The Practice of Seeing

Have you ever written something and proofed it carefully, only to see that you’ve been overlooking a typo, reading it as though it were correct a dozen times? We sometimes read what we know is supposed to be there, the same as we have preconceived ideas about images that we try to draw or, for that matter, about the things we encounter in our daily lives.

Upside down practice makes us look more carefully at what's really there. And the more we practice, the more the lines and spaces are loaded into our brain. The sketch above started upside down and got worked over right side up--several times. There was something about the shapes and the angle of the calf's head that I couldn't quite get so I continued to change it until I was ready to try another one.

I liked the angle of the baby's head better in the next upside-down drawing, below. (To see the reference photo, click and scroll to the bottom photo: "upside down--on purpose") So I added a little watercolor and ink. Now that I look at the image, I see that I focused on the Mom's face more with the watercolor and barely dabbled on the baby's face. A little bit of gratitude to Mom for being easier to draw? I think so. Actually, I think Mom's face is more interesting.

Fortunately, our unconscious jumps in there and does some of the work--in art, in writing and in our daily lives. I wasn't paying any attention to the composition, just working on the shapes, especially the calf. But Mom is actually the focus of the interaction in this image. And she gave me the greatest satisfaction. Somehow it shows!