Lesson seven, Field Notes. Field Notes, the drawings that artists,
designers, inventors make when they're really just walking through their normal
round of life. They've usually made into notebooks, convenient scraps of paper
and on the back of the proverbial envelope there. There's nothing clever
about Field Notes. They tie together writing, mathematics
and drawing, and they all aids to the memory. I mean,
on this drawing, it tells us when it was made, it was made in April where it was made. It was made
in Brentwood, which is Ruskin's house in the light district. It tells us how long the snake
is that he drew. It says it's 18 inches. It also has a little poetic component, which says
it's like the decoration on a suit of armour. And so we get this
big picture building up of a man going for a walk, finding maybe a dead snake,
maybe seeing a live one and recording its pattern, the pattern on
its back, its its general appearance. It's not a piece of art. It's a note.
It's a record. It's using writing and drawing to as an aid to
memory. It goes into a little book. It's put into his pocket and he takes it home, maybe never
looks at it again, maybe uses it as the beginning of a painting or a drawing or a design
for a fabric. What is most important about these drawings
is that they are from the heart. They're not display pieces.
They are literally just AIDS to the memory. They are like pages in a journal.