Quick poses with toned paper

The following drawings where done on white paper toned with charcoal powder. I saw a fellow student and amazing draftsman, Isaac Pelepko, doing this one day and decided to give it a shot. I found it immensely helpful. Working with toned paper forces you to erase as much as you draw, which really forces you to see the lights on a figure (i.e. the parts of an object that light hits directly, as opposed to the shadows, which the light doesn't reach).

I thought I was being clever by establishing my lights in some sort of a hatching system. Now i just find it distracting.

I remember drawing this one and hating it at the time. In hindsight, I don't dislike it nearly as much. Its very rough which may be the reason I like (and dislike) it.

These don't read very well but whatever.

This is my best one, I think. Which is funny, because I don't really remember drawing it at the time.

I only worked this way for about a week but learned soo much. Last week I went back to trying it and will post my results soon. Now that I know more about modeling factors, I'll hopefully be more aware of the midtones!

I'm linking to Isaac Pelepko's website here. Just a disclaimer; Isaac's stuff might be a bit racy for some but its also very very funny.