The Art of Seeing for the curious
Begin with one ordinary thing.
Choose something within reach.
Choose one ordinary thing
Anything ordinary enough that you think you already know it.
Look at it for twenty seconds without naming it.
What did your eye go to first?
Look again
Now look again.
Find an edge you missed.
Find where light becomes shadow.
Notice one irregularity.
Has the object changed?
Or has your attention changed?
Your attention has preferences.
It selects.
It edits.
It decides what matters before you notice that it has decided.
Find the least interesting part of the object.
Stay with it.
What became visible only after you stopped looking for something interesting?
Now look at what is not the object.
In drawing, sometimes the clearest way to see an object is to stop looking directly at it.
You look at the space around it.
Does the object look different when you see the space around it too?
We rarely look only with our eyes.
An ordinary object can survive being misread.
People, places and problems are less forgiving.
Who or what in your life might you be seeing through an old conclusion?
Seeing is not the same as looking
Seeing is not the same as looking.
What becomes visible when you stop looking for what you expect to find?