Practice enrichment - Life Drawing and evaluation and SWOT analysis

As part of my practice enrichment module, I was required to attend week of life drawing. I had only done life drawing once before and had found it to be an interesting experience that broadened my knowledge of anatomy and traditional drawing techniques under a timed session.
I really enjoyed this activity but towards the end of the week my arms and back were aching from all the standing and drawing. I was tired of studying the same models body and I had become slightly bored of the activity, not to mention the room was unbearably stuffy. So I conclude that for me personally life drawing is invaluable to an artist who wishes to progress in their own style and gain a good understanding of human anatomy- IN SHORT BURSTS! Doing it for a week straight from 9:00am-3:00pm is harsh on the hands and mind! But despite this I would do it again for the sake of progression.

Strengths: Drawing ability, attention to detail, ability to focus on the task fully.
Weaknesses: Standing up for too long hurts my back, I needed a stool and to lower my canvas which took up valuable time and broke my concentration.
Opportunities: Gain knowledge of anatomy, use of different materials, interesting and thought provoking tasks and challenges.
Threats: Tiredness, boredom, pain, mentally draining, some poses were unusual and hard to draw within the specified time limit.

The task given to us here was to sketch out the model in the position he was in for the amount of time we were given. At first we were given a good few minutes but the time got progressively slower to a few seconds until it was impossible to do anything but draw a line or stick man. The point of the exercise was to portray movement as the model stood in different positions around the room. By overlapping and using techniques like not taking your pencil off the paper it gave a blurred effect and livened up the image.

Front study 

With these two images we were required to hold a very long thin stick with charcoal attached to the end and were given a few minutes to draw the model. This was challenging and a fun approach though I would much rather have had an hour to finish it! 

Side view 2 minutes without taking charcoal off the paper 

For this example we were given about two hours to make a sketch, then we had to choose a set of different coloured chalks to draw with and we were asked to draw on top of our original picture. I didn't like this idea since I had spent time putting detail into the first picture but it's still an interesting approach to use.

3/4 back study

Ear study- this was the first piece we did and it required us to go up to the model and look at his ear for however long you wanted. Then you had to go back to your easel and draw it from memory, though you were allowed to keep going to have another look. I actually found this really hard because I was just settling into the whole life drawing scenario and it was a bit of a warm up sketch. I also disliked having to draw from memory but didn't think it was right to keep going over to stare!