negative space exercises are really good for losing that whole "symbol drawing" thing that is typical for beginners of life drawing

personally i did that for a bit and got pretty good at rendering believable things but never got into it that heavily and later did a lot of drug fueled abstract stuff, my favourite was working with indian ink and brush on meth, but mushrooms/acid and fluorescent gel ink under UV was fun too, always wanted to do light on dark ground as a kid