Drawings of Sasha and Jason

Here are some of my most recent figure works. I am aiming towards greater accuracy in recording the figure, and trying to internalize the entire process so I can work from sight, without external measuring devices and ultimately without a "method." I have already abandoned external measuring, using only the occasional plumb line to check angles. (This flies in the face of the sight-size method, but I didn't want to go there anyway!) I am also skipping the envelope now, and diving more or less straight into the block-in. This CAN create some problems with proportion, or fitting a figure onto the page exactly where I want it, but I figure those will come with time, and actually, I haven't had a huge problem with that recently.

Generally speaking, I've been starting with a shoulder, working out the size of the head and torso, then moving on to the lower body and legs. I think I'd be better to define limits around the figure (for example, drawing a line for the shoulders and then a line for the legs, to set the size of the entire body), but so far, I've been lucky to hit the proportions within an acceptable size.

I've also started drawing in my notebook instead of on individual pieces of paper, as I've been thinking more of just working on figure drawing as opposed to turning out "pieces." I am not working in colour (at least for a while), just getting back to working in pencil to capture a basic likeness. I alternate between thinking, "man, I ought to be able to become very proficient with this" and "holy crap, this is so difficult, I'll never have time to learn it all." I figure that with another 20 years of work, I'll have something to say about the figure, by which time I will be 60...but then, I'll be 60 in 20 years regardless, so might as well have something to show for it!

Anyway, here are the figures. I haven't been dating them until this past week, so I can't remember the exact order, but it's not important anyway.
[I will replace these crappy photos with better-quality photos as soon as I can get around to it.]