… because it isn’t a glass of water; it’s just a sketch. But I like how I began to capture the light here. I didn’t get it right, but I got closer than I think I’ve gotten on any sketch before, and I really do love light and shadow and refraction.
That said, I did a terrible job of capturing “glass” in this glass. Here’s one of my father’s finished drawings on a similar theme (though no water; his glass was entirely empty. Let that be a lesson to you.)
I’ve always loved this drawing, how precise and controlled it is, how it makes a flat white page into a space one can occupy. I suppose there’s a lesson there, too: the hours upon hours spent making a small orderly corner of the world where every lines makes sense and can be justified and defended, and the whole thing can be secured in a frame unchanging, so you can keep looking back at it and knowing it is there exactly as it should be.