The Ben

My chest has slightly improved since the weekend but I'm still not up to running  . Last night I used the car to get home and stopped off to sketch  Ben Nevis . It was a glorious evening and the mountains were simply stunning . I painted this from the car park of the local school - what a view for the children to have! A sketch does little to convey the grandeur of the scene or show the richness of the colours . In the evening sunlight the hues were changing from minute to minute as well. Still a sketch in my opinion is far superior to a photo as it necessitates connection and involvement with the scene, one has to really look, rather than just clicking a shutter passively.I have thousands of mountain photos on my computer. For speed and convenience a camera cannot be surpassed for recording beautiful views yet for  many of those pictures I would struggle to name the location yet alone the time and circumstance of the photo. With a sketch I can always remember the day and place and my mood when I executed it, even if that sketch was done 30 odd years ago. Today we are so tuned in to film and photos as conveying true reality that we don't realize what they miss out. How many times whilst running to work have I been overawed by the beauty of morning sunlight on the snow clad slopes of the Ben, whipped out my phone to snap the scene and been disappointed by the tiny sliver of light representing the mountain and dark  foreground devoid of detail. In reality on such an occasion the Ben explodes on your consciousness with stunning beauty, in the photo it is nondescript. In a painting you can attempt to express that impression of the scene and even if you lack the time or skill to do so you still have the memories of the attempt. Even a brief shoddy sketch actually records more information for the sketcher - by being a link to those impressions and memories- than the photo does.