New year, new bird. I’ve photographed many animals on my campus over the years.

Today’s sketch is part of a project to sketch and paint all the wildlife I’ve seen on my campus. Maybe I’ll make it into a poster, or a field guide.

This is also a project in getting a little better at my art every day, and getting a little better at ecology every day as well.

If I can make even tiny improvements in each of these on a daily basis, imagine what I can do in a year.

One of my faculty in grad school reminded us all: a dissertation seems daunting, but if you write just one page every day for a year, you’ll write it all.

A watercolor illustration of a duck with a blue-green head, yellow bill, and brown body is depicted.