left handed drawing in the past and again the likeness was good, my sons are dyslexic and it comes from my side of the family so whether this has a bearing on my left laterallity I do not know.  I have darkened the outline with my left hand so that it would stand out on the photograph.

I used charcoal in the next picture and my main criticism is that I took too long over the drawing, it looks laboured and I didn't fell confident in the drawing of the model.  I like charcoal very much and use it a lot in life drawing as it frees you up which I need to do to improve my drawing.

The next two sketches I did on black paper using pastels and I found that this was fun and quick I particularly like the cross legged pose as I just drew the pose as quickly as possible and blocked in tone with different colours not bothering about realism but shape.  It was surprising and not the usual way I approach my work.  I need to expand on this and not be so worried about mistakes or failures.

My final two pictures in this section one in oil pastels where again I have just experimented with colour and the other picture is pastel on pastelmat.

What I have learned from quick sketches is that I need to be more relaxed use my whole arm and try to concentrate on angles, gesture and be bolder with my mark making.