Life Drawing - improving the art of drawing

Since embarking on a journey of personal reflection I have decided to improve my skill of drawing people by taking up life drawing art classes on a Tuesday evening at the Jam Factory in Oxford. During my project I am hoping to draw members of my own family to relate to personal meaning of my project. I feel that attending life drawing classes will help to improve my technique of drawing people by focusing on composition, movement, lines of construction and tone. Furthermore, I have chosen Jenny Saville, a contemporary artist from Oxford to relate to the drawings that I do. I have chosen this artist because I find her work intriguing. I have decided to focus more on the drawings that she does rather than on her own meaning behind them. I have created an A1 page with my own response to her work to show my intentions: this A1 page has a watercolour was as a background and the title have been written in black felt tip pen and then washed with water to create a bleeding effect which can be seen in some of Saville's drawings:

Saville focuses on the life form and particularly the female body. She creates pieces that are often larger than life size. She draws both in graphite and in oil paint. I have completed most of my responses to her work in graphite pencil. Saville draws in great detail, picking out certain features of the model which I really like. I am attracted to the detail and depth of her work, particularly her tone and line. Some of the lines she uses are dark and weighted. I have tried to show this is my own response on this A1 page. I have focused more on line to create a form rather than tone. However, I have added in hatched lines to add some tone to the drawing. 

As you can see, I have decided not to draw the models face as I have wanted to concentrate more on the body of the model rather than certain features of the face as this is not necessarily what I wish to practise. I will practise more on the face in future drawings. This is a simple drawing of the female body, however It has given me great practise when drawing certain features and practising with composition. I quite like the pose of the model. I have tried to portray the movement of the hair as the hand ruffles through it and the angle of the hips and legs. The simple drawings of Saville have influenced me, these ones I have been particularly attracted to: 

This is a simple composition and I like how Saville has drawn in and left the construction lines of other poses. However she has decided to work into one main pose.

This graphite drawing is interesting. It focuses more on the models face and zooms in on the top half of the model rather than the whole body. This is perhaps a technique I could try.

This drawing has been developed into colour; oil paint. Like the other drawings, Saville has also chosen to leave in the lines of construction to show movement. The colours are highly pigmented but stay realistic. 

I will continue to attend life drawing classes to add to my collection of observational drawings. However I also aim to draw from old photographs of my family and photographs that I have taken to add further practise. Jenny Saville's drawings are emotive and do have some powerful meaning behind them. Like her, I aim to put my own meaning behind the drawings that I also create. And as stated before, this will be of personal reflection and memory preservation.