For this activity, we were asked to draw the appearance in front of us in five minutes. I was sitting at my desk at the time, therefore I chose to draw this image from the first-person perspective.

I think the interesting part about this activity is that although it is the environment I live in every day, I haven’t seen everything as closely as I did in these five minutes. This kind of exercise helped me to practice my observation and drawing speed, and to sketch the basic appearance of these objects in a short period of time.

In fact, I used to be unconcerned about observational drawing, I thought it was just a matter of drawing from things, and the improvement that this kind of exercise can give me is very limited. Throughout this term, after doing several observational drawings on scenes, people, or simple activities like this, I realised that my ability to capture shapes and forms had really improved, which I could not achieve by drawing from photos. I think it is very interesting. Not only did it help me with my art, but I was able to appreciate and be thankful for the little details around me that I hadn’t noticed before, which added more surprises to my life.