By Anne Stone

当你和一个画家一起漫步街头时，你们的眼中是不一样的世界：你只看到绿树成荫，光线耀眼，而画家眼中却是美的细节——他会看到并去思考阳光是如何从叶缝中倾洒而下，树根是如何交错盘绕，鲜花是如何装点绿地……每当你下意识地拿出手机记录美景时，你早已忘了用心去欣赏它。你曾以为自己会再次翻看这些照片，但结果却是遗忘的美景越来越多而已。也许，你缺少的只是一支画笔，它能让你细心观察周围的美；也许，你缺少的并不是画笔，而是画家的视角和心态，去记录这个世界的点滴。

Whenever something looks interesting or beautiful, there’s a natural impulse to want to capture and preserve it1impulse： 冲动；capture： 摄影，记录；preserve： 保存。—which means, in this day and age, that we’re likely to reach for our phones to take a picture.

Though this would seem to be an ideal solution, there are two big problems associated with taking pictures. Firstly, we’re likely to be so busy taking the pictures,we forget to look at the world whose beauty and interest prompted2prompt： 促使。us to take a photograph in the first place. And secondly, because we feel the pictures are safely stored on our phones, we never get around to3get around to： 抽出时间做……。looking at them, so sure are we that we’ll get around to it one day.

These problems would seem to be very much of today, a consequence of the tiny phones in our pockets. But they were noticed right at the beginning of the history of photography, when the average camera was the size of a grandfather clock4grandfather clock： 落地式大摆钟。. The first person to notice them was the English art critic, John Ruskin5John Ruskin： 约翰·罗金斯（1819—1900），英国维多利亚时代主要的艺术评论家之一，代表作为《现代画家》（Modern Painters），其作品几乎都是强调自然、艺术和社会之间的联系。. He was a keen traveller who realised that most tourists make a dismal6dismal： 糟糕的，差劲的。job of noticing or remembering the beautiful things they see. He argued that humans have an innate7innate： 与生俱来的。tendency to respond to beauty and desire to possess it, but that there are better and worse expressions of this desire. At worst, we get into buying souvenirs8souvenir： 纪念品。or taking photographs. But, in Ruskin’s eyes, there’s one thing we should do and that is attempt to draw the interesting things we see, irrespective of9irrespective of： 不考虑。whether we happen to have any talent for doing so.

Before the invention of photography, people used to draw far more than they do today. It was an active necessity. But in the mid-19th century, photography killed drawing. It became something only “artists” would ever do, so Ruskin—passionate promoter of drawing and enemy of the camera—spent four years on a campaign to get people sketching10sketch： 画素描。again. He wrote books, gave speeches and funded art schools, but he saw no paradox in stressing that his campaign had nothing to do with getting people to draw well: “A man is born an artist as a hippopotamus is born a hippopotamus; and you can no more make yourself one than you can make yourself a giraffe.”11他写书、举办讲座还投资艺术学校，但他强调举办这些活动并不是为了让人们画得更好，而这与他（举办活动）的初衷也并不矛盾：“人天生就是艺术家，正如河马天生就是河马；你不能再使自己变成艺术家，就像你不能变成长颈鹿一样。” paradox： 悖论。

So if drawing had value even when it was practised by people with no talent,it was for Ruskin because drawing can teach us to see: to notice properly rather than gaze absentmindedly.12因此在罗金斯看来，对于没有天分的人来说，绘画也是有意义的，因为它能够教我们去观察，让我们适当地去留意（周围的事物），而不是心不在焉地盯着一个地方看。absentmindedly： 茫然地，心不在焉地。In the process of recreating with our own hand what lies before our eyes, we naturally move from a position of observing beauty in a loose way to one where we acquire a deep understanding of its parts.

Ruskin was very distressed by how seldom people notice details. He deplored the blindness and haste of modern tourists, especially those who prided themselves on covering Europe in a week by train:13deplore： 谴责；haste： 匆忙，仓促；pride on： 为……自豪。“No changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier,or wiser.14不挪地儿地以每小时一百英里的速度（指坐火车）旅游一点儿都不会让我们更坚强、更快乐和更明智。one whit： 一丁点儿。There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast.15不管人们走得多慢，都看不尽世间的风景；走得快，也不会看到更多的景色。The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being.”16一颗子弹飞得太快并没有好处；而一个人，一个真正意义上的人，走得慢也没什么坏处；因为人值得骄傲的并非行走，而是存在。glory： 荣耀的事，值得骄傲的事。

So he slowed things down and recommended we spend far longer looking at impressive things, even quite simple things. His own drawings showed the way.

It is a measure of how accustomed we are to rushing that we would be thought unusual and perhaps dangerous if we stopped and stared at a place for as long as a sketcher would require to draw it.17这说明了我们是如此习惯于匆忙，如果我们停下脚步，用画家画一幅素描所需要的观察时间盯着一个地方看，便会被认为是不寻常甚至是危险的。sketcher： 画素描的人。Ten minutes of acute18acute： 有洞察力的，敏锐的。concentration at least are needed to draw a tree; the prettiest tree rarely stops passers-by for longer than a minute.

Summing up what he had attempted to do in four years of teaching and writing manuals19manual： 手册，指南。on drawing, Ruskin wrote:

“Let two persons go out for a walk; the one a good sketcher, the other having no taste of the kind. Let them go down a green lane20lane： 小路。. There will be a great difference in the scene as perceived21perceive： 感知。by the two individuals.The one will see a lane and trees; he will perceive the trees to be green,though he will think nothing about it; he will see that the sun shines, and that it has a cheerful effect; and that’s all! But what will the sketcher see?His eye is accustomed to search into the cause of beauty, and penetrate the minutest parts of loveliness.22penetrate： 洞察，了解；minute： 微小的，细小的，文中为最高级。He looks up, and observes how the showery and subdivided sunshine comes sprinkled down among the gleaming leaves overhead, till the air is filled with the emerald light.23他抬起头，能观察到一缕缕阳光从头顶闪闪发光的叶子的缝隙中倾洒下来，直到空气中满满都是绿宝石般的光。showery： 阵雨般的；subdivided： 细分的；sprinkle：洒，撒；gleaming： 晶莹的，闪闪发光的；emerald： 翠绿色的。He will see here and there a bough emerging from the veil of leaves, he will see the jewel brightness of the emerald moss and the variegated and fantastic lichens,white and blue, purple and red, all mellowed and mingled into a single garment of beauty.24bough： 大树枝；veil： 遮蔽物；moss：苔藓；variegated： 斑驳的；lichen： 地衣；mellow：（使）变柔和；mingle：混合；garment： 外观，外表。Then come the cavernous trunks and the twisted roots that grasp with their snake-like coils at the steep bank, whose turfy slope is inlaid with flowers of a thousand dyes.25接着映入眼帘的是凹凸不平的树干，树根交错，如蛇一般在斜坡上盘绕着，草坪上点缀着五颜六色的花朵。cavernous： 凹状的，多孔的；coils： 卷，圈；steep： 陡峭的；bank：坡地，斜坡；turfy： 草皮的；inlay with： 用……镶饰；dye： 染料。Is not this worth seeing? Yet if you are not a sketcher you will pass along the green lane, and when you come home again, have nothing to say or to think about it, but that you went down such and such a lane.”