The first half of Life Drawing has been a series of highs and lows for me.  Some days I would feel fairly happy with my drawings and other days would be a complete disaster.  I struggled for the first couple of weeks getting the hang of how we are expected to draw.  I found it difficult, at first, to see the internal structure of the model and to build on that skeleton, many times I reverted back to drawing what I was seeing (like a still life).  I also struggled with keeping my lines light in the early stages of a drawing, I have the nasty habit of pressing to hard.  My first shell drawing is a good example of my tendency to press down too hard.

There is very little variation in the shade of my lines which makes the shell seem a little flat.  In honesty I thought I would enjoy working on the manekin more than I do, I've been finding it excessively difficult to understand the textbook images and I often refer to other visual sources to build the muscles.  I think that I am beginning to grasp the drawing style that we are expected to portray, but there's a lot of room for improvement.  I'm looking forward to moving into the shoulders the second half of the semester, that's one attachment that I've found to be a struggle for me to draw as well.  I'm certainly not the best in the class, but I feel like I'm improving, which says a lot for me, I've never been very excited about 2-dimensional media, and, as a result, I tend to avoid them.  I'm finding the structure of Life Drawing to be more relaxed than the foundational drawing courses, and that certainly helps me stay motivated to draw. My mid-term portfolio can be found here.