Black woman sitting cross-legged drawing outdoors
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Last June, in the early months of the pandemic, we asked you to share what practices you were finding particularly helpful during that time. We savored and shared your submissions and find them worth revisiting.

This one, from Bradford Grant, professor of architecture at Howard University, helps us appreciate the moment and the world around us through drawing. For those of you who prefer writing, or simply observing, alter the practice to fit your favored form of beholding. 

"I have been comforted by plainly and closely observing (seeing) and then drawing (sketching) in my sketchbook the immediate world around me or as I call it 'front porch drawing.' Skill, talent or training is not necessary, you simply sketch what you see without judgment of what you see or what you draw. It has focused me and allows me a means of beholding my immediate environment."

Bradford Grant, once an advisor for the Fetzer Institute, has also served as an Instagram-artist-in-residence for the National Portrait Gallery.