Using photos as part of my drawing process

So I've been taking pictures with a camera more often than usual nowadays. And I got a little worried that I might be having more fun with photography than drawing and painting. I've noticed that when I'm interested in learning something new, I tend to really get rather obsessed with it. That's what happened with fountain pens and urban sketching. So it started me looking for ways to connect photography with drawing and painting. Already, I feel that photography helps sharpen my colour sense and composition. And that can help me improve my drawing and painting.

But I wanted to see if I could use it in my process of creating art. A month ago, after taking another big bunch of photos, I decided I'd use some of them as photo references. That's what artists do. (I don't do that often because I was so into real-life observational drawings). So I chose 3 and decided that I'd only use them loosely as reference, and not try to make a copy. I'd also bought 4 new sticks of oil pastels (Van Gogh brand). They were not pricey and I wanted to compare them to the Sennellier oil pastels, an excuse for buying more art materials! So I basically used that, and maybe a bit of pencil.

In Sept, as I was looking up prominent photographers to learn from, I came across youtube videos about photographer, Saul Leiter, and his pictures appealed to me. Have you heard of him? I'm new to photography, so I've only just discovered him. I also borrowed a library book on him and watched his documentary. I like that slightly abstract yet, kinda poetic, blurry, emotional look his photos have. And he seemed to like shooting into reflections. So in some of the photos I shot, I was trying that out. And I tried to create art with that similar look and feel. Rubbing oil pastels with my fingers produced very blurry edges so I used the edges of paper to create hard edges when I wanted to. This is one experiment that I've tried and liked. Let me know what you think.

I don't claim to have found some amazing new way to draw. I'm just experimenting and learning as I go along. This was fun. I wonder what I'll discover next!

Below are the pictures I based the above drawing on: