This probably should have been the part one post since drawing comes before painting, but I just remembered I had these. Had a few big pads and an old moldy(literally) portfolio with some drawings in it.
All the black and white drawings are with charcoal and I think the red ones are Conte Crayons if I remember correctly.
Notice the actual mold on these last two newsprint drawings lol
I remember when I was in school, as I mentioned before, I spent a LOT of time drawing from life and going to workshops. My ultimate goal was to be able to invent figures from my imagination and I had teachers tell me that the best way to learn to draw figures from your imagination was to draw from life.
After a while my life drawings improved but I still was terrible at drawing figures from my imagination. What I found was that you definitely needed to practice both, probably an equal amount. One of those things I wish someone had told me sooner. I learned that when you're drawing figures from your head the thought process is a lot different than how I learned to draw figures from life, which we referred to as "direct drawing". Direct drawing is sort of like a counter to construction drawing. Where with direct drawing, you just draw the shapes as you see them and with construction, you build the more complex shapes from simpler ones. In general direct drawing is cleaner, but I think construction gives you more of an understanding of what you're drawing.
Later as I learned more about drawing from imagination my way of approaching the figure leaned a lot heavier towards construction, so if I did these drawings again today, they'd be a lot messier I think.
Anyway, hope you guys are enjoying my blast from the past posts. As always, thanks for looking!