If I know I'm going to eat at a really nice restaurant (you know, the kind of place that serves lime Jell-O), I'll starve myself all day leading up to it. Not completely, I'll have a bite of a snack here and there, but more just to tease my belly and make it REALLY WANT the meal that's coming later that night. This way, when it finally comes I'm SO hungry that I take my time and enjoy every scrumptious morsel. Try it sometime - this really takes every bit of the dinner from the salad to the appetizers to the main course and even dessert, and makes it the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. This way, I find I thoroughly enjoy my nice meals, even if I don't get dessert at the end.
I like to trace the outline of things by hand before I fill them in with watercolors. Sometimes I go outside the lines, but sometimes that means you find something that you didn't know was there. This is key - if you spend too much time doodling what you know, you are missing out on everything you don't know.
