Artists aren’t seeing a different world. They’re just noticing the crack in the sidewalk you walked past.

The difference is attention rather than vision. Nobody is handed a more interesting world, and some people have simply built the habit of stopping at what everyone else steps over. That habit is learnable, and it mostly consists of slowing down and letting something ordinary hold your eye longer than feels necessary. The material was always on the route you take every day.

Walk a route you know well and find three things you have never looked at properly. Photograph or write down one of them. Do it again tomorrow on the same route and see what else was there.