5nd Art-Trail Contest: My submissions of the figure from life

I think it is so cool how the artists are using this platform to learn and grow from one another. It looks like there is a number of contests, challenges, and collaborations happening. I'm excited to be able to participate. I'm going to submit a drawing and a painting to @art-trail's contest. The theme is Nude/Human body/Anatomic Study:

"The naked human body is one of the most ancient subject in art. There were nudes in art when art was not... art yet! Representing the naked body means showing intimacy, humanity, nature, frailty, beauty, sensuality, essence. Sometimes all these sides of human being together."

I've been attending a local drawing group semi-regularly that gets together every week to draw the live figure. They collect $5 from everyone to pay the model and he/she sits for five one-minute warm-up poses (gestures), and then a long pose made up of four 20-minute sittings with 10-minute breaks. They just mark the area and the model with masking tape so he/she can get back into position after each break. It's never exactly the same when they sit back down as much as we can tweak sometimes, but those little discrepancies are part of the challenge and help with understanding the structure.

My submission for the first category is one of my best drawings of my favorite model. I love that she leaves her socks on. In this drawing there's cats on them! Looks like I did this one over a year ago based on my note (5.18.16). That's when I was going every week! For this group I generally work in graphite like the drawing below, but sometimes I dip into charcoal or paint.

I almost always start out with a hard pencil to keep it light when working with graphite (a pencil marked with some variation of H works for me) to get my composition and proportions how I want them, and then I move into a mechanical pencil that I love so much. I love the .7 tip for details and it's technically a 2B. Based on my darks, I'd guess I had an even softer pencil (like a 4B or 6B) to get some of those dark, heavy lines. It's about 9"x12".

My submission for the second category: painting! While drawing was my first love, painting is now my niche. But this is the only painting I have from the figure group I attend. I like to use the group as a break from painting, besides lugging around my paint supplies to work in sub-par lighting environment isn't too encouraging. Although, sometimes I really do have a hard time putting down the brush hence this painting:

It's acrylics on a 16x20 canvas. Normally I'll spend an average of 15 hours on a 16x20, so the time constraint of about 80 minutes kept me loose and fast. I love the painterly impressionistic strokes of color provoked. This was done June 15, 2016.

Hope you guys enjoy!