Life Drawing For the First Time

My first lesson at life drawing was bit weird - seeing a complete stranger just strip off was very strange and I would be lying if I said I was comfortable with it. Also drawing figures were was ridiculously hard, I have never been one for drawing portraiture and figures, I prefer still life and so this was a little challenging to begin with and my first four drawings were rubbish really. But as I got into the pace of the quick drawing it got better but I really struggled to keep up with the quick pace and sketching as much as I could of the figure in a short time.

We tried to mix up how we were sketching by using our left hand, taping a pencil to the end of a stick and tried drawing from a wonky distance and then keeping our arm stiff and moving our bodies as the way to move the pencil. 

The whole point was to get us moving behind our canvas and to get used to stepping back to look at our drawing and subject. Also so we weren't getting too close to our drawings and not looking at our subject for reference.

Research!!
After our lesson I researched into figure drawing techniques that related to the measurements and structure so I could improve and use them to improve my drawings in life drawing next week.

Thumb and Pencil Method
A popular method is by measuring with an outstretched arm and measuring the size of the head with your pencil, this is because it is the basic unit in a figure - then using that size to figure out the proportion of the figure which is usually around 6 heads.

A second method was using shapes to construct the figure before filling out with outlines - for example using triangles and circles to be the rough/quick representation. 

Sketching out the angle lines of the figure is another method which I found that I was already using and found quick easy to use since its what came to mind straight away when told to sketch quick. 

So my target for next lesson will be to try different quick sketching methods and see if any of tjose work better for me.