Drawing is the most essential form of looking. I advocate this as an important activity because without it the tendency is always to use one's eyes for minimal visual systems. Walking around lampposts, not stepping in a puddle, this kind of thing. This is our standard visual operating system. The left brain has a wonderful series of symbols acquired during childhood to tell us what is about. To tell us what's in front to left and right. But if we want to really see, to really experience the world in a visual way we have to start looking a little harder. Drawing is a doorway through which one must go in order to learn how to look harder, in order to enhance one's perception, to see the world.

Without primary visual information visual creativity is incredibly limited. You literally have nothing to play with. And that's what it's all about, visual play, putting this with that and seeing how it goes. Having fun, getting back to being the visually curious four year old.

So it is with some trepidation that I suggest that you carry a camera with you. I have until recently adopted a pretty hardline on cameras. I have two or three very good cameras about the studio and a bag of old analog Nikons for my son to inherit. So cameras don't scare me, I use them as a part of my image collection system.

But cameras also encourage us to NOT use our eyes. I see people on vacation arriving at a site after travelled all day. You see them have a quick look around take a few snaps maybe even a short video, then go and find a cafe. "Let's save this and experience it later" is how the processes is justified. The camera stops people from stopping and looking it certainly stops people from stopping and drawing which is what we should do.

When I had a particularly small pocket camera I started taking it with me everywhere but my daughter got hold of it and took it away with her to school. So it is with some pleasure that I got myself a replacement. In this case an iPhone with a decent camera. Now I have a means of recording anything that pops up in front of me. The rather badly taken photo here was shot this weekend when we went for a walk up on Exmoor. That tree looks to me like it's just hanging on, I wanted an image that I can use to develop into drawings and maybe into an idea for a chair. A chair that expresses the very nature of the wood that it is made from. Gnarled, weathered, growing against the prevailing wind and storms. A bit like me.

So you don't need to carry a sketchbook with you, let you off that one. However you do need to use your eyes when you see something stop the car go out and take the photo then bring it back and do something with it don't just leave it on your laptop. Externalise, get the idea out of your head and onto paper. Then the idea can live, have a life of its own. You can leave it now and come back to it later. If you don't externalise it the idea will just burn away like the morning mist. Poof.