Choose an artist and spend a little time with a particular work. These seven guides help you notice how images and objects are made, describe what you see and follow the evidence behind an interpretation.
Start with a subject that catches your eye: a face, a field, a vessel or an unexpected object. Each guide links to museum images and records, explains useful vocabulary and offers a short looking exercise. You can read at home or carry the questions into a gallery.
Drawing, observation and the human figure
Leonardo da Vinci: Looking Closely at Paintings and Drawings
Follow a face, a fold and a plant to see how observation becomes drawing and painting.
Michelangelo: From Drawing to Sculpture and Fresco
Trace pose, volume and revision from a chalk study to a monumental figure.
Landscape, light and historical perspective
Van Gogh’s Drawings: How Line Creates Movement and Depth
Read direction, spacing and density in the marks of an Arles landscape drawing.
Manet and the Sea: Looking at Light, Boats and Modern Life
Compare sea, sky, vessels and viewpoints in works by Manet and Monet.
George Catlin’s Indian Gallery: Art, Evidence and Perspective
Compare paintings with historical records and Native perspectives; keep evidence and interpretation distinct.
Objects, form and imagination
Picasso’s Ceramics: How Everyday Forms Become Art
Look around a ceramic form and learn how shape, decoration and workshop production relate.
Salvador Dalí: Surreal Images, Objects and Sculpture
Explore familiar objects made strange, then read the records behind paintings and sculpture.
A close-looking routine you can use anywhere
- Describe. Give the whole work a minute. Name the largest shapes, the subject and one detail you initially missed.
- Examine the making. Move between whole view and detail. Look at marks, edges, surfaces, material and scale. For an object, compare the available views.
- Check the record. Note artist, title, date, medium, dimensions and collection number. Read what a museum, artist or relevant community says about its context.
- Interpret and test. Write one claim and the visible detail that supports it. Keep an unanswered question alongside it. Distinguish your response from an artist’s statement or a research finding.
Try ten minutes with one work: two on the whole, three on a detail, three on its record or a comparison, and two making notes. Use the plain-text close-looking worksheet on a device or print a copy. It includes prompts for paintings, drawings and objects, plus space for sources and a second interpretation.
The guide illustrations are conceptual scenes. The museum images linked inside each article show the actual artworks. Use collection records for object identity and current display information; an exhibition archive records an earlier event.
For drawing projects, color, museum planning and collecting records, explore the broader Art library.