The elements of drawing John Ruskin

When I first read a little of Ruskin's work and walked past his school, and later, when I sat camera in hand looking out at his view near Kirby Lonsdale I must admit to a holding onto a sense of misplaced, uneducated, working class snobbery, and I ignored him; This ignorance was developed further in another misplaced way, my education in art at BIHE was largely based upon 20th Century Artists and I think  Ruskin was unfashionable  and mentioned in passing, so I paid scant attention to his dictat on the way to develop skills or of good practice in drawing, indeed I was to busy trying to draw my way; So as one does I looked everywhere else, mostly to European artists but also a lot in English art with the likes of Nicholson, Bacon, Virtue and others and I hope I learnt a lot:- strange then that Ruskin should be reintroduced to me by a Portuguese artist Manuel Casa Branca with whom I spent a number of great days drawing next to the River Ribble, albeit some miles below Ruskin’s view, better still to read the preface of Ruskin’s book by Bernard Dunston and this paragraph.........

"We read about Ruskin’s work with a set of ideas about drawing very different from those of his readers in the mid 19th Century...how can the Ruskinian method have meaning for us?...someone setting to draw a leaf or a leg with the intention of finding its structure or to discover how to express it clearly as possible that structure within the limits of a pencil and a piece of paper is not going to set about it that differently if he is 15th century florentine or soemeone today..." The best answerer of questions as Ruskins states is persaeverence and the best drawing masters are the wood and the hills"...John Constable couldn't agree more and after all he was maybe the start of the art we so love today...
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In truth, I have grown to really like the guy and his writing, listen to this ode of joy on colour by the man himself :-

"You ought to love colour, and to think nothing quite beautiful or perfect without it: and if you really do love it, for its own sake and are not merely desirous to colour because you think painting a finer thing than drawing , there is some chance that you may colour well." John Ruskin in 'The Elements of Drawing'  Letter 111 on Colour and Composition. 1857.. Smith Elder and Co.