Jennifer Edwards from the EDM group inspired me with one of her Mini Art Lessons, this one on contour drawing--the kind of drawing where you put your pencil or pen to paper, and follow the contours of whatever you are drawing with your eyes, not looking back at the paper or striving for so-called realism, but simply seeing and showing. I pulled out a pencil and pad while watching TV tonight, and tried a few. Probably not quite what she had in mind, because the whole point is to really LOOK at what you're doing, while I was back and forth between my subjects and "Treasure Island," but I count any day I do some drawing an accomplishment. Have a look at Jen's vastly more detailed and beautiful illustrations here: http://drawn2life.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/drawing-your-life-mini-lesson-6/
My live model is Miniver, who obligingly sleeps a lot. I'm going to try some more of these--I have become too reliant lately on working from photos, and need to get back to looking.