The Aim
Draw an hour-long pose with your chosen medium
The Exercise
For this exercise I chose to draw my daughter. I chose charcoal as a medium and drew on large (A1) heavy-weight cartridge paper. There was strong natural lighting coming from the left-hand side of the drawing.
Reflections
I feel that the body is sitting correctly on the sofa with sufficient weight and presence to be believable. However my reaction to looking at this drawing again after a couple of days was that I had drawn two different drawings and stitched them together. The top half doesn’t quite match the bottom half. Lily’s hand is a little on the small side, which is exaggerated by the foreshortening with the knees and lower legs, in particular the leg crossed up over (which are possible a little too wide). I also have muddled up the style of drawing in different places too, especially with the fabric. The shirt is made up of quick expressive marks, where as the leggings are more tonal and smudged. These differences in drawing style do, I think, reflect the different materials and the sense of bagginess or tightness of each garment but in my opinion they don’t help the drawing come together as a whole.
Update
Having posted this exercise yesterday I have had some very helpful feedback from another student regarding the models left elbow (right as looking at it). I hadn’t really appreciated that it looked a bit like the arm ended in a stump at the elbow and wasn’t really attached to the hand poking out from underneath the tablet. I guess in my mind the elbow was always attached so failed to notice that a viewer totally new to the drawing wouldn’t see it this way. So I have gone back and redone that elbow (without my daughter being present). I have elongated it very slightly and adjusted the shading. These very small changes make a huge difference and I hope this now looks like an attached elbow and lower arm supporting the screen.
Drawing 1:Drawing Skills 
I didn’t see it as two different drawings. i think it is very good indeed. the only thing I found odd is her left elbow (on right side looking at drawing).
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Hi Susan thanks for that and you are quite right her elbow looks like a stump rather than attached to her forearm! Thank you so much for pointing this out. I have made some adjustments and posted another copy under the original if you are interested!
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I think this is great, especially the lighting effect. I agree with Susan about the left elbow not quite working, but the pose and composition are very convincing overall.
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Thank you, the reworked elbow is definitely an improvement!
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