Most of us stop looking much sooner than we think we do.

We see a tree and our brain tells us “tree.” We see a mountain and think we know its shape. But drawing asks us to stay with what we’re seeing just a little longer.

For the past couple of years, I’ve maintained a regular drawing practice I call Morning Practice. Most of the drawings begin with my own photographs, often taken while traveling or simply moving through the landscape.

The materials are simple: line and a limited range of gray values. What interests me is the looking.

When I draw, I try to stop thinking first about what something is and instead look at the shapes, values, angles and relationships. Where does one shape end and another begin? Where are the darkest darks and lightest lights?

Again and again, I discover that what I thought I saw isn’t quite what is actually there.

Over time, I began to realize that this practice wasn’t just changing my drawings. It was changing my paintings.

Observation 2: Atigun Pass grew directly out of that experience.

I photographed Atigun Pass while traveling through Alaska’s Brooks Range. When I later returned to the landscape through drawing, I began to see beyond mountains, road and sky. I noticed the underlying structure—the shapes, lines, divisions and relationships that held the landscape together.

When I returned to Atigun Pass in paint, I wasn’t interested in reproducing the photograph. I wanted to bring what I had discovered through drawing into the painting. The landscape remained the source, but observation became more important than representation.

That exploration became Observation 2: Atigun Pass and has continued to influence the direction of my work.

It has also led me to develop The Art of Looking, an adult drawing workshop based on the same observational process I use in my studio.

Perhaps that’s what Morning Practice has taught me most of all: observation is a skill. The more we practice it, the more we begin to see.

Come see where drawing and painting meet in my work during the Ojai Studio Artists Tour, October 10–12. I’ll have paintings and Morning Practice drawings in the studio—and I’d love to share what I’ve been working on.