Learning to See

I’m not very good at retaining knowledge, so I always get kind of childishly excited when I encounter something/anything in my day that I can link to something I’ve learned at school. I get so proud of myself when I hear a big word and know what it means, or hear a quote and know who it’s by, or definitely when my Mom showed me the latest Coldplay CD (her new obsession) and I was able to tell her (thanks to Gantt!) that the painting on the album cover was Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix! I love taking studio classes because I can relate pretty much everything I see to them in some way. I’ve really been enjoying taking only art classes this semester because I can just stay in the visual-thinking mode all of the time. (I cannot do two modes at once.) Since I spend all of my day thinking – visually, it’s kind of been like anywhere I am I have a book to read! This has made a big difference in pretty much every other area of my life as well because I look at everything differently. Sometimes it seems like everything I see I imagine on a canvas, or in a sketchbook, or as a photograph. I notice things everyday that I’ve learned from each of my classes. I catch myself analyzing color combinations and proportions, advertisement layouts, fonts, and patterns, but what has really been the most interesting is how I’ve learned to look at and analyze shapes as being made up of lines. Seeing the lines and directions of the lines that make up a subject has really helped my brain to understand a three-dimensional object as two-dimensional. I am very glad that I am learning to live visually. It makes the world a much more beautiful place when you try to see the art in every part of it.

 

Louis Pasteur (a French scientist) said, “In the field of observation, chance favors only the mind that is prepared.”

 

The experiences of everyday life provide us with a constant stream of interesting stimuli, yet most people are not prepared to appreciate the fascinating details that are right before their eyes. I am learning.