About looking and seeing....

The easel is set up. The pencil is poised. Where to start. At this point STOP. Look at the subject. REALLY look at it. Concentrate. Forget the details. Forget the exciting focal point of the image. Even if that is the most interesting part - indeed perhaps it is the reason you chose this subject in the first place. Ignore the subtlety of colour and form and texture. Look at the object in front of you. See it AS IT IS. Examine the overall composition of it. Try to see the general shapes that make up its basic construction. Sphere or cone or cube. See how they relate to each other. Picture the volume enclosed within it. Imagine the lines that describe its contours even those invisible to you at the back of the subject. Acquire an understanding of how space is broken by that object sitting within it as if the air surrounding it was the only revealing fact that showed there was an object there. Some artists acquire these "looking" skills by using this delineation of negative space to allow the outlined form to be revealed. This style of drawing avoids the cartoonifying of a sketch and producing a clumsy bordering for an outline for a drawing that if it IS incorrect in its structure will destroy the integrity of the artwork. Even using the lightest touch possible with a hard pencil to sketch in an outline allows into your drawing a mindset that is not natural. Shape, form and texture are not functions of solid line.
Similarly examine the colours of the subject or object. Do not rely on your knowledge of that subject to allow it to provide the tonal ranges as a cursory inspection may reveal. Take your time. A blackboard in the shade is a different colour to a blackboard in full sun and neither is black. Don't paint the green bottle without the reflections which change that green colour to whatever is revealed and reflected in it. In other words every object is part of its context and those surroundings impact on it as a subject but that object also impacts on those surroundings. In a landscape colours and shadows grant meaning that allows the eye to make sense of the image in terms of a particular kind of reality. To paint and sketch is to allow oneself to be drawn into a closer examination of this reality which in turn helps to make sense of other areas of artistic truth. To give oneself this possibility of a new understanding of both life and art is to uncover a potential that great artists recognise immediately but us mere mortals need to learn. And it IS a matter of learning - learning to slow down, to study, to try to see what IS in front of you NOT what you THINK is in front of you. Between this collaboration of muscle memory and intellectual rigour a new sense of artistic reality can be forged and the complexity of even the simplest object can inherit a new and stunning beauty that was, in fact, always there in front of you but never seen before. Open your eyes and look again. And again. And again.