second post

There is a hard-boiled egg on my breakfast plate most mornings, and for years I photographed it — the golden yolk, the steam on the cup beside it, the way morning light lands on a white plate. The camera taught me to see the composition. The sketchbook is teaching me something slower.

When I paint the egg instead of photographing it, I have to stay. The photograph takes a fraction of a second; the sketch takes ten minutes, and in those ten minutes the egg stops being breakfast and becomes a small landscape — the matte shell against the glaze of the plate, the yolk not one yellow but four.

The result is never perfect, and that’s the point. A wobbly line holds the morning better than a sharp one. Just like a photo on my phone, a small sketch can hold a feeling that only I recognise — but unlike the photo, it holds the time I spent looking, too.

If you’d like to try, the practice notes beside this post are where I’d begin. No special skills needed — just curiosity and a willingness to pause and really look.