I recently realized my attention to fine detail and the varying tones in black and white images began in my teenage hobby of sketching. Using #2 pencil and varying degrees of erasure and finger brushes and rubs and intensities of graphite edge, I sharpened my monochromatic ability “seeing” color in shades of grey. Drawing from the color image of a full-sailed schooner ship at sea calls for special focus to the nuances of depth, texture, contrast, shadow, and light and how to bring it into another life using only a pencil.

Just as imagining depicting a black and white image from the point of a pencil enables me to see even the hues of white, so does widening our experiences in other ways enable us to see life from diverse points of view.

Make room for more points of view.