Tandem life drawing session

At last week's life drawing session, we had 2 models to draw. Which was a first for me, and terribly perplexing. Where to even start? The scribbles I got down for gesture poses were, to put it kindly, "barely legible." In 3-5 minutes there is hardly time to get down one figure, let alone two. I continued to struggle throughout the 20 minute poses. Pretty much the whole three hour session was taxing because there was so much info to take in. I almost packed up and left, but I finally got a strategy together and had some success on the very last pose, although I still got lost in the detail and ran out of time.

That's willow charcoal stick on large-sized 18"x24" drawing paper, which is what I use for almost all of my 20 minute drawings.

Anyway, the most important thing I took away from this session was the following:

Don't give up.

Not a particularly revolutionary or original thought, I know. But there is always a lesson to be learned, even in the worst of drawing sessions, when all you do is junk you rip into shreds and dump into the recycle bin.