Make Your Work Come to Life The Daily Laws, March 15th

Leonardo da Vinci’s hunger to get at the core of life by exploring its details drove him into elaborate research on human and animal anatomy. He wanted to be able to draw a human or a cat from the inside out. He personally dissected cadavers, sawing through bones and skulls, and he religiously attended autopsies so that he could see as closely as possible the structure of muscles and nerves.

His anatomical drawings were far in advance of anything of his time for their realism and accuracy. In your own work you must follow the Leonardo path. Most people don’t have the patience to absorb their minds in the fine points and minutiae that are intrinsically part of their work. They are in a hurry to create effects and make a splash; they think in large brush strokes. Their work inevitably reveals their lack of attention to detail-it doesn’t connect deeply with the public, and it feels flimsy.

You must see whatever you produce as something that has a life and presence of its own. Seeing your work as something alive, your path to mastery is to study and absorb these details in a universal fashion, to the point at which you feel the life force and can express it effortlessly in your work.

Daily Law: See your work as a living thing. Your task is to bring it alive and make others feel this.