Life drawing 3: male form

This was my third session of life drawing, this time with a male model of around 40 years old.

We began with a couple of five-minute poses, and I used charcoal on coloured paper just to capture the rough outlines quickly. Working from a seated position with a board on my lap, I found it a little hard to assess how well I was doing at the time - maybe I should use an easel which would allow me to step back occasionally from the work. I wasn't too happy with the results at the time, but I feel rather better about them now, and feel they do at least get the flavour of the pose.

The next pose was for slightly longer, about 10 minutes, but again, I found it hard to get the proportions right, and I was probably too close to the model. I switched to pencil, hoping to get a more precise image, but I've ended up with a somewhat elongated image that's not very convincing....especially with the outstretched arm going off into the distance.

This next pose was 25 minutes, and I decided to stick with pencil.
Again, I struggled at first with proportions, making the head far too small, but after a lot of rubbing out, I think I managed to achieve a fairly accurate representation of the seated figure. Again, I've failed to convey the sense of his right arm resting on the knee, and the legs now look a bit weedy and thin.

The final pose allowed us around 45 - 50 minutes, with the model reclining on the ground.

I really don't think any of these are very successful. I'm still struggling to convey limbs that go off into the distance.
I managed to do three pictures in the time allowed, hoping that a new angle might produce something better.

In the first, I think I've got the proportions correctly, but the legs look a bit flat.

 I then decided to try using chalk on coloured paper, and did this picture very quickly, really just to try out the effects that can be achieved with the white chalk in highlighting certain areas. It's very crude, but I was pleased with the look of the white chalk, so I might try out this technique a bit more to get a bit more accuracy.

Finally I switched to another position to see if that was any more successful, and spent around 10 minutes on this. Halfway through, I decided the buttocks and legs were not quite right rubbed them out and then attempted to correct them. The result is probably worse than what I rubbed out, and the legs aren't right. Again, it's limbs going off into the distance that seem to defeat me, so I'll have to keep working on it.