Deep Looking part 2: learning to draw gave me superpowers
How fall in love with a work of art
What if you were bitten by a radioactive spider one day and suddenly found your ability to perceive physical reality was immensely sharpened? What if you could, at a glance, look at an object and remember it well enough to draw it from memory? What if you woke up one day and had a superpower that allowed you to see things with such intensity that you could remember fine, exact and accurate details 30 or 40 years later?
We moderns, with all our artificial means of remembering, thinking and seeing things, are perhaps losing a set of skills that were once much more common. We think certain mental skills are a kind of magical ability or genetic anomaly that can’t be reproduced. But we’re wrong about that.
This is a post for paid members, so there’s a paywall coming below. The Sacred Images Project is a reader-supported publication, which means there’s no annoying ads but also no advert revenue to keep the lights on and the kitties fed.
The paid posts are going to be getting more in depth, but it’s a full time job to create this content. So, I hope if you’ve found some value in this work, you’ll consider subscribing.
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In this post, we will talk about visual intelligence, the difference between merely looking and really seeing, how to look while thinking and how looking with thinking improves your perceptive intelligence overall. It’s a long one, and there’s a little exercise at the end to practice on. We’ll learn how to do “looking with deliberation, with the visual intellect consciously engaged.”
I hope you’ll consider joining us as we explore these ideas.