I’m continuing with life drawing classes and although I enjoy them and can definitely see them helping me with the anatomy knowledge in animation exercises, I have good days and bad ones.
I used to think it was quite normal and sometimes, and I know that putting pressure on the outcome is the worst way to approach a session, but I started to notice what is the key (at least in my case) to have a good session. If I spend few ours working on an assignment, and so draw quite a lot, I am then less rusty when I take the class in the evening. It might also because I’m consequently less precious about the final outcome and just try to get the pose down as quick as I can, which after all is what gesture drawing is.
A “bad session” for me would be struggling through the initial 30 sec poses, which I am never happy with anyway in terms of results. My struggle would be to get down the correct pose with the right proportions: I can see my drawing getting small, the big and small again, but it doesn’t get easier to draw after the first few drawings. With the time increase, I find it easier to then move into one and then two minutes, the latter allowing me enough time to draw all the essential (head, torso, legs, arm, hands and feet). During bad days though, when the time comes for the 2 minutes poses, I would have accumulated a lot of frustration and my concentration would be gone. The second round after the break is slightly better but still not good enough.
I think the plan is to always have some drawings done before the session starts in the evening, whether that means work on assignments or just do observational drawings or personal one. I understand that this is not a guarantee that my drawings will always come out as intended, but it will definitely give me an insight and prove my theory either right or wrong, and I can take it from there.