Both of these are frequent visitors to my home office. The sketching kit that I would normally carry around in my purse is now set up next to my desk most of the time, so I painted these with watercolors.

Another painted coffee cup!

And now for some hot tea! This time with fountain pens. And another Paper & Clay item - the tea pot (and also the first two coffee cups).

Bonus! Workshop presenter and meeting host.

That yellow cup shows up a lot!

The place where I pick up my groceries just so happens to be near the Clark Tower. What am I going to do - not sketch it?!
This first time during ***all of this*** that I picked up groceries, I also went to the pharmacy drive-through and sketched the woman below. 

The above sketch is probably the worst sketch I've made of the Clark Tower. Not because of the errant line, but because I was not paying attention to measuring the scale that the building needed to be in order to fit it in with the trees, etc. I'm not bothered by it - just pointing out that this happens and I just keep sketching!

These are all in Stillman & Birn Alpha softcover sketchbooks, the 3.5x5" (I think) version. The top two sketches were done with the Pigma Graphic 1 (my fat pen), and the rest were done with the Pigma Micron 01. After that first trip, I stopped carrying my full sketch bag and just have the one pen in my purse since I'm really only sketching outside of my house on these grocery runs.

I've been meeting up with fellow sketchers on Sunday afternoons - we talk about the week in quarantine, sketch our surroundings, and we usually end up sketching each other as well.

We had bookclub on Zoom and it worked really well - everyone was very conscientious about waiting for others to finish talking before they started talking. That never happens in person!

More Sunday Sketching.

A work meeting! We use a different format for work meetings, and it isn't as tidy as the Zoom interface, so my co-workers ended up all over my page.

A month ago it was International Women's Day and I was at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens sketching, chatting with people about sketching, and admiring the work of Mbabazi House of Style's owner Grace Byeitima.

The next week at work I put hand sanitizer and Kleenex at the end of my desk, between myself and any visitors.

Quick and safe trip to New Orleans in early March!

My every day sketch gear - a small watercolor palette from art-toolkit.com, a handful of pens, and a folded up and clipped paper towel. But I sketched all of this with a Bic Crystal pen! 

I wasn't happy with this sketch so I filled the page with reasons why! I was much happier with the one below. 
Liz Steel started using the hashtag #mymorningcoffeesketch on Instagram to show her first sketches of the day - of her coffee cup - get her "creative juices focused and flowing as I start work." She says it's a daily ritual that grounds her work day. Check out Liz's Instagram, @lizsteelart, and her website https://www.lizsteel.com/ for everything you ever wanted to know about sketching!

Last week at the end of Studio Night I posted on Instagram (@elizabethalley) that I'm very grateful for my art practice during the coronavirus quarantine. Even though I was distracted that night, I made some art in my studio and felt better.
I have Studio Night every Tuesday night. I make art other times, but Tuesday nights are for being in my studio and making new things, experimenting, and working stuff out. When we started this quarantine thing I thought I might grab some more time here and there for art-making, and I have, but the routine of Tuesday nights has been really good for my soul.
This is all in addition to my regular sketching practice. Lately I've been sketching a lot of coffee cups - okay, I always sketch coffee cups! - as well as houses in my neighborhood and people on Zoom gatherings and work video meetings. I'll show you those soon, but I wanted to shift focus here on having a purposeful practice of making things.

This is my setup, or rather, these are my setups. I'm very fortunate to have a studio in my home. Ever since my husband and I moved into our second apartment in 1992 (one that had more than one actual room!), I've had at least a studio area, but often a half or whole room. It's a priority for me.
I know it's not everybody's priority and it doesn't have to be. You can have a small amount of supplies next to your favorite spot in your den, on the kitchen or dining room table, or nearby when you're working from home. You may see a lot of supplies in these photos, and they do all get used eventually, but what I mainly work with in the studio are a small traveling watercolor kit, some colored pencils, a bottle of ink, and sketchbooks.

You might think that routines and repetition are antithetical to creativity but that is just part of the myth of creativity that we have in our culture - that it comes in bursts, or that it comes to you without you asking it to.
The truth is, creativity is work, but it is the best and most fun work. If you start moving your hands with a brush and some paint, or with cutting out shapes and gluing them down, ideas will start coming to you and you'll see things in your work you wouldn't have seen otherwise. 
So if you go to your space for making art on a regular basis and you see what you have and you add things and take things away, you will generate ideas and you will generate work.
​Here's my progress over the last four weeks:

Follow on Instagram for inspiration, prompts, and real talk about maintaining an art practice:
Flicker Street Studio @flickerstreetstudio
Lisa Solomon @lisasolomon
Emma Carlisle @emmacarlisle_
Martha Kelly @marthakellyart
Melissa Bridgman @bridgmanpottery
Lisa Congdon @lisacongdon
Malaka Gharib @malakagharib
Austin Kleon @austinkleon (he also has a good newsletter that you can subscribe to)
Missy Dunaway @missydunaway
I love Instagram for the inspiration in can provide if you follow people who inspire you, rather than people who make you feel like you aren't doing enough. There are SO MANY MORE people I could name, and I have - search on Instagram for #FSSsketchingworkshop to find a post I made where I listed about 40 inspiring people to follow.
Books:
A Field Guide to Color by Lisa Solomon
Syllabus by Lynda Barry (and anything else by Lynda Barry)
Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon (and anything else by him, too)
Sketching starter kit:
This link is for a list of items at dickblick.com. Normally I would send you to the Art Center but, sadly, they are closed for the time being. This is basically what we use in my sketching classes, but it can easily be your making-art-at-home kit, too. 
I listed a Canson sketchbook because it has fairly decent paper for a cheap sketchbook, but my personal preference is Stillman & Birn - I like the softcover Alpha sketchbook. In my studio I have sketchbooks of all types that I work in at the same time - if you wanted to try working this way, buying more than one Canson isn't going to cost too much. But this could also be the time that you use all of those sketchbooks and notebooks you've been accumulating. Just open them and start putting some paint down!

Please let me know if you have any questions, and please share your progress!