Life Drawings from the Month of June

I have been attending the Tuesday night life drawing sessions at Stu's as well as an occasional Sunday morning at Clarke's studio.  Some times I like the work I produce, other times I feel as if my work is just mediocre.  I am doing well if I can get one good drawing out of Tuesday night's 20 minutes poses.  Clark's are one extended pose, so it is good or it is not so good, never in between

This is one of my favorite paintings, as I like the rougher strokes of color.  This month I have been working in oil pastel on Bristol board.  I have been using Copal as my blending medium.  For the 20 minute poses, I have started working on smaller pieces of Bristol board, this one is 11" x 14"

I don't usually try to show the entire figure, rather I tend to focus on the core, the midsection.  This one is different from my norm.  Again, with the oil pastels I am focusing on more natural skin tones and am applying white, or another very neutral color to the negative space.

Another example of a painting that was made on same night as the above painting.  I was having a good night interpreting Lisa's figure.

 This past Tuesday our model was Jesse.  His skin was very bronze, he was tall, and beautifully shaped.  He looked very statuesque!  It made drawing him a real pleasure.  To show his bronzer skin, I turned to more of an orange palette than I had been using for the skin tones.  It seemed appropriate.  I also went out of my comfort zone and focused one of my paintings on his profile and upper body.  Amazing, but it actually looks like him, I guess I surprised myself as that usually doesn't happen for me.

I will be taking a life drawing class next week at the Art Educator's Summer Workshop and am hoping for some tips or instruction that will help me do a better job drawing figures as well as teaching my students how to draw people (clothed).