Talking to my tutor

I spoke to Deborah on the phone yesterday. It was very reassuring to hear her voice and make some kind of connection with her. I haven't really had that with my previous tutor, and felt as if I was learning a bit in a void. I had noticed that other people at the life drawing class had been a lot freer in their drawing, and of course had seen that in the Egon Schiele and contemporary artists as well. I asked her about this, and we talked about it a bit. My notes were:

Use charcoal or watercolour - something you can't control so much
Re textile person - go the way you want to go eg wire drawing, stitched drawings, draw on collage etc
Free to experiment

Today my first sketch was lines:

Bean pods
The colours are an artefact of using a flash

My second sketch like this:

Dried bean pods I'm saving to grow next year
Charcoal in sketchbook
Trying to use tone rather than line to show the shapes and shadows
Much happier drawing natural objects 

And my third one like this:

Dead bean pod and live beans
Conte crayon on brown paper
Using harder and softer pressure on the crayon
I like the free feeling this gives the sketch very much
Colour might help differentiate object from background a bit better for this one, particularly as the beans pop with purple.