Take time to observe
A creative prompt with observation and attention in mind
Creative Fuel is a newsletter about the intersection of creativity and everyday life. Prompts are focused on helping us tap into our creative process, no matter our medium. The full archive of prompts can be found here.
This week I wrote about attention and featured a Q&A with artist Kristin Link. As she said of her own creative practice, “when we’re drawing we’re just being with the subjects.”
That is to say: the act of observing is an act of existing. We are not judging or assuming, we are investigating and learning.
Today’s prompt has that in mind. It is a prompt that I often use in creativity workshops, because above all, it’s an act of paying attention and observing. So often we move through the world taking in what our brain thinks it knows is there. But what do things actually look like?
Consider what would happen if I told you to draw an apple. Then what would that drawing look like if you put an apple in front of you and spent five minutes actually looking at it?
To spend time observing something, whether we’re going to draw it, write about it, or simply think about it, is to learn about it, instead of just assuming what we know.
So today we are going to be.