Alan de Botton suggested people to draw picture when they travel. Drawing picture helps people to focus on beauty and learn why it is so, and discover the unique beauty in the scene, then, try to explain it with drawing.

In the character named “Procession of Beauty”, he quoted Ruskin’s saying:

“I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing ; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.”

So, encouraged by Ruskin, and Alan, I started to draw with a hard-to-use ball pen on the back of the hotel notice. Here are two.

The United Center

Above is the view I see when I was waiting for check-out. I sat there, and spent about 10 minutes or more to draw this one.

Here is the photo from the same view:

Gate 15 of Hong Kong Airport

When I was waiting at Gate 15 of the Hong Kong Airport for my China Eastern Airlines flight, I took another hotel notice, and draw what I saw on the back. Due to time limitation, I didn’t draw the roof well, and the relative size of the ticket counter on the left is also wrong. Anyway, this is what I got:

Here is photo from the same view:

The Difference between Drawing and Camera

There is no way anyone can draw a picture as complete as a photo, or even more impossible to be exactly the same as the nature of itself. But as suggested in the Art of Travel, nothing (either camera or simply be there) can substitute the process of observing. Only after observing the nature for long enough, careful enough, and pro-active enough can someone really keeps the nature in his/her own mind.

Personally, the difference between draw a picture of a place and taking a photo is that, if I draw a picture, I can draw pretty much the same one later without looking at the picture or the scene itself (it is in my memory); while if I take a photo, there is no way that I can draw it out. It is just in the photo, not my heart.

I also encourage people to draw. Well. I don’t feel too embarrassed when people see how bad my drawing is. It is just a way to reach better observation of the scene.

P.S. Below are the bigger versions of the same two drawings.