Episode 18: The Bench Blindness Experiment: What Changes When You Step Back

This episode is a simple experiment you can do with your own work.

At our workbench, we spend so much time looking at a piece that familiarity starts to take over. We know where everything is. We know what we intended. Over time, that can make it harder to see what the viewer will actually notice.

In this episode, I guide you through a series of short tests: looking at your miniature up close, stepping back, viewing it through a phone, reducing detail, and checking what remains in memory. At each step, the question is the same: what changes? Not what you already know, but what shifts, what holds, and what disappears.

Your miniature doesn’t exist as one fixed image. It changes with distance, attention, and context. And once you see that, you can start using it.