Dear Reader,

In this rather longish discussion, I want to talk about why everyone should draw still life - and what we stand to gain from this practice.

Train your eyes to look

Our brain uses a lot of shortcuts while looking. We make very quick judgements about what we see based on things we have seen before. And most of the time we spend as little time as possible on a single object. The brain might build a simple caricature of what we see in our head and move on. This might be enough interacting with the world in our daily routine - however this leaves a lot to be desired when our goal is real understanding of what we are looking at.

How an artist looks at an object and a scene is more structured. It is worthwhile learning because it can help in really understanding where we are and what we see. To really admire the beauty of a place or thing. To build this skill of structured looking we must learn to look and draw. Drawing provides the way for us to put down on paper what we see. Only when we draw what we see, we can now verify how close the picture in our mind is to the truth.

Build a visual library

In this world with limitless photos of everything around us, it is tempting to go find the exact reference for everything. However if we are to draw from imagination, then it is generally quicker to put down an idea with the things we can already draw.

If we can sketch still life of all the thousands of little things we found around us - from screws to books, to gadgets… then we can accomplish more with imagination.

Look at this video about artist Kim Jung Gi who has a huge visual library …

I’ll leave you with that excellent video and come back next time with rest of this post.

Have a great sunday,

Abhishek (art noob)