Draw whatever happens to be there

For years I waited for a subject worth drawing. A beautiful place, good light, something special. That day almost never came — so I almost never drew.

Whatever is on the table is enough. The remote control, a half-full mug, the fold in the tablecloth. Not because those are beautiful subjects, but because the subject does not matter. You are practising looking, not choosing.

In fact, ordinary things are easier to learn from. You already know what a mug looks like, so you notice immediately when you are drawing it the way you know it rather than the way it sits there. That difference is exactly the point, and a mountain landscape will never show it to you.

And there is something else. Draw whatever happens to be in front of you for a week, and you start seeing your own house differently. The fold in that cloth catches your eye. The handle of that pan turns out to have a shape you had never looked at, though you have picked it up a thousand times.

So don't wait for a subject. Look to your right, take the first thing you see, and draw that for ten minutes.