Drawing course - final week

Part two of our big drawing - certainly the biggest (and most sustained) I've yet done. This is how it looked at the start of the day -

To which I added shading -

and then tackled this tricky bit, following the suggestion to look at it in terms of dark and light, rather than the line -

With the shape in place, it was time to "do something" about that huge uninteresting area at the top and left. Charcoal would have competed with the interesting area in the foreground, so pencil was suggested. First I added some charcoal squiggles to rub back, then used pencil for shapes resembling the positioning marks on the floor.

starting some "textural diffusion"

charcoal rubbed back, pencil shapes over top

finished?

Alas that's the end of the course. What have I gained from it - the pleasure of working with charcoal on an easel, neither of which are practical at home; a regular time-slot for drawing; practice in replicating the positions of objects in relation to each other; other ways of looking at the possibilities within a drawing. And that perseverance thing - keeping going even when it's not working, breaking through to a point where it does start to work, even if it means rubbing it all out and starting again.