Shading/General Critique

Hello everyone!

First, I want to say how happy I am that I found this site a few months ago! I've always enjoyed sketching, but as a hobby I haven't ever had any instruction. This site has helped in so many ways to help clean up my drawings and give me a lot of helpful ideas to make my sketches much better.

My preferred medium is Pencil and charcoal. I don't do well with colors, and to be honest, just prefer black and white. What I feel I need to work on the most is shading. I've been trying to work on it progressively, and would love to get some feedback on the look of my shading, as well as any tips or reference material to help with shading techniques.

I'm fortunate enough that my wife enjoys posing for me. Its fantastic having a live in model as I'm sure you can imagine. And any time she may not be available, this sites model poses has been awesome.

On to the sketches:

http://imgur.com/DotV9pL

Any and all advice, critique, links to information would be greatly appreciated!

Hi DrDayDream!

I want to extend a belated welcome to our site and forums! :) I'm thrilled to hear you've found us useful even with a live in model at hand.

I had to remove several of your sketches in accordance with our forum rules, which you're more than welcome to review again here: https://line-of-action.com/forum-rules/ Regular nudity is definitely okay, but sexual depictions come with all sorts of legal issues we'd rather avoid, sorry!

In regards to your shading, I think it would be good to explore a higher contrast in your drawings. Everything looks very gentle and soft, but that also leads to a drawing looking simply smudgy rather than carefully detailed. It also looks faint, as if the shading is not finished. What sort of goals have you set for yourself regarding shading, and what materials are you perusing for practice?