Above is a collection of my sketches. A lot of them are straight from my imagination. I will sketch people while waiting for the bus, in school class, or at church meetings. My sketchbook has a lot more head drawing than figure drawing.
It is best to draw from life, in the classroom or in the field. This is because drawing from life forces me to draw the subject matter in a constrained time limit. If I am outside then I have only a couple hours or minutes before the light changes. When the light changes both the value and color changes. If I am drawing a running horse from life have but a few seconds to capture the image in my mind and then sketch it onto paper. Working from a picture of a running horse is not as effective because I will be focusing more on the details of the photograph instead of the basics. It is more important to me that I understand the shapes and forms in the action of a running horse than copying a photograph.
The above computer illustration is titled, 'The Lost Mods playing outside.' I did three drawings and then scanned them into photoshop. I did an individual pencil drawing for the guitarist, bass player, and the singer with the drummer. I combined all of them together to create a band. I then added in color and shading in photoshop using the following tools: paint bucket, gradient, pen tool, and the brush tool. 
The above computer sketch is titled, 'Kyle Scoufield: Mod Guitarist sketch.' Kyle Scoufield is a character in a story I'm writing. My sister took a picture of me playing guitar and I did a pencil sketch of that. I wasn't wearing my glasses and the sketch didn't look exactly like me, so I decided it would be Kyle Scoufield. In this piece you can still see the pencil drawing. This was the effect I was going for. I wanted the texture of the graphite to impact the rest of the piece when I added in color in photoshop.
