Anna Barton

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Notes on The Art of Travel (ch 8)

I loved Ruskin’s commentary on how much drawing really influences your perceptual skills. Drawing entices all of the senses because even something that has an unique feeling, is going to have unique texture to capture. I think it is fascinating how much our mind thinks that we know about a place or thing, compared to how many details we realize we did not pay attention to after drawing it. I definitely related to the feeling of wanting to capture beauty, and how often we use our camera to do this, it’s instinctive. He also states that through drawing we begin to understand why we enjoy a certain place on a conscious/aesthetic level, looking at the details can help us determine what about that place we find ugly or appealing. I think this is interesting, and very true in drawing and painting! You might like a color, but not realize why until you are mixing it and seeing all the color combinations it takes to make that color for instance. When he talked about the difference of perception between the sketcher and the non-sketcher it reminded me of how I am when I am alone in a landscape, compared to how I am when I am with a lot of people or on my phone. When I am alone my senses seem much more alive, and I notice more details like the sketcher, compared to when I am focusing on other things and the landscape becomes part of the background noise. When I conducted my word painting I simply tried to describe the landscape carefully so that a person who is not present could recreate the scene in paint. Ruskin though uses psychological languages that helps the reader understand why they enjoy the place, reaching far beyond a common description. I want to try to use more of this language in a future word painting.