I went to the park last weekend with a buddy, our sketchbooks, and some pencils. The outing ended up as a duck drawing study. As a kid I spent a lot of time drawing pets – a bunny my grandmother gave me, and a dog when I was a little older. Now that I don’t have any pets, I felt energized drawing animals outside. The sketches were not glamorous, but they’re good practice for understanding the proportions. After a while, a few small children were feeding the ducks and birds started crowding around our drawing spot, so we walked to another area along the pond. This time, I focused on drawing the landscape of the park. For most of the landscape I ended up tilting the pencil and using the shading side of the lead, instead of emphasizing crisp lines with the point, and it felt like painting with graphite.