Happy Leap Day!! and, More from my life drawing class:

Today we had to do a cross contour drawing of our hand.  Meaning I couldn't pick up my pencil at any time but, I was allowed to look at my paper.  We only had a few minutes and we had to pick this pose.

Reducing an image to the least amount of shapes with the broad side of a charcoal stick.  I think this helps with size and placement issues. 

Here are 4 more 1 minute energy drawings.  I'm trying to see flowing lines through my subjects and added the spinal curve to many of these like in the one above on the bottom left. 

With this cross contour drawing, again we could not pick up our charcoal, we had to use one of the students across the room for our subject.  I finally feel like all the contour and cross contour drawings are helping me actually see the subject.  I think the likeness of this woman is one of my better ones to date.  I've drawn people before, but couldn't get the my representation to look like the person I was trying to draw.