Two in need to improvement

In fairness, I have seen some young people - perhaps especially young women - curled around themselves while nursing a drink and I couldn't but wonder how they'd done it without dislocating one or both hips.  By comparison, I sit these days like a sack of potatoes - you'd find painting me much easier.  And of course - you'd be BOUND to sell!  Work from life, is my serious advice - get yourself a live model and draw them in many, many poses.   For both paintings, yes I can see some improvements between stages 1 and 2, but structurally there are a few issues: and again I recommend you work from live models: forget what you think you know about the human form, treat your subjects as though they were an alien species you'd never seen before.  Work on fingers, as you would on twigs on trees or stems on plants - draw hundreds of hands, from life, plaster casts, photographs.  And do go back to those eyes and reduce the white areas - you do have a habit of making them too wide; now and then you correct this, and then slip back, like a wicked little devil, into bad habits.   The first painting is rather better on the eyes than the second - perhaps it's the eyes that most attract you, and you're exaggerating them in consequence? Off you go into your bathroom - have a good look in the mirror (I don't actually KNOW your bathroom, but I'm assuming there's a mirror in there..): first take a close look at your eyes, and the positional- and size-relationship to your nose; then step back, carefully avoiding the soap you carelessly dropped on the floor, and look at your whole face and how the eyes, as it were, fit into it.  You'll see that they're not huge - they're not even that big, specifically that wide. I know you're not a young woman: and I know that young women often accentuate their eyes, with mascara, plucked eybrows, false lashes etc - but don't fall for these cunning tricks - put 'em in their place*; integrate them into the overall shape of face and head.   *Groucho Marx said "women should know their place; my place, if I can get them there..."; but he wouldn't have got away with saying that now, for good or ill... Anyway, you shouldn't be having young women in your bathroom, which is where we were; very bad for you at your age...  Having said all that - we need always to study whole bodies, rather than focus on bits of them, if we want to paint whole figures.  Could your art group hire a few live models?  Could some of your other members volunteer? Last point - slow down - I suspect you suffer like many of us from the desire to get the paints out; concentrate on the drawing - add slashes of colour to accentuate form, but don't be in too much of a rush to complete a painting; sharpen your pencils or charcoal, or use a brush with thinned ink or watercolour, get a big, thick sketchbook, lots of pages for practice, think of bodies as volumes, shapes - de-personalize them: you're not painting a girl or boy, you're drawing shapes.  It does work, eventually - I keep some of my old drawings (no, I'm NOT going to show them) to remind me of how much I've learned over even the last ten or twenty years by practising drawing.  I don't say it'll take you ten years, but the more you can do, the better.  

Excellent advice from Robert, as usual. Maybe if as you say there’s a shortage of life models in  Melton Mowbray, you could try what our group did a few times, do 15 minute sketches of each other, everyone taking turns to sit for the rest of the group to sketch, no time for detail. Otherwise if you paint from photos, turn the photo upside down so that you are painting or drawing what you actually see and not what you think you see!

Heh.... I understand.  I live on the Isle of Wight.  But I understand there are classes in our local arts hub in which models will display themselves: I haven't taken advantage of them, I'm too anti-social these days (and not proud of it: I really ought to get involved).  I mean it though - if you want to improve your figure drawing, to be quite crude some of you are going to have to get your kit off, or you need to hire a couple of willing models (being sure you have sufficient heating in the halls in which you're expecting them to show themselves).  I don't think there IS a better way - a second best way is plaster casts, but they present their own availability problems.  Good luck, anyway.  I do know it's not easy. 

PS - I think your first painting, and the second, is pretty good!  I've certainly seen young women wrapping themselves up in their own limbs like that - why?  Well, I suppose they just can..... There's way too much fat in my case, getting in the way .... 

I rather like your stylised ladies Peter. Remember no matter how you paint someone will come along with a put down. If you paint realistically they will tell you it looks like a photo. So only change if that's something you want to do. Different is always good.  If you are wanting to go down the route of being more realistic, one of the most useful things I found for proportions was a character art drawing course on udemy by Scott Harris. Its aimed at drawing from imagination but the method is perfect for real life too. It was inexpensive. He's drawing on a tablet in photoshop, but it can be followed just the same with pencil and paper. 

Good man Peter! Hope the exhibition goes well.

I really like your paintings. Lovely colours and subjects. They make me happy.  Access to live models can be hard. I usually try, with mixed results,  to convince my wife to pose for a picture, then I work from that.    A few useful tutorials on gesture/figure drawing. Proko's videos are fairly good. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtG4P3lq8RHEQ1kiN_Nub1vXR8fQQLjDF. For specific poses you can browse  https://www.human-anatomy-for-artist.com/

Peter you portraits are unique to you , yes they are different but that’s what makes art much more interesting. They may not be go everyone’s taste but if your happy and content with then then don’t bang your head against the wall to please others . Whilst any advice and constructive criticism is welcomed and appreciated it’s doesn’t mean you have take it all onboard. Definitely look to live sketching with a model where possible no mater who it is , as like most thing it better done live  and we learn so much. Tessa hinted a time limit sketch’s and THAT is a really good bit of advice as it stops the fiddling or the I will just do this ,moops looks worse now syndrome.