Learning New Things Every-Other Day

One of my first posts pertained to the subject of being over-excited to take life drawing. Well now we find ourselves at the halfway point and boy-o-girl has it gone too fast. The question is- What have I learned so far this semester? My answer to that would be a great deal of little tricks and an eye for the human form. When the class had first started I had been working on my sketching skills and drawing characters here and there everyday in my sketchbook but did not have a true understanding of many things.
Now that I have been in Life Drawing for half a semester my understanding of the figure has changed. Now when I look at people walking on the street I try to find their rib cage and where there pelvic bones would be. Creepy I totally understand but hang in there with me. The hips and shoulder angles point to the foot that supports our weight when standing so I seem to pay much more attention of how the upper and lower parts of the body interact with each other. So when people are standing I figure out what leg is supporting their body.
My 'life' drawing skills have gotten much better as you will be able to see from my sketches posted on my blog or my flikr account . At first I had a problem with creating the torso and rib cage far too large. After practicing in class, outside of class, and watching the tutorial video I found that it is almost a square for the most part. Adding that to my knowledge has greatly increased the quality and proportions of my drawings.
We have also spent much time working with the hip and pelvic bones which have become another reference point. The more reference points and markers we add the easier if seems to create drawing that look much more correct than previously.
The major thing that I could work on would be to give my drawings a less geometric stylistic feel to them. This is great for the mood I am going for in my outside work but when drawing from life I may miss some of the smaller details when the drawing is more geometric. I really enjoy graffiti and street art and that is part of where it comes from as well as just giving my stuff a different stylistic feel.
One of the things I do well is keep my drawings clean and to the point. I do not like to keep stray lines on my page. For lots of my inked drawings there are only as many lines as needed and no extra. When drawing I like to have everything clean and that is one of the reasons I use graphite rather than charcoal sticks. My marks get bolder with my level of sureness on the lines and shapes. Throughout the semester I have seen myself becoming more sure of the lines I lay down and not as much second guessing.
Before the end of the semester I want to have a much better understanding of the muscles on the surface of the skin and why they appear that way which will come from studying the mannequin. I also want to get a sharper eye for negative space when there is not a picture border around the subject at hand. My drawings from picture seem to be much more precise but who's aren't? So I would like to improve my overall drawing ability but now have an understanding of why certain things look the way they do. The last thing that I would love to learn would be the bone and skull structure but that seems to be a figure drawing two subject so I guess I may just have to sign up for that class.
I understand that this class is a life drawing class but I think that it may be a good idea to give us a little more outside homework such as draw a picture of a person and add all the tricks we know as well as the structure underneath? Just a thought. This is the one class I would not mind homework for.