I’ve made scarcely any mention of it on my blog but last year I did a fair amount of life drawing at my college and have just begun attending again for the new year.
Being completely honest; my sketches in these classes have been at best mediocre and at worst, terrible. As presentable pieces they’re pretty poor and it certainly highlights my weaknesses in observational drawing. Making comics has likely furthered my artistic skills in many respects, but it’s also resulted in a procedural habit of making up details as I go along, filling in the gaps with my imagination and exaggerating as required. This isn’t exactly a bad thing, but as I got back into life drawing I found myself instinctively approximating details rather than actually looking at the curves and shapes in reality.
Excusing my work by saying its ‘stylised’ can only be taken so far. In my final graphic I don’t intend to go for straight up realism, however even the most abstract art tends to have an element of reality to it. What it all comes down to is the danger of playing it safe, failing to push myself and admit that I can do better.
The drawings above aren’t particularly great – the fact that anatomical differences on the same model are so evident is testimony to this – but it’s uplifting to see that there’s a marked improvement over what I did last year. On the smaller scale I could consider these to be failures, but it’s my hope that they’ll assist in my long term success.
Look at it this way, the more mistakes I make now the less I’ll make in the final project…
Growing Branch 
Life drawing sessions, so frustrating yet a really good learning experience. You shouldn’t be so harsh on these drawings, they are pretty good(you should see mine haha). Some teachers/artists would probably tell you that you put too much details and style and such… But you got the postures and attitude good, especially in the first one. We can feel the weight and flesh and “life”, isn’t that the point?
@demontales: Truth be told I’ve selected two of my better sketches here, earlier examples being somewhat less accomplished :/ My tutors have indeed criticised the maximalist approach I take to style/details though they’ve admitted this is from a fine art rather than graphics point of view. Either way, it’s good to hear the figures carry some weight and a sense of ‘life’ as you put it :)