Analyzing Old Art and Redrawing It (Teacher Sample)

First, I selected an old drawing that I did back in November of 2017.
I took time to study it and determine what were the things I liked about the drawing and what were the things I didn't like and wanted to improve upon. Here's my short list of both:
Things I liked:
- The physical interaction between the two figures
- The hair rendering style
- The overall mood/tone of the peice
Things I wanted to change:
- Introduce more interesting color scheme
- Make the posing more natural looking
- Improve body part placement and anatomy
- Add a background and more details in the clothing and jewelery
Before redrawing the old piece, I did a few things to help me prepare and better execute the final drawing. The first thing I did was a tracing exercise using a variety of photos of people hugging in different ways.
After the tracing exercise, I did several rough sketches of my original two figures interacting to try to determine the most interesting pose. From there, I selected the sketch I felt was most successful and began my final redrawing using the selected sketch as a guide.
I also did a couple of few things during the drawing process that helped improve my redrawing. The first being that when I was uncertain of the angle and perspective in my pencil sketch, I took a few reference photos of my own when I was unable to find one online.
Since adding a background and details was also important to me, I looked up images of different formal clothes, accessories and fancy interiors to give me inspiration. Looking back at these photos, I now understand that they also inspired some of my color scheme choices.
Here is the final drawing, loosely based on the original: