I'm going to say that every single one of us in this room

made drawings when we were little.

Yes?

Yes? OK.

And maybe around the age of like, four or five or something like that,

you might have been drawing,

and a grown-up came over and looked over your shoulder and said,

"What's that?"

And you said, "It's a face."

And they said,

"That's not really what a face looks like.

This is what a face looks like."

And they proceeded to draw this.

Circle, two almonds for some eyes,

this upside-down seven situation we have here,

and then a curved line.

But guess what?

This doesn't really look that much like a face, OK?

It's an icon.

It's visual shorthand,

and it's how we look at so much of our world today.

See, we have so much information coming at us all the time,

that our brains literally can't process it,

and we fill in the world with patterns.

Much of what we see is our own expectations.

All right.

I'm going to show you a little trick

to rewire your brain into looking again.

Did you all get an envelope that says "do not open" on it?

Grab that envelope, it's time to open it.

Inside should be a piece of paper and a pencil.

Once you have that all prepped,

please turn to somebody next to you.

Ideally, somebody you don't know.

Yeah, we're doing this, people,

we're doing this.

(Laughs)

Great.

Everybody find a partner?

OK, now look back at me.

OK, now look back at me.

You are going to draw each other, OK?

No, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I promise this is not about doing a good drawing, OK?

That's not what we're doing here,

we're looking, this is about looking.

Everybody's going to be terrible, I promise, don't worry.

You're going to draw each other with two very simple rules.

One, you are never going to lift your pencil up off the paper.

One continuous line.

No, no, trust me here.

This is about looking, OK?

So one continuous line never lift the pencil.

Number two,

never, ever, ever look down at the paper you're drawing on, OK?

Yes, it's about looking.

So keep looking at the person you're drawing.

Now put your pencil down in the middle of the paper, OK?

Look up at your partner.

Look at the inside of one of their eyes.

Doesn't matter which one.

That's where you're going to start.

Ready?

Deep breath.

(Inhales)

And begin.

Now, just draw but notice where you are,

you're starting there and you see there is a corner,

maybe there's a curve there.

Notice those little lines, the eyelashes.

People are wearing masks, some aren't, just work with that.

Now just go slow.

Pay attention and draw what you see.

And don't look down.

Just keep going.

(Murmuring)

And just five more seconds.

And stop.

Look down at your beautiful drawings.

(Laughter)

Right?

Show your partner their incredible portrait.

It's so good, right?

I want to see them.

Hold them up.

Can you guys hold them up?

Hold up, everybody.

Oh my gosh.

Are you kidding me?

You all are amazing.

OK, you can put your drawings back down,

tuck them under,

put them on the paper.

That was wonderful.

I mean, they're all terrible, but they're wonderful.

Why are they wonderful?

Because you all just drew a face.

You drew what you saw.

You didn't draw what you think a face looks like, right?

You also just did something that people rarely do.

You just made intimate eye-to-eye,

face-to-face contact with someone without shying away

for almost a minute.

Through drawing, you slowed down,

you paid attention,

you looked closely at someone

and you let them look closely at you.

Good job.

I have found that drawing like this

creates an immediate connection like nothing else.

Alright.

So I call myself an illustrator and a graphic journalist.

I draw, I tell stories.

I spend time with people looking and listening.

And I take the words of the people that I speak with

and I put it together with drawings that I do, mostly from life,

just like you all just did.

I found that drawing like this does a lot of things

that photography can't do.

So when somebody points a camera at you, how do you feel?

A little objectified, right?

When I'm drawing, I hold my sketchbook low

and it keeps an open channel between me and the person I'm drawing.

A lot of time somebody will see me drawing and they'll get curious.

They'll come over to me,

and a real, authentic conversation begins.

Let me give you an example.

So a while back,

I wanted to do a drawn story

about how the public library serves our elders.

But after spending a few days kind of lurking around with a sketch pad,

looking over older folks' shoulders and asking them what they were reading,

I wasn't really getting the story.

Until I stumbled upon Leah.

Leah is the first, and at the time was the only, full-time social worker

dedicated to a library in the nation.

Turns out, public library definitely serves our elders.

It is also a social service epicenter of a city.

This is Charles.

Charles works with Leah.

And he does outreach within the library to folks

who are experiencing homelessness.

And he took me around,

I carried my sketch pad and I was drawing everything I saw,

and he showed me a very different library than I'd previously seen.

So computers that I assumed were for checking-out books,

or, you know, looking at emails,

were in fact a lifeline for folks who are searching for jobs and housing.

The sinks in the public restroom,

they are a laundromat and showers for folks who are sleeping on the street.

A library is a safe, quiet place

where anybody can go and find resources

and rest for free.

See, the moment I stopped looking for the story that I expected to see,

an entirely new and richer truth was revealed.

I found this to be true with everything and everyone I've ever drawn.

OK, so I draw from life, right, like you guys did.

And so I built myself a mobile studio

in the back of a swanky Honda Element --

So that I could go anywhere,

talk to anyone at any time and then draw and paint and sleep in the back.

It is very cozy.

I was on the road in Utah,

drawing and talking to people,

when I spotted on the side of the road a hand-painted wooden sign.

It said "Bootmaker."

I stopped.

A tall, white, handlebar mustached man wearing a cowboy shirt,

opened the door and found me,

a sketchbook-carrying, jumpsuit-wearing, urban, lefty lesbian,

smiling like, waving like a dork.

(Laughter)

When I spotted the stuffed cougar on the wall behind him,

this vegetarian thought she knew all she needed to know

about Don the bootmaker.

But there we were.