A selection of drawings from the last 3 weeks

I attend two 3 hour life-drawing sessions each week
I go for the morning only at Angela Palmer's class at Brockweir in the Wye Valley. Here we have conventional sitting or lying poses. A pose is held for two Tuesdays, morning and afternoon, allowing oil painters to work on a painting through to completion over  two whole days. However, I tend to explore the pose through a number of drawings, often from varying locations in the studio.
On Thursday morning I go to 'extreme poses' at Pegasus Art in Stroud. This is where Paul Fowler sets up the most exciting and challenging life-drawing experience one can hope to find. The model, sometimes two models, climb into a 'harness' of ropes suspended from the beams, and create amazing forms for us to draw. Poses last for 30 minutes, and we have 5 different poses each morning.

The following drawings are more or less in chronological order. All incorporate my now standard two-handed technique.  All are on A1 220gsm cartridge paper. I start a drawing with my harder graphite woodless pencils, e.g. 2H/H, then begin to emphasise selected aspects with 2B/3B, then a third layer of very selective mark-making using perhaps 7B or 9B. I do not use an eraser, so the final product holds a record of my explorations and of how the drawing has been made. Mistakes are lived with. The learning about the pose and my emerging relationship with the pose is recorded through my mark-making on the surface of the paper.

I am grappling with a number of issues currently, which find expression in these drawings:
(i) seeking tonal variation through the use of line,
(ii) foreshortening, aided by exaggerating that which is nearest,
(iii) utilising soft or lost edges to help the focus on my selected area of interest,
(iv) when presented with a pose, deciding quickly what it is that challenges, then starting to explore that interest on the paper. By this I mean that I instantly set in motion my perceptual-motor response mechanism. I look, I see, I feel. I then somehow transfer my feelings, through my hands, through my pencils, on to the paper. I then become immersed. I enter a meditative state. I then begin to respond to the marks that are appearing on the paper. From here on the drawing evolves: part sub-consciously,  part consciously.

5 minute gesture compilations

I've done 6 life-drawing sessions since my last posting, and here are 3 starters.
At Angela Palmer's class at Brockweir in the Wye Valley on a Tuesday we often start with three or four 5 minute poses. For quite some time I have taken up the self-imposed challenge of drawing all 3 or 4 poses on the same A1 sheet of cartridge paper. There is probably a degree of anticipation as to what might follow the first pose, but it is only when the model takes up the second pose that a tentative narrative starts to emerge. I frequently find that the third, and if there is one then the fourth pose, can continue the narrative, and go onto complete what may be described as a 'designed' composition.

All drawings are made using both hands simultaneously with graphite woodless pencils.