Going back to my roots

It has been quite a number of years since I tackled painting/drawing nudes. I guess the main reason for my lack of figure work has been due to the difficulty of getting to a life drawing class or hiring a model. Living in the middle of nowhere does limit one's options. 
Yesterday a friend came over to visit and she was looking through my folio, when she came across a couple of my figure drawings. She was like 'wow you need to do more of these people would love them.' Now not just two minutes ago we were discussing how conservative Haugesund is and how my recent work (with the skeletons, eyes, creepy Victorian figures) would scare a lot of the locals away, AND only the serious 'Gary Reef' collectors would truly appreciate the new direction. 
So it got me thinking, and today I decided I would start doing figure drawing again. So below are some examples of some figure drawings from a life drawing class I used to take back in the 90's, I have a lot more pictures and need to upload them, but here are some to give you an example of my style.

Now not having a model directly in front of me does make it slightly challenging because it is hard to visualize different positions, but because my style does allow for proportional errors, he he he, I think I can get away with it. The style is very loose and free flowing. One thing I try not to do is over work the figures or the composition, keeping it simple is best! Also, only allowing myself to work on any one figure for a few seconds helps.
I decided I would start by using different shades of primary and Prussian Blue. A lot of people say Prussian blue is an old fashioned colour but I have always loved it. The figures themselves, well they are inspired by looking at my other drawings (basically i am doing contour drawings of them) and I am selecting the images I think would work well together. I am looking at figures online, etc.

---

The thing you have to keep in mind with this particular style is that you have to consciously ask yourself 'How can I create the gesture in the least amount of brush strokes?' 'How can i capture the essence of the pose?' It does take a lot of practice and you really need to loosen up before beginning a drawing like this.  Anyway I will add to this gallery above as the work evolves.