Gestures . . . aren't they all?

So I have become lazy with my drawing abilities (note the last update to my Flicker page) and after more than half a year, decided to do something about it: I started taking very humbling classes at Fleischer Art Memorial. I had always been intrigued by attending there, what with it's low cost alternative to debt-friendly fare such as enrollment at the Univeristy of the Arts or flying to France to study anatomy under the tutelage of Thomas Wienc from L'École des Beaux Arts.

The first class, or more appropriately, my first legitimate art lesson, was with gesture drawings. We worked from a beautiful model whose hair was something I wanted so desperately to capture but since hair has nothing to do with "finding the center," I had to ignore it all the while noting how great it looked even when it became matted to her forehead thanks to a very well-heated. She had scars on her body and a tattoo, but still I found her to be of great beauty. Sadly, I could not illustrate anything I wanted to. Why not? Well, not understanding how to "gesture draw" would be the most prevalent factor. Next to that, lack of practice with a conté crayon followed by all around artistic rust (once again, see the Flickr page and the last date I posted).

So, I tried to learn gesture drawing on my own, after the fact (posted here). 3 drawing done this morning in roughly 7 minutes. It should have taken me 6 minutes, but I lost track of the time on the thrid drawing. Next week, I get to learn contour drawings. I am humbled once again.