My practice: go outside and draw something I see every day. I’m not being purist; if it’s pouring, or I wait too long and it’s dark, I draw inside, and in a pinch, from a photo I’ve taken. It has been a very rainy start to the year, and once I sat in our enclosed entryway while the rain fell on the poppy leaves just outside.

Fern in our yard
Palm, Balboa Park, SF
Pine cone
Oceano dunes (from photo taken last summer)
California poppy leaves
I hungrily watched the golden-hour light on the trees along Market Street as I was donating blood, hoping I would be done before the sun went behind the buildings so I could draw that light and the shadows it cast. But by the time I was released to the canteen, the light was flat, and as I ate my snack, I drew this tree’s outline instead.
Downtown building, SF, from a photo taken last summer
Lichens on our tree
Leaves of an unidentified shrub in Opera Square, Van Ness Ave,  SF
Pine cone
Blueberries, from photo taken in our yard
Leaf of Chilapa x tashkentensis
Luna

After the first day, I have drawn with a gel ink pen. I might return to graphite pencil at some point, but right now, given my tendency to get fiddly, I’m enjoying the constraint of having only black to work with. These are all 5″×8″ or smaller, the size of my current sketchbook.