My daughter’s art teacher suggested a way of developing observation skills: setting up little still lives everywhere (at home using toys, at restaurants, at the playground) and drawing them either right on the spot or later, from memory. I thought it would be a neat exercise to try for myself, and yesterday I did it for the first time. I was sitting at my favourite cafe in the morning when I noticed that the direction of the shadow from a water glass on the table accidentally lined up with the milk pattern on the surface of my latte.
I cheated bit in terms of memory training – instead of sketching the scene right there and then or tying to remember it in detail, I snapped a picture on my phone and used it later as a reference for sketching.
