Looking without seeing…
I returned from my art class with Larry Elmore last week as I expected to: inspired and ready to do more. However, the toil of real life and responsibilities stepped in, so that thin ghostlike scream you hear is my inner muse being crushed under the weight of paperwork and deadlines.
*sigh*
However, in my determination to keep something of that feeling alive, I have found myself going over some of the lessons that Larry imparted to us. One specifically is how people often look without actually seeing things.
Sounds odd, I know, but it does make sense. From a young age we program our minds to not really see things and assign basic values or information about them. For example, we look at a tree and immediately think that the leaves are green and the trunk is brown. We do this in many other areas that we consider mundane.
Here is a challenge: go out and look at a tree and try to pin down all the colors that actually exist. I’d be willing to bet that you find more than just brown or green.
I started actually trying to see the things I was looking at, and realized there is a wealth of color present in almost everything that I never noticed before. Here is another challenge: go outside and see just how many things have a shade of purple in them. I’d bet you would be surprised at the number of things you find.
As an artist, I am always eager to learn something that would improve my craft. Little things like the lesson I just described, while simple can actually go a LONG way toward that goal…
[...] Looking without seeing… [...]