Charmouth beach stones - more drawing

This week, I spent two nights drawing for almost two hours. I'm trying to get (back) into a habit of drawing regularly, and spending more time in my studio. Especially in the evenings, when you're tired from work, it can be hard to motivate yourself to get off the sofa and pick up some pencils. Even if you actually like it, and know that it will make you feel so much better than just spending the entire evening in front of the tv. Why can it sometimes be so hard to shake off such bad and irrational habits? 

I've also been thinking a lot about style and techniques. How so often our inner critic/perfectionist puts those images of how your drawing or painting should look like before you even got the first brush stroke or pencil line down. How difficult it can be to put those expectations aside and just follow the flow. I know exactly how I would like to be able to paint or draw. And it doesn't always work. So I'm trying hard now to ignore that voice, and to approach my canvas or sketchbook without expectations (I even taped a reminder up on my easel), and just let it flow. To find out what comes naturally, and then take it from there. I had something else in mind when I started drawing the first stone, something that didn't involve blending and making it all smooth. But then I couldn't help picking up my blending stick, and I spent two evenings happily layering and blending and getting lost in details.

During our holiday, we went to Charmouth beach. One side of the beach is sand, the other side is stones, quite big ones, that make it quite difficult to walk (but is very popular with fossil hunters). I loved the beautiful big smothes stones with their white veins running through them, that were lying in between the other stones, and I took some photos of the them so that I could draw them later.