January was a long month; trying to find items to do for a Sketch-a-Day Challenge over the 31-day month was challenging. That problem went away when I started doing sketches of tight crops of photos of water ripples.
For Day 16 I travelled from tropical Puerto Vallarta up to the frozen north. It was a very cold December in Vancouver with most of the ponds frozen over. The only exception was at the Lagoons, a couple of private ponds with underwater fountains that kept part of them ice-free. The birds in the neighbourhood had all gathered there and were happily splashing around. 
I did a number of crops of various shots of the pond ripples which I then sketched. 
Day 16 pencil sketch. I made notes on the side of the page saying, ‘Klimt, Munch, Japanese’, references to artists/paintings I wanted to check out. If you’re curious these were the search terms that I ultimately used to find work similar to mine: Klimt art, water, Attersea and Japanese woodcut art, ripples in pond.
Day 17 was another drawing of rippled reflections at the Lagoons again. I had intended to only add a bit of blue-green watercolour to the drawing but somehow ended up painting the whole thing.
One shot I had was of this little crow admiring himself in the water. I had some trouble drawing him so I decided I should do a few sketches of crows before I tried again.
Day 24 and I finally got back to the crow at the water’s edge. After doing a pencil sketch I add large dripping brushes of watercolour. The paper was so absorbent that it reminded me of painting on Chinese rice paper, a completely different experience than painting on European watercolour papers where the paint stays on the surface and the colours stay brilliant.
Day 24 finished, water colour and acrylic ink.
I still have one more sketch to do, this Common Goldeneye Duck. His reflection in the water adds another area of interest.
Another sketch I did was of a cropped portion of rain falling on a duck pond near me. 
This is a low-lying willow tree that the red-winged blackbirds like to fling themselves off of for a springtime bath.
This was Day 25, my last sketch of water ripples as in the process of drawing this one I became fascinated with the bark on the trees and headed off in a new direction.
An interesting article on photographing reflections on water: http://www.betterphotography.in/features/art-water/450/
Batz Gallery 
I really like this!
This Sketch-a-Day Challenge was an interesting experiment of having to reach deeper into myself when I ran out of ‘easy’ things to sketch. I’ll certainly be trying it again next January, and maybe even sooner…
The more I see them the more I enjoyed them. If you have a chance to do it sooner, I’d love to see the results.