Stretching the mind

Some tougher poses tonight at Life Drawing class. I'm still working with pastels in a looser way. Though I'm now a little worried that I'm falling into a safe zone with them.
The blue and orange one I tried not to 'draw' the figure too much and initially started by blocking in the tone. However this proved a little difficult once I ran out of major tonal sections!
I'm going to try some different techniques next week and perhaps use pen and ink...eek! This could be good to stretch my brain even more or it could be a disaster as i realise that the pastels are actually really forgiving of minute mistakes. We'll see what the damage is next week!

Spring birds

This is my latest piece if bird inspired mixed media. As (I thought) spring was on its way it seemed appropriate to use one of my favourite little birds in a piece.
I'm happy with the collage and mixture of marks on the birds themselves. But I think the background needs to he lighter and perhaps evened out, it's a complementary grey/purple colour but its too rich. I'm considered cutting the birds out on their little trees an transferring them to a background of warmer climes!

Faces

This evening I went to my local Life drawing class, something I haven't done for over a year!
We focused on faces for the whole evening, which was interesting especially as when I normally draw figures I focus very little on the face.
Here is 'Roy' and 'Caroline'. They were both 10 minute sketches in charcoal. Roy was easier, being a standard profile. Though I think his ear is a little big! Caroline was a challenge which I set myself. I asked her to deliberately sit partial profile, so that I could see the line of the nose but also the cheek the other side. About half way through I nearly gave up, but I persevered and it paid off, just! I need to re-work the cheek on the right, make her cheekbone higher, but it bears some resemblance which isn't bad!