Exercise 2 - Emphasising form with cloth

I'm a bit short of models at the moment so this had to be a self portrait. I started with water-soluble crayon at A3.

I chose too light a blue for this (this is the problem of working at night) so it's far too feint.

 I worked back into it with a darker blue but it's become a bit staid and forced. The brief didn't state materials or size so I did some further studies in my A4 sketchbook.

 The top drawing is in fineliner but the one I had was drying out and the cat chose that moment to sit on my lap so I had another go in coloured pencils trying to be bolder with the colours

Then biro, I got a bit carried away drawing my face. It's nice to experiment when your model is not going to complain that you've made them look old/ugly/fat etc.
The problem with a clothed figure is when the fabric lies in a way that doesn't appear to relate to the figure underneath or when it looks as though it is part of the underlying figure in a way that is not possible. Having said that I've done a lot of life drawing and I find a clothed figure more interesting in that the clothing says so much about the person beneath.