Funky Diagram Part 1: Asking Good Questions

I said I would offer some background on my 4-step diagram that helps me design activities and art lessons. The steps are:
1. How to ask good questions
2. How to discover answers
3. How to think on your feet
4. How to communicate to others

Let's start with the first one: How to ask good questions.

Every great discovery starts with good questions, new questions, risky questions that haven't been asked before. To really see something, you have to be willing to ask questions that you are not used to.

Try this exercise in looking without drawing:
- Find a really boring object. Maybe a chair, or a box, or a pencil. Anything will do.
- Put it in front of you.
- Now, look at its shape. Let your eyes follow its outline. Stare at it long enough that it stops being a chair, or a phone, or a piece of paper and starts just being a blob in front of you.
- As your eyes follow the outline, you'll notice something. That outline has nothing to do with the shape of the object that you might have in your head. For example: a chair might make you think of a square with legs under it. But when you outline a chair with your eyes, all you'll see is a place where it goes up, then maybe to the right, then maybe at an angle, then back to the left... not very chair-like at all.

What just happened? You opened up a whole world of questions about an ordinary object. Questions that weren't there before. Like, what is it really shaped like? How does its outline go? What shapes make up this object? How does it relate to the space around it?

This what I mean by asking good questions. To ask good questions, you have to change your perspective. When you see something in a new way, it becomes a new thing. In the case of visual arts, you get past the symbols you may have in your head ("chair," "pencil," "paper,") and really start to break an object down into just its shape.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can take a piece of paper and a pencil and start outlining that shape on your paper. You'll be amazed at how accurate your outline can be, when you are not trying to draw the "symbol" of a chair and you are just following exactly what's in front of you. But you don't have to draw the shape to change your perspective.