Why You Should Stop Taking Pictures on Your Phone—and Learn to Draw

By Anne Stone

當(dāng)你和一個畫家一起漫步街頭時，你們的眼中是不一樣的世界：你只看到綠樹成蔭，光線耀眼，而畫家眼中卻是美的細(xì)節(jié)——他會看到并去思考陽光是如何從葉縫中傾灑而下，樹根是如何交錯盤繞，鮮花是如何裝點綠地……每當(dāng)你下意識地拿出手機(jī)記錄美景時，你早已忘了用心去欣賞它。你曾以為自己會再次翻看這些照片，但結(jié)果卻是遺忘的美景越來越多而已。也許，你缺少的只是一支畫筆，它能讓你細(xì)心觀察周圍的美；也許，你缺少的并不是畫筆，而是畫家的視角和心態(tài)，去記錄這個世界的點滴。

Whenever something looks interesting or beautiful, there’s a natural impulse to want to capture and preserve it1impulse： 沖動；capture： 攝影，記錄；preserve： 保存?！獁hich 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： 抽出時間做……。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： 落地式大擺鐘。. The first person to notice them was the English art critic, John Ruskin5John Ruskin： 約翰·羅金斯（1819—1900），英國維多利亞時代主要的藝術(shù)評論家之一，代表作為《現(xiàn)代畫家》（Modern Painters），其作品幾乎都是強(qiáng)調(diào)自然、藝術(shù)和社會之間的聯(lián)系。. He was a keen traveller who realised that most tourists make a dismal6dismal： 糟糕的，差勁的。job of noticing or remembering the beautiful things they see. He argued that humans have an innate7innate： 與生俱來的。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： 紀(jì)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： 不考慮。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： 畫素描。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他寫書、舉辦講座還投資藝術(shù)學(xué)校，但他強(qiáng)調(diào)舉辦這些活動并不是為了讓人們畫得更好，而這與他（舉辦活動）的初衷也并不矛盾：“人天生就是藝術(shù)家，正如河馬天生就是河馬；你不能再使自己變成藝術(shù)家，就像你不能變成長頸鹿一樣?！?paradox： 悖論。

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因此在羅金斯看來，對于沒有天分的人來說，繪畫也是有意義的，因為它能夠教我們?nèi)ビ^察，讓我們適當(dāng)?shù)厝チ粢猓ㄖ車氖挛铮?，而不是心不在焉地盯著一個地方看。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： 譴責(zé)；haste： 匆忙，倉促；pride on： 為……自豪?！癗o changing of place at a hundred miles an hour will make us one whit stronger, happier,or wiser.14不挪地兒地以每小時一百英里的速度（指坐火車）旅游一點兒都不會讓我們更堅強(qiáng)、更快樂和更明智。one whit： 一丁點兒。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不管人們走得多慢，都看不盡世間的風(fēng)景；走得快，也不會看到更多的景色。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.”16一顆子彈飛得太快并沒有好處；而一個人，一個真正意義上的人，走得慢也沒什么壞處；因為人值得驕傲的并非行走，而是存在。glory： 榮耀的事，值得驕傲的事。

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這說明了我們是如此習(xí)慣于匆忙，如果我們停下腳步，用畫家畫一幅素描所需要的觀察時間盯著一個地方看，便會被認(rèn)為是不尋常甚至是危險的。sketcher： 畫素描的人。Ten minutes of acute18acute： 有洞察力的，敏銳的。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： 手冊，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，細(xì)小的，文中為最高級。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他抬起頭，能觀察到一縷縷陽光從頭頂閃閃發(fā)光的葉子的縫隙中傾灑下來，直到空氣中滿滿都是綠寶石般的光。showery： 陣雨般的；subdivided： 細(xì)分的；sprinkle：灑，撒；gleaming： 晶瑩的，閃閃發(fā)光的；emerald： 翠綠色的。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： 大樹枝；veil： 遮蔽物；moss：苔蘚；variegated： 斑駁的；lichen： 地衣；mellow：（使）變?nèi)岷停籱ingle：混合；garment： 外觀，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接著映入眼簾的是凹凸不平的樹干，樹根交錯，如蛇一般在斜坡上盤繞著，草坪上點綴著五顏六色的花朵。cavernous： 凹狀的，多孔的；coils： 卷，圈；steep： 陡峭的；bank：坡地，斜坡；turfy： 草皮的；inlay with： 用……鑲飾；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.”