Choose something that interests you — birds, trees, flowers, clouds, reflections, architecture, garden objects, or changing light — and spend some time observing it carefully. You can be fully spontaneous and see what you see or you could plan a bit.

If you are interested in birds, I recommend just looking around. If you’d like, you could use a local field guide, an identification app, or perhaps a small pair of binoculars. For plants and landscapes, a garden, local park, or even your own neighborhood can provide endless subjects. You don’t need to go far.

The goal is just to see what captures your attention.

• A walk

• A phone camera

• Pocket notebook or sketchbook

• A few minutes of attention

If something continues to hold your attention, make a note of it. You may want to return to it later.

This is an important part of my approach.

Collecting gives you a way to hold onto an idea until the right time and the medium or approach becomes clear. It gives observations and visions a chance to mature.

You can collect in many ways, and do not need to use all of these. One is enough.

Start here:

• phone camera

• small notebook and quality pen

• envelope for leaves and small items

• folder for reference photographs

• small, reused boxes

The goal is to hold on to things, revisit them, and allow ideas to mature naturally.

Keep what continues to intrigue you. You can return items like leaves, and feathers later and you can discard any digital photos that you no longer need.

Sketching is less about creating finished drawings and more about learning to notice and remembering what you saw.

Carrying a small sketchbook removes the pressure to create something important and replaces it with permission to simply observe.

Draw what is in front of you: the shape of a leaf, a coffee mug, shoes by the door, or the pattern of branches against the sky. Anything.

You can sketch quickly and loosely to capture shapes and relationships, or spend more time focusing on the details of a single object. The goal is not perfection. The goal is attention.

Start here:

• small unlined A6 notebook

• a comfortable pen that writes smoothly in a variety of conditions and won’t leak in a bag or pocket

• Drawn on the Way: A Guide to Capturing the Moment Through Live Sketching by Sarah Nisbett

As your confidence grows, you may enjoy experimenting with drawing or painting outdoors on larger papers.

Drawing begins with learning to observe and learning to see relationships, shapes, values, and edges.

Start with inexpensive paper and a set of artist pencils. The pencils matter more you might think — a range of hardnesses gives much more depth, contrast, and subtlety than a standard pencil.

A sketch pad, a set of graphite pencils, and a kneaded eraser are enough to begin developing your eye and technique.

Start here:

• Strathmore 200 Series sketch pad

• Faber-Castell Castell 9000 artist pencil set

• Kneaded eraser

• Good pencil sharpener

• Look Closer, Draw Better by Kateri Ewing — Follow this method

When you're ready to create finished drawings, consider moving to higher-quality drawing paper with a beautiful tooth and surface that are more suitable for finished work.

Watercolor is beautiful to work with, but it behaves differently than many other media and can feel intimidating at first.

Begin with small, more abstract projects that help you learn how to move water rather than trying to create realistic paintings immediately. Leaves, skies, patterns, and simple exercises often make wonderful early watercolor subjects because they encourage experimentation without the pressure of perfection. Early success will help you feel accomplished and inspire you to return to it.

Good-quality paper, student-grade paints, and a small selection of brushes will make the experience far more enjoyable and less frustrating.

Start here:

• Quality watercolor tube set - I used Cotman for years before moving to professional grade.

• Meeden paint palette with mixing tray - this is a quality palette worth the extra money with trying to mix. As a beginner, you could become very frustrated by beading paint.

• Hahnemule cold-pressed watercolor paper - you may want to try less expensive paper, I quality matters a lot here and you’ll get better results

• Princeton Snap brushes in size 2, 6, and 10 plus one Princeton Neptune size 4 brushto experiment with soft brushes.

• Creative Watercolor and Mixed Media: A Step by Step Guide to Creating Stunning Effects by Ana Victoria Calderone. ‍

As your confidence grows and you become more skilled, experiment with artist-grade paints, larger brushes, softer brushes, and additional papers to discover what suits your style and interests.