Drawing Again: Preparation

Yesterday I posted on my project blog that I've started drawing again. The long bout of writer's block I've suffered for the past 6 years has finally ended. There's a problem that comes with that, though. I'm drawing figures. I know little enough about drawing figures that I'm feeling really frustrated. Drawing heads and pretty faces is much, much easier for me, simply because I've practiced drawing them for so long (seven years, in fact, from 1999 to 2006). So back to the bookcase I go. I picked two books to learn from: Jack Hamm's Drawing the Head and Figure, and Burne Hogarth's Dynamic Figure Drawing. The first will help me with the "contrapposto" poses I'm trying to draw right now. The second will help me with action poses from all angles. Actually, I'm fairly good at what little I can draw. I think yesterday's two rough sketches of my character Shira's midsection and beautiful behind are quite good. It's what I don't know that's driving me back to the instruction books. And so the learning resumes. Meanwhile, I ought to start practicing drawing heads again to bring back all the skills I've learned over the years back to memory...