Artist Nicholas Carbonara hosted an interesting workshop that was centered around the idea of simply observing your surroundings and essentially meditate while drawing. It was an unconventional experience that I didn’t expect and I really enjoyed. He briefly touched on the current societal trend where everyone tries to take pictures of every single event, primarily for archival purposes. It is an interesting cultural habit and I think that is rather problematic because personally I feel that while in certain situations you may want to capture moments, i.e., a baby’s first steps, I would argue that you should rather just experience the event and engage your senses. You may not be able to visually recollect the memory down the road in your mind but certainly the sensations that you felt, like smells and sounds, may be more prominent. When looking back at photos in the future, you lack context and it just becomes a collection of pixels on a screen. Depending on certain sounds or smells, memories from that past with that smell could be triggered spontaneously but you lose this capability if you focus more on taking photos. Do you think people should reprioritize engaging their senses over primarily taking pictures for each new experience?

Regardless, I enjoyed simply staying in a room with relaxing music and a few unique models and enacting different poses and actions. I can’t say I drew anything of substance; it was rather scattered and reflected my shifting attention across the room to different objects and people. There wasn’t really any much thinking going on in that period and it was a wonderful experience. I would love to engage in this type of workshop in the future. Take some time to do some people watching or simply sit on a bench and draw for 15-30 minutes. I think it would surprise you how enjoyable and pleasant the experience will be.