Reverie

I have been in a reverie these past several days, one made richer by drawing. It provokes all these feelings, seeing the beautiful blue and pearl of the Chinese vase, the exquisite character of the lines that curve round its edges. I understand better some aspect of Degas whose pictures often seize upon evocative fragments. You find these fragments through drawing because drawing is simple and intense and uncluttered by problems and distractions of technique. It's more just pure looking, watching with a pencil. I can see how a composite approach to a still life can become essential, though drawing the complex arrangement of things is desirable too.
However you can get at something first by just doing the effect of light curling round a single object and its unitary surface. As complex as exploring another planet is seeing these intense and particular effects of vision.
Just the space between one edge of the rim and another ought to matter -- in a real still life -- and the space in between them.