Pencil drawings

One of my favorite teachers in college was the late Charles Hall. If I remember correctly, his class was the first one I went to and he taught Basic Figure Drawing. The thing that was great about CCAD was that they were really good about breaking you down and helping to destroy bad habits. I think the main thing that his class destroyed in me was starting off too dark when drawing and instead learning to lightly build up your drawing. To achieve this he had us all start off with extremely hard leads - 6H, 4H, and 2H. 6H is basically like drawing with a nail, but it allows you to lightly get your structure down. Even then he would have us use a kneaded eraser to soften as you went - basically you would sketch, lighten up with your eraser, sketch some more, eraser, sketch, etc etc. It was a long process but it taught me patience and if you did it correctly, your final drawing had this weird sense of reality and ghostliness to it. Most of all it was just a very peaceful way to work..... Over the years my pencil work evolved from shading to crosshatching and eventually I began adding hard lines to stuff to emphasize certain parts and give it a style. Here's some examples of my pencil work over the years, ranging from realism to stylized.....