My latest one. It’s a 12x12 piece on Clairfontaine dark blue Pastelmat. Used soft pastels in the form of pan pastels, pastel sticks (Rembrandt, Sennelier, Nupastels) and pastel pencils (Stabilo Carbothello, Caran d’Ache, Faber Castell Pitt Pastels, and Sennelier woodless pastel pencils) reference image by Jennifer Morrison
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@Meme5 Sonia, again a beautuful artwork! I can not amaging to be so precise with pastels…I know it is one oft your favorites mediums and your Handlung this it so wow!
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I cane across my grapes drawing that I started weeks ago. It had two grapes and stems unfinished so tonight was the night to complete it, so now I feel better with a small accomplishment. It’s centered on a 10x10 rising museum matboard 100% cotton with prismacolor and polychromos colored pencils. Reference from Jennifer Morrison site
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Beautiful looks so realistic. Almost like you could just grab one and peel it
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This is my first time drawing a person from a live model . It was an amazing experience and I plan on taking some of the classes offered here on the vt to help with more drawing skills etc . A group here in Michigan I belong too offers live models so I will continue to engage in that and hopefully get better at it . Any suggestions or comments are appreciated . I love all the feed back . Next time I might try charcoal instead of pencil.
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Hello @Creativejan,
First, I want to say thank you for posting this. Must be a very interesting experience to draw a life figure. As you are asking for some comments and feedback, I will try to give you some.
But please, take it with a grain of salt, as I have never done a life drawing myself, but I just want to help if possible.
That being said, if I would do a life drawing (or even drawing a pose from a picture - that one I have done), the first thing I would do is “squeeze my eyes”. Drawing such a complex object, and especially a body, may be overwhelming. Because we are used to looking at people all the time, we already “know” how a body, an arm, a leg looks like, but it may be distracting us when actually drawing, because we are using our brain and memory instead of using only our eyes.
That is why I would squeeze my eyes, to get rid of all the details and focus only on bigger shapes and try to draw that first. I would do it more “messy” way, to find out the right shape at the beginning (so maybe a circle would have more than 1 line, until I would find the correct shape and size).
As well, I would try to connect the parts of the body that I can’t see. Again, because we may position some parts slightly differently than they may be in reality.
In your example, I would try to imagine where exactly is the right hand of the person. We can’t see it, it is covered by the body, but we know that the hand is coming from the right shoulder. Now, is the hand straight or is it bended? You can even draw it (even if you dont see it if that help), to see where the hand would end up. The way how his right hand is drawn, facing down holding the pole we can assume it is straight. If we look at his wrist and we make the lines longer toward his shoulder, will we meet the shoulder?
I think you got a size of the body pretty good. Drawing hands and feet is very often hard. Same like drawing a face in detail would be hard. It is because we are looking at hands and faces all the time, so our brain picks up any slight difference between a drawing and reality. I would probably pay less attention to these parts just now, maybe I would just make a general shape (let’s say some oval) and later on fill in details if I have time (I see you have it timed). What I would pay attention would be the position and how they are rotated. Again, here our brain is taking the control and our eyes are ignored because we “know” how the leg looks like so lets just draw it. The first step (sqeezing your eyes) should help here a bit. If I am looking at the legs and feet, something feels a bit off. I do not know how the person was standing, but I am assuming that as he is facing away from us, his body is away from us, his legs (and feet) would be probably facing away from us. So, for example, we would see more of the heel and the rest of the feet would face the pole (so the line of the feet would go more to upper left corner of the paper instead of down left). I may be wrong here but that’s what I would imagine. Legs are generally hard to draw, feet as well, and the position is hard to see because we know the person is “standing on the floor in front of us” but that may influence our opinion a bit when drawing.
It’s a bit long post but sometimes its hard to explain things in writting. I hope this will help at least a bit and that you could take something from it.
Dont forget that this is just my opinion and observation, maybe someone more experienced can help even better 
Thanks again for posting, looking forward seeing your next drawing.
Lucy
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Thank you for the welcome. Travel can be very inspiring.
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Thank you soo much Lucy for your input and advice . It is greatly appreciated and I will use it the next time I go next Thursday and see what I come up with that time. I agree faces , feet and hands can be a little challenging as well and I will be taking Matt’s classes on that as well as continuing with the right side of the brain and I also have a book I can’t think off the top of my head but it draws bodies and faces and hands . And the advice of looking with eyes squinted is a great idea . I did do the basic outlines like you discussed and it does help I was trying to just get the general body shape . Thank you soo much I appreciate it. That is what I love about the virtual instructor forum so many people are so helpful and encouraging. Thank you again Jan
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I can’t believe I hadn’t seen your graphite drawing. It is amazing 
I hipe to see your work more often!
Sonia Alonzo
Terri @robichon
Thank you, so happy you like them. Always means so much to me especially coming from a talented artist like you!
Sonia
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I have now venture into Oil paint. This is an excercise in painting grass (or fine lines with a brush). I got the background colour too dark, so I wasn’t able to get the contrast I wanted.
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Nice improvement, @Bearinthegarden
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I can finally sort all this pencils and pastels back to where they belong to make room for a fresh set of materials for current projects
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Hi Sonia @Meme5
I can so relate to the collection of supplies all over the place. My area looks like this too when I finish something or have multiple projects going. 
It feels so good to get everything back where it belongs, so that you can start messing it up all over again.
Terri
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Beautiful composition! Wow, it looks like colored pencil first glance, your control and detail with pastels is impressive.
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