Seeing Like an Artist: The Art of Observational Drawing

Hold up your hand in front of your face and stare at it for thirty seconds. Really stare. Notice the lines across your knuckles, the way your fingers cast tiny shadows on each other, the shapes of the gaps between your fingers. Now try to describe one thing you noticed that you had never paid attention to before. Most of us look at familiar objects every day without truly seeing them. Artists train themselves to break that habit. Here is a question to get you thinking: if you drew your hand right now from memory versus drawing it while looking at it carefully, how different do you think the two drawings would be — and why?