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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30325 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30325-h.htm or 30325-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30325/30325-h/30325-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30325/30325-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      One typographical error has been corrected: it is listed
+      at the end of the text.
+
+      Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph were
+      moved to the nearest paragraph's begining.
+
+
+
+
+
+Library Edition
+
+THE COMPLETE WORKS
+OF
+JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+ELEMENTS OF DRAWING AND
+PERSPECTIVE
+THE TWO PATHS
+UNTO THIS LAST
+MUNERA PULVERIS
+SESAME AND LILIES
+ETHICS OF THE DUST
+
+
+National Library Association
+New York             Chicago
+
+
+THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING
+
+IN THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                                                 ix
+
+    LETTER I.
+  ON FIRST PRACTICE                                        1
+
+    LETTER II.
+  SKETCHING FROM NATURE                                   65
+
+    LETTER III.
+  ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION                               106
+
+
+    APPENDIX I.
+  ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES                                     183
+
+    APPENDIX II.
+  THINGS TO BE STUDIED                                   188
+
+
+
+
+["The Elements of Drawing" was written during the winter of 1856. The
+First Edition was published in 1857; the Second followed in the same
+year, with some additions and slight alterations. The Third Edition
+consisted of sixth thousand, 1859; seventh thousand, 1860; and eighth
+thousand, 1861.
+
+The work was partly reproduced in "Our Sketching Club," by the Rev. R.
+St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., 1874; with new editions in 1875, 1882, and
+1886.
+
+Mr. Ruskin meant, during his tenure of the Slade Professorship at
+Oxford, to recast his teaching, and to write a systematic manual for the
+use of his Drawing School, under the title of "The Laws of Fésole." Of
+this only vol. i. was completed, 1879; second edition, 1882.
+
+As, therefore, "The Elements of Drawing" has never been completely
+superseded, and as many readers of Mr. Ruskin's works have expressed a
+desire to possess the book in its old form, it is now reprinted as it
+stood in 1859.]
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+As one or two questions, asked of me since the publication of this work,
+have indicated points requiring elucidation, I have added a few short
+notes in the first Appendix. It is not, I think, desirable otherwise to
+modify the form or add to the matter of a book as it passes through
+successive editions; I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some
+obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains, and will
+remain, in its original form, which I had carefully considered. Should
+the public find the book useful, and call for further editions of it,
+such additional notes as may be necessary will be always placed in the
+first Appendix, where they can be at once referred to, in any library,
+by the possessors of the earlier editions; and I will take care they
+shall not be numerous.
+
+  _August 3, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual of drawing, I
+ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but
+those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly
+state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is
+too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance
+of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear
+questionable in the method of its treatment.
+
+ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of
+children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it
+advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of
+art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on
+what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free
+will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in
+its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors
+almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely
+daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-box may be taken away
+till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on
+soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colors at
+command; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that
+imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children
+delight in, (generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical
+art delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the
+parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things
+it can see and likes,--birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.
+
+iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should only be
+granted as a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its
+drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should
+always be within a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he
+can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in
+it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind;
+but should be firmly restricted to a _few_ prints and to a few books. If
+a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a
+boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by
+the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in
+them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give
+themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is
+concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his
+colors and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,
+and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line
+is too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy;
+_accuracy_ being the first and last thing they look for. If the child
+shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should
+neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show
+pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it
+well, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any
+more than they would praise it for being stout. They should praise it
+only for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;
+otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly.
+The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated by George
+Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or
+fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;
+and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
+hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to
+know something of the first principles of art.
+
+iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought
+forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at
+present devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther
+experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in
+several important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are
+sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
+without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so
+materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word
+or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be
+thought willful eccentricity.
+
+v. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all
+directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they
+propose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil
+or water-color, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter
+work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such
+accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to
+design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught as
+an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the
+second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in
+the branch Government Schools of Design.
+
+vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to
+the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it
+seems to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as
+_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the
+skill by which an inventive workman designs and molds a beautiful cup,
+is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
+afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the
+faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original
+piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as
+those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate
+copies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
+reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education
+of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael; then let
+Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or
+a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most
+convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the
+platter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain
+first the best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any
+consideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your
+trained artist to determine how far art can be popularized, or
+manufacture ennobled.
+
+vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual
+temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends
+wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a
+master or a school can teach; so that while powers of invention
+distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from
+school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of
+sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be without
+exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate.
+
+viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to
+obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's
+power, a delicate method of work, such as may insure his seeing truly.
+For I am nearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is
+very little difficulty in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that
+this difficulty be still great, 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. It is surely also a more important thing,
+for young people and unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate
+the art of others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the
+modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of
+judgment. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern
+water-color painting, can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo;
+they must forever remain blind to the refinement of such men's
+penciling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a
+degree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode
+recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot
+go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand
+what masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some
+proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting
+of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of
+natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labor than I have
+asked him to undergo.
+
+ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it
+possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works
+unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight road which admits
+unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the
+hedges need to be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring
+back the erring traveler. The system followed in this work will,
+therefore, at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are
+familiar with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College;
+for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate him
+from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead into, is _at
+once_ set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds entertainment in
+his efforts and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest
+object which it is possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and,
+practically, I find a child's toy, a white leather ball, better than
+anything else; as the gradations on balls of plaster of Paris, which I
+use sometimes to try the strength of pupils who have had previous
+practice, are a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has
+been objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the
+most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;[A] but I do not want it
+to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, is
+the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. This he
+learns most satisfactorily from a sphere; because any solid form,
+terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes some of its
+appearance of projection to its perspective; but in the sphere, what,
+without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade,
+the image of a solid ball; and this fact is just as striking to the
+learner, whether his circular outline be true or false. He is,
+therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes the
+ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out
+to him, and he does better next time, and better still the next. But his
+mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the outline left to
+take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of
+immediate intelligibility,--strictly speaking, it is merely the edge of
+the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an outline,
+in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from the first, that
+Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another; but outlines
+none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is
+recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only
+means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and
+discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and
+extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the
+handling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the
+solitary student can only find out his own mistakes by help of the
+traced limit, and can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise
+in which nothing but firmness is required; and during which all other
+considerations (as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely excluded.
+
+x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that
+recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the
+most important and special of all that are involved in my teaching:
+namely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local
+color. I believe that the endeavor to separate, in the course of
+instruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local
+color, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the student's
+power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much as it
+retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by any
+discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the only
+distinctive one in my system, so far as it _is_ a system. For the
+recommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration,
+whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other
+reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and
+teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or
+stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold
+their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."
+
+xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with
+regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous
+or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted student, such formalities
+are indispensable, and I am not without hope that the sense of secure
+advancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the
+following out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible
+to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be
+otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only
+desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as
+that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or
+whether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working
+world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give
+no price for it.
+
+xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have
+not imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would
+be worth while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a
+master's help, and in the way perspective is at present explained in
+treatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is
+not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the
+rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep
+of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot
+foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
+subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by
+the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever
+trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its
+laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in
+the easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult
+ones. It would take about a month's labor to draw imperfectly, by laws
+of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five
+minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending
+the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is
+true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused
+themselves with it; and all the great painters put fine saloons and
+arcades behind their Madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in
+perspective: but even this was generally done by them only to catch the
+public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they
+took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a
+crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their
+capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in
+the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only
+they left just perspective enough to please the public.
+
+xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David
+Roberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic
+arch to scale at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was
+professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he
+professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in
+true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much perspective
+as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his
+buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not
+justify this; and would recommend the student at least to treat
+perspective with common civility, but to pay no court to it. The best
+way he can learn it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in
+a frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance
+at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be
+placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass,
+but as high or as low as the student likes; then with a brush at the end
+of a stick, and a little body-color that will adhere to the glass, the
+lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them
+through it. When so traced they are all in true perspective. If the
+glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true
+perspective, only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane,
+while common perspective always supposes the plane of the picture to be
+vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom yourself to inclose
+your subject, before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held
+upright before you; it will show you what you may legitimately take into
+your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow foreground near
+you, and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building
+you can properly take in, etc.[B]
+
+xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because
+I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good
+purpose by an amateur. As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be
+drawn on the same principles as anything else.
+
+xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student
+should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended
+practice he find himself in difficulties which I have not enough
+provided against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under
+drawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street),
+and who will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that can
+remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself
+in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do
+so; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me
+when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough
+guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious
+embarrassment; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions
+will find, on the whole, that the best answerer of questions is
+perseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.
+
+  [1857.]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [A] Or, more accurately, appears to be so, because any one can see
+    an error in a circle.
+
+  [B] If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more
+    of perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of
+    49 Acacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master,
+    and to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly,
+    easily, and rightly. [Mr. Runciman has died since this was written:
+    Mr. Ward's present address is Bedford Chambers, 28 Southampton
+    Street, Strand, London, W.C.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+ON FIRST PRACTICE.
+
+
+1. MY DEAR READER,--Whether this book is to be of use to you or not,
+depends wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you
+desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse
+in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in
+listless hours, I cannot help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that
+you may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such
+things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your own memory
+of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you
+wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world,
+and to preserve something like a true image of beautiful things that
+pass away, or which you must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to
+understand the minds of great painters, and to be able to appreciate
+their work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely
+taking up the thoughts of other people about it; then I _can_ help you,
+or, which is better, show you how to help yourself.
+
+2. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers, which
+indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much
+easier to learn to draw well, than it is to learn to play well on any
+musical instrument; but you know that it takes three or four years of
+practice, giving three or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary
+command over the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly
+command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with it,
+can be acquired without painstaking, or in a _very_ short time. The kind
+of drawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in
+a term or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not
+drawing at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not
+always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;
+profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of
+vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,
+after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will
+try to copy the commonest piece of real work--suppose a lithograph on
+the titlepage of a new opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest
+illustrated newspaper of the day,--they will find themselves entirely
+beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much
+more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young
+lady is supposed to have command; and that wood-cut was drawn in urgent
+haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by
+people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power;
+both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any
+simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.
+
+3. Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a
+new language, without some hard and disagreeable labor. But do not, on
+the other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear
+that you may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is
+indeed true that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw
+instinctively, and get on almost without teaching; though never without
+toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are
+many degrees: it will take one person a much longer time than another to
+attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are
+never quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the
+faculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in
+the experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to
+draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available
+power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all
+persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a
+decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess
+such knowledge.
+
+4. Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains,
+and to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I
+can promise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an
+hour's practice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in
+whatever way you find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours'
+practice, will give you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever
+you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other
+people's work: of which hours if you have one to spare at present, we
+may as well begin at once.
+
+
+EXERCISE I.
+
+5. Everything that you can see in the world around you, presents itself
+to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors
+variously shaded.[1] Some of these patches of color have an appearance
+of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk has of
+threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs: but whether this be
+the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch
+of some definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to
+produce extents of smooth color, without texture.
+
+6. This can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft
+at the point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpracticed
+hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it
+is better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and
+fine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by
+working over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be
+properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the best
+artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument,
+in order thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be
+content to do so for a considerable period.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
+
+7. Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of
+color, we must be able to lay on _one_ color properly, in whatever
+gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore,
+first to lay on tints or patches of gray, of whatever depth we want,
+with a pointed instrument. Take any finely pointed steel pen (one of
+Gillott's lithographic crowquills is best), and a piece of quite smooth,
+but not shining, note-paper, cream laid, and get some ink that has stood
+already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black, and as thick
+as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and draw four
+straight lines, so as to inclose a square, or nearly a square, about as
+large as _a_, Fig. 1. I say nearly a square, because it does not in the
+least matter whether it is quite square or not, the object being merely
+to get a space inclosed by straight lines.
+
+8. Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so
+completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch of gray
+silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as at _b_. Cover it
+quickly, first with straightish lines, in any direction you like, not
+troubling yourself to draw them much closer or neater than those in the
+square _a_. Let them quite dry before retouching them. (If you draw
+three or four squares side by side, you may always be going on with one
+while the others are drying.) Then cover these lines with others in a
+different direction, and let those dry; then in another direction still,
+and let those dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk of blotting,
+and then draw the lines as quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on
+as swiftly as the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to
+reach this great speed at first, you will go over the edge of the
+square, which is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now
+and then than to draw the lines very slowly; for if you do, the pen
+leaves a little dot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil
+your work. So draw each line quickly, stopping always as nearly as you
+can at the edge of the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge
+are afterwards to be removed with the penknife, but not till you have
+done the whole work, otherwise you roughen the paper, and the next line
+that goes over the edge makes a blot.
+
+9. When you have gone over the whole three or four times, you will find
+some parts of the square look darker than other parts. Now try to make
+the lighter parts as dark as the rest, so that the whole may be of equal
+depth or darkness. You will find, on examining the work, that where it
+looks darkest the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines
+than elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little
+scratches and dots, _between_ the lines in the paler parts; and where
+there are any very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them out lightly with
+the penknife, for the eye must not be attracted by any line in
+particular. The more carefully and delicately you fill in the little
+gaps and holes the better; you will get on faster by doing two or three
+squares perfectly than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and
+begins to look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly
+to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use
+the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it
+softly into an even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty
+consists in getting evenness: one bit will always look darker than
+another bit of your square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look
+over the whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a mess,
+give it up and begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you
+have done your best with every square. The tint at last ought at least
+to be as close and even as that in _b_, Fig. 1. You will find, however,
+that it is very difficult to get a pale tint; because, naturally, the
+ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper
+more than you want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by
+leaving the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine,
+lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last,
+passing the penknife over the whole. By keeping several squares in
+progress at one time, and reserving your pen for the light one just when
+the ink is nearly exhausted, you may get on better. The paper ought, at
+last, to look lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines
+distinctly visible.
+
+
+EXERCISE II.
+
+10. As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to
+vary it by proceeding with another at the same time. The power of
+shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of hand and keenness of
+sight; but there are other qualities required in drawing, dependent not
+merely on lightness, but steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect
+in its power, must be made accurate as well as keen, and not only see
+shrewdly, but measure justly.
+
+11. Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on botany containing
+_outline_ plates of leaves and flowers, it does not matter whether bad
+or good: Baxter's British Flowering Plants is quite good enough. Copy
+any of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by
+the eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,
+rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right:
+when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the book; on
+this paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your
+own; and having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all
+patiently, till you have got it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with
+a very soft pencil, and do not rub out so hard[2] as to spoil the
+surface of your paper; never mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not
+roughen it; and let the false outlines alone where they do not really
+interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to
+hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have
+got it as right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the
+point; rest your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to
+hold the pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising
+your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on
+one part of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the
+present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of
+shade; all such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for
+your exercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is
+better, however, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does
+not in the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but
+it matters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place
+than in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even
+line slowly and in any direction; all dashing lines, or approximations
+to penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the
+ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it
+in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.
+
+12. As soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you
+have made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in
+the slowness. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a
+sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[3] the real
+difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but
+keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.
+
+
+EXERCISE III.
+
+13. Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares,
+and chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for
+rest.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading
+instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to
+produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2, the dark tint passing gradually
+into the lighter ones. Nearly all expression of form, in drawing,
+depends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is
+always most skillful which passes from one tint into another very little
+paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, as
+in Fig. 2, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black,
+passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every part of
+the band may have visible change in it. The perception of gradation is
+very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many artists), and you
+will probably, for some time, think your gradation skillful enough, when
+it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece of gray shaded
+ribbon, and comparing it with your drawing, you may arrive, in early
+stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction with it. Widen your
+band little by little as you get more skillful, so as to give the
+gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the same time to
+look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest and the most
+beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and try to
+consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a piece of
+paper colored blue, or gray, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe
+how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the
+window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on the outside and
+inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look round and
+hollow;[4] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus gradually you
+will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the light as it
+increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your eye gets keen
+and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.
+
+14. But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects
+in which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad
+omen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of
+by you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of
+sky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
+between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the
+corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to
+gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as
+_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without color, no, nor with color
+either; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your
+spots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the
+sense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
+for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all
+great painters, however delicate their perception of color, are fond of
+the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,
+and in a wood-cut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black
+lines; and if you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will
+never gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common wood-cuts,
+in the cheap publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given
+to the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but you must
+make your lines as fine as you can, as well as far apart, towards the
+light; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross
+irregularly in any directions easy to your hand, depending on nothing
+but their gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of
+lines, however, I shall have to tell you more, presently; in the
+meantime, do not trouble yourself about it.
+
+
+EXERCISE IV.
+
+15. As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an
+H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest
+possible to the palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen,
+lightening, however, now with india-rubber instead of the penknife. You
+will find that all _pale_ tints of shade are thus easily producible with
+great precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark
+power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt
+to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere,
+however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing
+any single speck or line that may be too black, with the _point_ of the
+knife: you must not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink.
+If you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over with
+india-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine
+touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to
+perfect evenness with the darker spots.
+
+You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work
+with it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.
+
+16. At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured
+that some clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking
+amazement, and ask you who could set you to that "niggling;" and if you
+persevere in it, you will have to sustain considerable persecution from
+your artistical acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good
+drawing depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You do not hear them
+tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with a crash among
+the keys, in imitation of the great masters: yet they might, as
+reasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your
+knowledge. Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the
+sense of being careless, confident, or exhibitory,--no,--no, and a
+thousand times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be bad
+advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done quickly, but good
+and beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find no boldness
+in the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not
+bold at her work, do you think you ought to be at yours? So never mind
+what people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently; and if
+you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that though
+there are all kinds and ways of art,--large work for large places, small
+work for narrow places, slow work for people who can wait, and quick
+work for people who cannot,--there is one quality, and, I think, only
+one, in which all great and good art agrees;--it is all delicate art.
+Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this at present,
+because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and subtle care,
+the great painters put into touches that at first look coarse; but,
+believe me, it is true, and you will find it is so in due time.
+
+17. You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil
+drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant
+by a chance touch of the india-rubber, than by an hour's labor with the
+point; and you may wonder why I tell you to produce tints so painfully,
+which might, it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two
+reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able
+to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you
+wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the india-rubber does it: and,
+secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams
+of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little
+pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves;
+in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:
+in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be
+represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an
+instrument known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage the
+point properly, you will indeed be able to do much also with this
+instrument, or with your fingers; but then you will have to retouch the
+flat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light into them, and that
+can only be done with the point. Labor on, therefore, courageously, with
+that only.
+
+
+EXERCISE V.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+18. When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil
+point, get a good large alphabet, and try to _tint_ the letters into
+shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure
+their height and extreme breadth with the compasses, as _a b_, _a c_,
+Fig. 3, and then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A,
+inclosed within the lines, being in what Turner would have called a
+"state of forwardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of
+the letter, draw pen-and-ink lines firmly round the tint, as at _d_, and
+remove any touches outside the limit, first with the india-rubber, and
+then with the penknife, so that all may look clear and right. If you rub
+out any of the pencil inside the outline of the letter, retouch it,
+closing it up to the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are
+all to be ruled,[5] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and
+hand; and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting the
+curved letters, such as Bs, Cs, etc., to stand quite straight, and come
+into accurate form.
+
+19. All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be
+persisted in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in
+any of them. An entire master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to
+be able to draw any form at once, as Giotto his circle; but such skill
+as this is only to be expected of the consummate master, having pencil
+in hand all his life, and all day long,--hence the force of Giotto's
+proof of his skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully,
+without attaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point
+being, not that every line should be precisely what we intend or wish,
+but that the line which we intended or wished to draw should be right.
+If we always see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the
+hand may stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it
+does not matter how firm the hand is. Do not therefore torment yourself
+because you cannot do as well as you would like; but work patiently,
+sure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of
+power; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a
+more amusing exercise for you.
+
+
+EXERCISE VI.
+
+20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of
+leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall,
+or other light ground: it must not be against strong light, or you will
+find the looking at it hurt your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or
+you will be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in
+shade; and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or rainy
+day is the best for this practice.
+
+21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the
+sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map
+with absolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the
+roundness of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them
+in with pencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct
+and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your
+paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is
+exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in
+curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them
+with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had
+to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy
+penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave
+the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the
+whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not
+take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused
+network or mist; leave them all out,[6] drawing only the main branches
+as far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not
+to draw a tree, but to learn how to do so. When you have got the thing
+as nearly right as you can,--and it is better to make one good study,
+than twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate,--take your pen, and put a
+fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking care,
+as far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so
+as not to make the boughs thicker: the main use of the outline is to
+affirm the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental
+roughnesses and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,
+or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement in
+this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may
+perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than
+your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to
+mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to be slovenly and
+careless, and the outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence
+into attention and precision. The outline should be about the thickness
+of that in Fig. 4, which represents the ramification of a small stone
+pine, only I have not endeavored to represent the pencil shading within
+the outline, as I could not easily express it in a wood-cut; and you
+have nothing to do at present with the indication of foliage above, of
+which in another place. You may also draw your trees as much larger than
+this figure as you like; only, however large they may be, keep the
+outline as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer
+sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure,
+otherwise you do not get good enough practice out of them.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you
+some new notion about trees. But when you are tired of tree boughs, take
+any forms whatever which are drawn in flat color, one upon another; as
+patterns on any kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance),
+executed in two colors only; and practice drawing them of the right
+shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the depth
+required.
+
+In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of
+representing depth of color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of
+ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a darker tint of gray
+than a pattern of yellow.
+
+23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use
+of the brush; and necessary for you to do so in order to provide
+yourself with the gradated scale of color which you will want. If you
+can, by any means, get acquainted with any ordinary skillful water-color
+painter, and prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a
+brush, by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long while
+yet, to begin to color, but because the brush is often more convenient
+than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, and the sooner
+you know how to manage it as an instrument the better. If, however, you
+have no opportunity of seeing how water-color is laid on by a workman of
+any kind, the following directions will help you:--
+
+
+EXERCISE VII.
+
+24. Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in water so
+as to take up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer till you cannot rub
+much more, and the color gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two
+teaspoonfuls of water to the color you have rubbed down, and mix it well
+up with a camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.
+
+25. Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or
+pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large
+as those of the very largest chess-board: they need not be perfect
+squares, only as nearly so as you can quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard
+on something sloping as much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your
+brush into the color you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid
+as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay a pond
+or runlet of color along the top edge. Lead this pond of color
+gradually downwards, not faster at one place than another, but as if you
+were adding a row of bricks to a building, all along (only building down
+instead of up), dipping the brush frequently so as to keep the color as
+full in that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only
+that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if it should,
+never mind; go on quietly with your square till you have covered it all
+in. When you get to the bottom, the color will lodge there in a great
+wave. Have ready a piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and
+with the dry brush take up the superfluous color as you would with a
+sponge, till it all looks even.
+
+26. In leading the color down, you will find your brush continually go
+over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps within it. Do not
+endeavor to retouch these, nor take much care about them; the great
+thing is to get the color to lie smoothly where it reaches, not in
+alternate blots and pale patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the
+square as fast as possible, with such attention to your limit as you are
+able to give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally
+to strike the color up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but the first
+thing is to get it even,--the power of rightly striking the edge comes
+only by time and practice: even the greatest artists rarely can do this
+quite perfectly.
+
+27. When you have done one square, proceed to do another which does not
+communicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares,
+as on a chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with
+the first, and put another coat over it, and so on over all the others.
+The use of turning the paper upside down is to neutralize the increase
+of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would otherwise
+take place from the ponding of the color.
+
+28. Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead of
+your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once acquired, will
+save you from much partial poisoning. Take care, however, always to draw
+the brush from root to point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even
+wipe it as you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing
+harm, provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at first,
+and cherish it; it will serve you longer and better than many bad ones.
+
+29. When you have done the squares all over again, do them a third time,
+always trying to keep your edges as neat as possible. When your color is
+exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much
+as you can grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate
+squares three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and
+dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them up to the
+same tint in the same way. The amount of jagged dark line which then
+will mark the limits of the squares will be the exact measure of your
+unskillfulness.
+
+30. As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses); and
+then draw straight lines irregularly across circles, and fill up the
+spaces so produced between the straight line and the circumference; and
+then draw any simple shapes of leaves, according to the exercise No.
+II., and fill up those, until you can lay on color quite evenly in any
+shape you want.
+
+31. You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot always
+put exactly the same quantity of water to the color, that the darker the
+color is, the more difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. Therefore,
+when you have gained some definite degree of power, try to fill in the
+forms required with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of
+laying several coats one over another; always taking care that the tint,
+however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid on, so much of
+it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line at the edge as it
+dries. A little experience will teach you how apt the color is to do
+this, and how to prevent it; not that it needs always to be prevented,
+for a great master in water-colors will sometimes draw a firm outline,
+when he _wants_ one, simply by letting the color dry in this way at the
+edge.
+
+32. When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with the darker
+color, no rapidity will prevent the tint from drying irregularly as it
+is led on from part to part. You will then find the following method
+useful. Lay in the color very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that you
+can only just see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the
+outlines, and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet
+everywhere. Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker color, and
+lay some of it _into_ the middle of the liquid color. It will spread
+gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now lead it up to the
+outlines already determined, and play it with the brush till it fills
+its place well; then let it dry, and it will be as flat and pure as a
+single dash, yet defining all the complicated forms accurately.
+
+33. Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably flat tint,
+you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the color with three or
+four teaspoonfuls of water; then, when it is mixed, pour away about
+two-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoonful of pale color. Sloping your
+paper as before, draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space
+between them of the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the
+top of your paper, between the lines; and having struck on the first
+brushful of color, and led it down a little, dip your brush deep in
+water, and mix up the color on the plate quickly with as much more water
+as the brush takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler color, lead
+the tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the color again, and thus
+lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between each
+replenishing of the brush, and stirring the color on the plate well, but
+as quickly as you can. Go on until the color has become so pale that you
+cannot see it; then wash your brush thoroughly in water, and carry the
+wave down a little farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry
+brush, and leave it to dry.
+
+34. If you get to the bottom of your paper before your color gets pale,
+you may either take longer paper, or begin, with the tint as it was when
+you left off, on another sheet; but be sure to exhaust it to pure
+whiteness at last. When all is quite dry, recommence at the top with
+another similar mixture of color, and go down in the same way. Then
+again, and then again, and so continually until the color at the top of
+the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and passes down into
+pure white paper at the end of your column, with a perfectly smooth
+gradation from one into the other.
+
+35. You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, instead
+of evenly gradated; this is because at some places you have taken up
+more water in your brush than at others, or not mixed it thoroughly on
+the plate, or led one tint too far before replenishing with the next.
+Practice only will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot
+always get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they
+ever leave them on their pictures without after-touching.
+
+36. As you get more power, and can strike the color more quickly down,
+you will be able to gradate in less compass;[7] beginning with a small
+quantity of color, and adding a drop of water, instead of a brushful;
+with finer brushes, also, you may gradate to a less scale. But slight
+skill will enable you to test the relations of color to shade as far as
+is necessary for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:--
+
+37. Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt,
+and vermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done
+with the Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[8] Cut a narrow
+slip, all the way down, of each gradated color, and set the three slips
+side by side; fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across
+all the three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the
+degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, etc. If you have gradated
+them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will be nearly
+equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, and any degree of
+the black slip will also, accurately enough for our purpose, balance in
+weight the degree similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then,
+when you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue color, if you
+can match their color by any compartment of the crimson or blue in your
+scales, the gray in the compartment of the gray scale marked with the
+same number is the gray which must represent that crimson or blue in
+your light and shade drawing.
+
+38. Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will
+find that you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[9] for yellow
+and scarlet, so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach
+to black; we cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark
+scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way
+down; passing _then_ gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken
+the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian blue to darken
+the cobalt. You will thus have three more scales, passing from white
+nearly to black, through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and
+through scarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make
+another with green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet; the
+sepia alone will make a forcible brown one; and so on, until you have as
+many scales as you like, passing from black to white through different
+colors. Then, supposing your scales properly gradated and equally
+divided, the compartment or degree No. 1 of the gray will represent in
+chiaroscuro the No. 1 of all the other colors; No. 2 of gray the No. 2
+of the other colors, and so on.
+
+39. It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should
+understand the principle; for it would never be possible for you to
+gradate your scales so truly as to make them practically accurate and
+serviceable; and even if you could, unless you had about ten thousand
+scales, and were able to change them faster than ever juggler changed
+cards, you could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side
+of a frost-bitten apple. But when once you fully understand the
+principle, and see how all colors contain as it were a certain quantity
+of darkness, or power of dark relief from white--some more, some less;
+and how this pitch or power of each may be represented by equivalent
+values of gray, you will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an
+approximation by a glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at
+all.
+
+40. You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any
+shapes of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble or
+tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells, etc., as tenderly as you
+can, in the darknesses that correspond to their colors; and when you
+find you can do this successfully, it is time to begin rounding.
+
+
+EXERCISE VIII.
+
+41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the first
+round or oval stone you can find, not very white, nor very dark; and the
+smoother it is the better, only it must not _shine_. Draw your table
+near the window, and put the stone, which I will suppose is about the
+size of _a_ in Fig. 5 (it had better not be much larger), on a piece of
+not very white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the
+light may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point
+interferes with your sight of your work. You must not let the _sun_ fall
+on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore choose a window which
+the sun does not come in at. If you can shut the shutters of the other
+windows in the room it will be all the better; but this is not of much
+consequence.
+
+42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything; I mean,
+anything that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot
+be drawn at all, only the idea of them more or less suggested; but if
+you can draw the stone _rightly_, everything within reach of art is also
+within yours.
+
+For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of representing
+_Roundness_. If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and
+straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing else that you may be
+able to do will be of any use. For Nature is all made up of roundnesses;
+not the roundness of perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces.
+Boughs are rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are
+rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there is no more
+flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. The world itself is
+round, and so is all that is in it, more or less, except human work,
+which is often very flat indeed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you
+have won the battle.
+
+43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will see that the
+side of it next the window is lighter than most of the paper; that the
+side of it farthest from the window is darker than the paper; and that
+the light passes into the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to
+the right on the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of
+things being more or less as in _a_, Fig. 5, the spots on the stone
+excepted, of which more presently.
+
+44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that everything
+you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker
+than the things about it, or of a different color from them. It is
+either seen as a patch of one color on a ground of another; or as a pale
+thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And
+if you can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the same size,
+shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will
+produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best
+draughtsman--Titian and Paul Veronese themselves--could do no more than
+this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an
+inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is
+to be done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper, on
+a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on spaces of red,
+white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in
+the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what
+you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there,
+if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper
+with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain,
+unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need
+not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up
+for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will
+find obedience easier and happier than you think.
+
+45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the forms and the
+evenness of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are
+dissatisfied with your work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It
+may not be wrong--in all probability is not wrong, in any (so-called)
+great point. But its edges are not true enough in outline; and its
+shades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it
+more tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.
+
+46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have
+a finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can
+draw with nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log
+of wood charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
+gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends
+on early precision in the commencement; much more in singing or drawing.
+
+47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in Fig. 5, but to copy the
+stone before you in the way that my sketch is done. To which end, first
+measure the extreme length of the stone with compasses, and mark that
+length on your paper; then, between the points marked, leave something
+like the form of the stone in light, scrawling the paper all over, round
+it; _b_, in Fig. 5, is a beginning of this kind. Rather leave too much
+room for the high light, than too little; and then more cautiously fill
+in the shade, shutting the light gradually up, and putting in the dark
+slowly on the dark side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of
+shape, because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible
+for you to draw the shape of the stone quite truly, and you must
+gradually gain correctness by means of these various exercises: what you
+have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to look solid and
+round, not much minding what its exact contour is--only draw it as
+nearly right as you can without vexation; and you will get it more right
+by thus feeling your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the
+outline at first. For you can _see_ no outline; what you see is only a
+certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it; and
+those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, by
+scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right shape, with the
+same gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really more
+likely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
+confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline.
+For instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin at _a_, in Fig. 5,
+whose form, though irregular, required more care in following than that
+of a common stone, I was going to draw it also under another effect;
+reflected light bringing its dark side out from the background: but when
+I had laid on the first few touches I thought it would be better to
+stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at _b_. In which beginning it
+will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I can more or
+less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work on, the lines
+which suggest the outline being blended with the others if I do not want
+them; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the
+irregularities of such a sketch will probably secure a higher completion
+at last, than if half an hour had been spent in getting a true outline
+before beginning.
+
+48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark.
+In order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round
+hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper the color
+of that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper with the hole in it,
+between you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards,
+so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
+through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like
+one of the patches of color you have been accustomed to match, only
+changing in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen
+through it. You will be able thus actually to _match_ the color of the
+stone at any part of it, by tinting the paper beside the circular
+opening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite _black_,
+but that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.[10]
+
+49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of
+the paper it lies on, look luminous through the opening; so that the
+little circle then tells as a light spot instead of a dark spot. When
+this is so, you cannot imitate it, for you have no means of getting
+light brighter than white paper: but by holding the paper more sloped
+towards the light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which
+before looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if
+you can place the paper in such a position that every part of the stone
+looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a spot of
+shade, and if your drawing is put in the same light, you can imitate or
+match every gradation. You will be amazed to find, under these
+circumstances, how slight the differences of tint are, by which, through
+infinite delicacy of gradation, Nature can express form.
+
+If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light
+through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it
+white; you can do no more.
+
+50. When you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed
+to finish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the
+stone as closely as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or
+fissures of any kind, whether between stones in walls, or in the grain
+of timber or rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they
+present, are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
+shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light and shade,
+however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, with a dark
+or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the
+bottom. This is one of the instances in which it may be as well to
+understand the reason of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing,
+for the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in
+general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some, we are sure
+to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the
+importance of those on which the attention is fixed causes us to
+exaggerate them, so that merely scientific draughtsmen caricature a
+third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose
+eye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not
+therefore trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
+people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are destitute
+of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help,
+especially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils
+to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their work, I can
+always show them how the thing is, and what appearance they are missing
+in it; but when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
+here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.
+
+51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object--for instance, the
+stone you are drawing--has a light side turned towards the light, a dark
+side turned away from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on
+something else (as by the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may
+sometimes be placed so as to see only the light side and shadow,
+sometimes only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both or either
+without the shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all
+the three, as the stone does here.
+
+52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now
+with your side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to
+the window. You will see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the
+other distinctly in shade. Here are light side and dark side, with no
+seen shadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on
+the other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.
+
+53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise, as you hold
+your hand, wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is
+turned from the light, the paper being of course farther from the
+window. You will see, as it passes, a strong gleam of light strike on
+your hand, and light it considerably on its dark side. This light is
+_reflected_ light. It is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes
+first in coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a
+ball would be if somebody threw it through the window at the wall and
+you caught it at the rebound.
+
+Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet
+cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as
+you wave the book, is now reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find
+the gleam is blue. Thus every object will cast some of its own color
+back in the light that it reflects.
+
+54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your
+hand: every object in the room on that side of it reflects some, but
+more feebly, and the colors mixing all together form a neutral[11]
+light, which lets the color of your hand itself be more distinctly seen
+than that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no
+reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.
+
+55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct light, and
+partly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the
+atmosphere and clouds. The color of their light sides depends much on
+that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colors of
+the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand what
+color an object will have at any point of its surface, that color
+depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of
+rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides
+is, that their color will be changeful, and that a picture which gives
+them merely darker shades of the color of the light sides must assuredly
+be bad.
+
+56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You
+will see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow
+of your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of
+shade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a
+rosy color somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
+all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the
+flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is, that much
+light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but
+very little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that
+chink under your finger.
+
+57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of
+the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the
+object. I say in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to
+prevent its being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or
+the ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand
+farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing
+gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some
+positions of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow
+altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a
+stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside
+the hand of one of his figures, and because he had been taught by rule
+that "shadow was darker than the dark side," he would never think of the
+reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the hand, just as
+if no glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of
+the true effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and
+wonders why the hand is so light on its dark side.
+
+58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a _rule_ in
+matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general
+way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it,
+supposing the colors otherwise the same; that is to say, when a white
+object casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark
+surface: the rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow
+of a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark,
+usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the
+ultimate truth in such matters is to _look_ for it; but, in the
+meantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the stone
+are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply,
+while the other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little
+darker shadow at the bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the
+stone surface is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And,
+therefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint, more
+or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or
+streak in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white
+one, you may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision,
+into either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on the side of
+it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that the light comes
+from, you will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
+side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete success of the
+effect depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the
+drawing; that is to say, on the evident correspondence of the form of
+the shadow with the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or
+anything irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience
+in following the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
+labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of shadow.
+
+59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the
+stains and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the
+forms. Very often, spots or bars of local color do more to express form
+than even the light and shade, and they are always interesting as the
+means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her
+lights; an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
+of composition. _a_, in Fig. 5, is a rough sketch of a fossil
+sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint,
+coming through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in
+the light; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller
+whiter spots in the dark. You may take such scattered lights as these
+out with the penknife, provided you are just as careful to place them
+rightly as if you got them by a more laborious process.
+
+60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation
+expresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on
+anything natural or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided
+it be not too complicated in form. I have asked you to draw a stone
+first, because any irregularities and failures in your shading will be
+less offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
+surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may as
+well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little
+while, till you find you can really shade delicately. You may then take
+up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on
+the table is as good as anything, and try to express them in the same
+way; only now you will find that your shades must be wrought with
+perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds.
+Always remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many
+scrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work
+resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel
+or napkin must be put on something that may be locked up, so that its
+folds shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
+the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery
+(there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the
+cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate
+your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then
+ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies from Nature,
+whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of
+the folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
+painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its
+sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the
+greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement
+of form than delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded
+surface will help you. Try whether it does or not: and if the patterned
+drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
+helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and simple
+checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even
+though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern
+occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications
+of it among the folds with scrupulous care.
+
+61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The
+greatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater
+they are, the more pains they take to do it truly.[12] Nor can there be
+better practice at any time, as introductory to the nobler complication
+of natural detail. For when you can draw the spots which follow the
+folds of a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
+spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps;
+but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able
+to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully
+drawn, will be the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the
+sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask
+drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
+living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet bank.
+
+62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or
+other finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much
+about the wooliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade
+and fold, and true in pattern. We shall see, in the course of
+after-practice, how the penned lines may be made indicative of texture;
+but at present attend only to the light and shade and pattern. You will
+be puzzled at first by _lustrous_ surfaces, but a little attention will
+show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right
+drawing of their light and shade, and reflections. Put a small black
+japanned tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it
+reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its
+own color mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw these
+reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as
+you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the luster
+to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects in
+general practice; only you should do one or two in order to understand
+the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as you cannot
+avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the shining of
+silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression of their
+folds. Observe also that there are very few things which are totally
+without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles you, on
+some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another object.
+
+63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the
+point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I
+give you leave to use the brush with one color,--sepia, or blue black,
+or mixed cobalt and blue black, or neutral tint; and this will much
+facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminary, you must do
+one or two more exercises in tinting.
+
+
+EXERCISE IX.
+
+64. Prepare your color as directed for Exercise VII. Take a brush full
+of it, and strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush
+gets dry, sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting
+the paper very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a
+number of more or less minute interstices in the color. The lighter and
+faster every dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry; and, as soon
+as it is dry, with little color in your brush, so that you can bring it
+to a fine point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to
+make the whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more
+color, always trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly
+applied color exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new
+color dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first.
+Retouch it therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A
+very small bit of color thus filled up with your very best care, and
+brought to look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give
+you better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in
+carelessly; so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most
+minute spot of white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then
+go to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a
+marked limit; then advance a little farther, and so on; thus always
+seeing distinctly what is done and what undone.
+
+
+EXERCISE X.
+
+65. Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of
+paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four fifths of the square, or
+thereabouts, leaving the edge rather irregular than straight, and let it
+dry. Then another coat over three fifths; another over two fifths; and
+the last over one fifth; so that the square may present the appearance
+of gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the one
+beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,
+when filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those
+used in the pen etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately
+beyond each edge, so as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones
+imperceptibly. By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a
+multitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,
+you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of
+each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with
+the next tint. The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded
+from dark to pale, with no bars, only a crossing texture of touches,
+something like chopped straw, over the whole.[13]
+
+66. Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade
+you like; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of
+color, prepared _very_ pale, quite flat over all of it, except the
+highest light, leaving the edge of your color quite sharp. Then another
+wash, extending only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that
+sharp also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still
+darker parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry
+sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the
+darks, and work the whole delicately together as you would with the pen,
+till you have got it to the likeness of the true light and shade. You
+will find that the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now
+get effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen merely.
+
+67. The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not
+trouble or vex the color, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the
+paper: color looks much more lovely when it has been laid on with a dash
+of the brush, and left to dry in its own way, than when it has been
+dragged about and disturbed; so that it is always better to let the
+edges and forms be a little wrong, even if one cannot correct them
+afterwards, than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great
+masters in water color can lay on the true forms at once with a dash,
+and bad masters in water color lay on grossly false forms with a dash,
+and leave them false; for people in general, not knowing false from
+true, are as much pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular
+blot as with the presence of power in the determined one; but _we_, in
+our beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then
+correct with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be
+right, at whatever cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we
+can be right with freedom.
+
+68. I have hitherto limited you to color mixed with two or three
+teaspoonfuls of water; but, in finishing your light and shade from the
+stone, you may, as you efface the edge of the palest coat towards the
+light, use the color for the small touches with more and more water,
+till it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a
+perfect gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when they
+are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the color
+tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and dash
+away the superfluous color on blotting paper, you will find that,
+touching the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated
+touches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth to
+shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this
+properly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and
+shadows of William Hunt's drawings.[14]
+
+69. As you get used to the brush and color, you will gradually find out
+their ways for yourself, and get the management of them. And you will
+often save yourself much discouragement by remembering what I have so
+often asserted,--that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be
+refinement that is wanting, not force; and connection, not alteration.
+If you dislike the state your drawing is in, do not lose patience with
+it, nor dash at it, nor alter its plan, nor rub it desperately out, at
+the place you think wrong; but look if there are no shadows you can
+gradate more perfectly; no little gaps and rents you can fill; no forms
+you can more delicately define: and do not _rush_ at any of the errors
+or incompletions thus discerned, but efface or supply slowly, and you
+will soon find your drawing take another look. A very useful expedient
+in producing some effects, is to wet the paper, and then lay the color
+on it, more or less wet, according to the effect you want. You will soon
+see how prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can
+reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it darker. Also,
+while the color is still damp on the paper, by drying your brush
+thoroughly, and touching the color with the brush so dried, you may take
+out soft lights with great tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of
+experiments of this kind, noticing how the color behaves; but
+remembering always that your final results must be obtained, and can
+only be obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the pen
+drawing.
+
+70. You will find also, as you deal with more and more complicated
+subjects, that Nature's resources in light and shade are so much richer
+than yours, that you cannot possibly get all, or anything like all, the
+gradations of shadow in any given group. When this is the case,
+determine first to keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for
+instance, there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a black
+inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper as a light mass,
+the green book as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass;
+and do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so as
+to equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference
+between the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the
+power of the former to draw so delicately as to express form in a
+dark-colored object with little light, and in a light-colored object
+with little darkness; and it is better even to leave the forms here and
+there unsatisfactorily rendered than to lose the general relations of
+the great masses. And this, observe, not because masses are grand or
+desirable things in your composition (for with composition at present
+you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact that things
+do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and that we see paper,
+book, and inkstand as three separate things, before we see the wrinkles,
+or chinks, or corners of any of the three. Understand, therefore, at
+once, that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in
+reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor
+markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature; you
+are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in doing this find
+that you cannot get the projection of things sufficiently shown; but
+never mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,
+but great need that their relations of shade to each other should be
+preserved. All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration
+of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more
+or less bad: a thoroughly fine drawing or painting will always show a
+slight tendency towards flatness.
+
+71. Observe, on the other hand, that, however white an object may be,
+there is always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must
+therefore have a slight tone of gray over everything in your picture
+except on the extreme high lights; even the piece of white paper, in
+your subject, must be toned slightly down, unless (and there are
+thousand chances against its being so) it should all be turned so as
+fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white
+objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian,
+you will soon understand this.[15]
+
+72. As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush
+the undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed
+to draw more complicated and beautiful things.[16] And first, the boughs
+of trees, now not in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the
+first bit of branch or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut
+off the ends of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only
+about a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit
+of branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw
+it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above
+all things, to get an accurate expression of its structure at the fork
+of the branch. When once you have mastered the tree at its _armpits_,
+you will have little more trouble with it.
+
+73. Always draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you
+see it. Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is
+behind it, ugly or not, else you will never know whether the light and
+shade are right; they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of
+the background. And this general law is to be observed in all your
+studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly, else you
+never know if what you have done is right, or whether you _could_ have
+done it rightly had you tried. There is nothing _visible_ out of which
+you may not get useful practice.
+
+74. Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with
+four or five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of
+light-colored or white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be
+relieved in dark from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape
+carefully with pencil as you did the complicated boughs, in order to be
+sure that all their masses and interstices are right in shape before you
+begin shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in the
+manner of Fig. 6, which is a young shoot of lilac.
+
+75. You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be at
+first puzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because the look of
+retirement or projection depends not so much on the perspective of the
+leaves themselves as on the double sight of the two eyes. Now there are
+certain artifices by which good painters can partly conquer this
+difficulty; as slight exaggerations of force or color in the nearer
+parts, and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not
+attempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves,
+shut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the point
+of one of the leaves against; and so sketch the whole bough as you see
+it in a fixed position, looking with one eye only. Your drawing never
+can be made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with
+_both_ eyes,[17] but it can be made perfectly like the object seen with
+one, and you must be content when you have got a resemblance on these
+terms.
+
+76. In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, take
+a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and as flat as
+you can, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, as if you wanted
+to know how thin it was; outline it so. Then slope it down gradually
+towards you, and watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held
+perpendicularly down before you. Draw it in three or four different
+positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each
+position, and you will soon find out how it must be.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+77. Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then larger clusters;
+and practice, in this way, more and more complicated pieces of bough and
+leafage, till you find you can master the most difficult arrangements,
+not consisting of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you
+do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures,
+that you take a much more lively interest than before in the work of the
+great masters; you will see that very often their best backgrounds are
+composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,
+brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or two form the
+chief interest of their foregrounds. If you live in London you may test
+your progress _accurately_ by the degree of admiration you feel for the
+leaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and
+Ariadne. All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of
+foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of vegetation, that
+it is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any
+possibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too
+intricate, to be thus dealt with.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+78. You must now therefore have recourse to some confused mode of
+execution, capable of expressing the confusion of Nature. And, first,
+you must understand what the character of that confusion is. If you look
+carefully at the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards'
+distance, you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at
+first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will see,
+mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which
+are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the
+edge turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for,
+supposing the real leaf shape to be as at _a_, Fig. 7, this, when
+removed some yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at
+_b_; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk and point
+disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes little more than a
+line; and the result is the condition at _c_, only with this farther
+subtlety in the look of it, inexpressible in the wood-cut, that the
+stalk and point of the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye,
+have yet some influence in _checking the light_ at the places where they
+exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf which
+remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only be rendered by
+two layers of color, one subduing the sky tone a little, the next
+drawing the broken portions of the leaf, as at _c_, and carefully
+indicating the greater darkness of the spot in the middle, where the
+under side of the leaf is.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we cannot reach
+such accuracy; but we shall be able to render the general look of the
+foliage satisfactorily by the following mode of practice.
+
+79. Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches long.
+Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that will support it steadily; put
+it about eight feet away from you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a
+sheet of not very white paper behind it, as usual. Then draw very
+carefully, first placing them with pencil, and then filling them up with
+ink, every leaf-mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you see
+them against the paper: Fig. 8 is a bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do not
+be afraid of running the leaves into a black mass when they come
+together; this exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of
+such masses are when seen against the sky.
+
+80. Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common
+tree,--oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in fact, if you are good, and
+industrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times
+a week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can
+get branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough, for this
+reason,--all masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the
+side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organization of
+branches from that seen in the view from above. They are generally seen
+more or less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature puts
+her best composition into the profile arrangement. But the view from
+above or below occurs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary
+you should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the tree.
+The difference between the two views is often far greater than you could
+easily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9, _a_ is the upper view and _b_
+the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. Fig. 8 is an intermediate
+view of a larger bough; seen from beneath, but at some lateral distance
+also.
+
+81. When you have done a few branches in this manner, take one of the
+drawings you have made, and put it first a yard away from you, then a
+yard and a half, then two yards; observe how the thinner stalks and
+leaves gradually disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness
+where they were; and make another study of the effect at each distance,
+taking care to draw nothing more than you really see, for in this
+consists all the difference between what would be merely a miniature
+drawing of the leaves seen near, and a full-size drawing of the same
+leaves at a distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would
+really appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass
+held at the same distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your
+drawing. You can always ascertain this full size of any object by
+holding your paper upright before you, at the distance from your eye at
+which you wish your drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object
+you have to draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the outline
+of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You will
+always find it, thus measured, smaller than you supposed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
+
+82. When you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your
+own drawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real
+trees, because the black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and
+does not shake, and is not confused by sparkles of luster on the
+leaves,) you may try the extremities of the real trees, only not doing
+much at a time, for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex
+your sight. And this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the
+outline itself; at least the chemical action of the light in a
+photograph extends much within the edges of the leaves, and, as it
+were, eats them away, so that no tree extremity, stand it ever so still,
+nor any other form coming against bright sky, is truly drawn by a
+photograph; and if you once succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you
+will find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
+photograph can be.
+
+83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the
+dark form of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those
+sprays, and in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much
+more embarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some luster, and all
+are more or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in
+any given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and
+foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or
+hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves,--often very
+forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes
+the blue of the sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself
+flashing like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen
+as darknesses through the translucent parts of the leaf; a most
+important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape
+artists in general.
+
+84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance,
+the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvelous and quaint
+confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of
+growth, and unity of action, but wholly indefinable and inextricable,
+part by part, by any amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out
+in facsimile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and you
+must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will more or
+less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of
+Nature, without absolute delineation of detail.
+
+85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form
+only, because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural
+object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this
+inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of
+handling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are
+intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and
+hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and
+dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first
+the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot
+draw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of
+mist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single grass
+blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power
+over decisive form, you may safely--and must, in order to perfection of
+work--carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity of
+hand.
+
+86. But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now look at
+Art as well as at Nature, and see what means painters and engravers have
+actually employed for the expression of these subtleties. Whereupon
+arises the question, what opportunity you have to obtain engravings? You
+ought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain
+number of good examples of Turner's engraved works: if this be not in
+your power, you must just make the best use you can of the shop windows,
+or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly, the
+difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to
+better use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess
+yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or
+Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the
+annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular points
+deserving your study in each engraving.[18] Be sure, therefore, that
+your selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each
+letter. Do not get more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the
+twelve at first; for the more engravings you have, the less attention
+you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the enjoyment
+derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a certain
+point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it were, over a
+larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated in
+different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his
+attention should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his
+enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at many, with
+divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and his best way of
+discovering it is to think long over few things, and watch them
+earnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and
+to see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality
+know anything rightly. Beware of _handbook_ knowledge.
+
+87. These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to
+copy; and they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of
+composition, than they are at present; still, it will do you a great
+deal of good, sometimes to try how far you can get their delicate
+texture, or gradations of tone: as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt
+to incline too much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For
+instance, the texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its
+tiled roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite
+as work can possibly be; and it will be a great and profitable
+achievement if you can at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at
+all imitate the dark distant country at p. 7, or the sky at p. 80, of
+the same volume, or the foliage at pp. 12 and 144, it will be good gain;
+and if you can once draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9 of
+the Italy, or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the
+moonlight at p. 223, you will find that even Nature herself cannot
+afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or towers, or
+moonlight.
+
+88. You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same effect.
+And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, and begin to think
+that engraving is not drawing, and that copying it cannot help you to
+draw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the
+difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless
+habit of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when
+one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of
+drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is
+more difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is
+true that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it
+at certain stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a
+habit of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying
+to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched--that
+is, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line made is
+white instead of black, which renders it much more difficult to judge of
+what you are about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good for
+you, because it will awaken you to the real labor and skill of the
+engraver, and make you understand a little how people must work, in this
+world, who have really to _do_ anything in it.
+
+89. Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as a
+model--far from it; but it is necessary you should be able to do as
+well[19] before you think of doing better, and you will find many little
+helps and hints in the various work of it. Only remember that _all_
+engravers' foregrounds are bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling
+parallel lines of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy;
+nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances, and portions of
+the foliage in the plates marked _f_, which you may copy. The best for
+this purpose, if you can get it, is the "Chain bridge over the Tees,"
+of the England series; the thicket on the right is very beautiful and
+instructive, and very like Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and
+"Powis" is also remarkably good.
+
+90. Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what harm
+there is in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if possible,
+with a Rembrandt etching, or a photograph of one (of figures, not
+landscape). It does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or
+finished one, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will
+teach you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that
+Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid
+with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all
+interesting. The "Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and
+Isaac," and such others, containing incident and character rather than
+chiaroscuro, will be the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it
+well; then exchange it, at little loss, for another; and so, gradually,
+obtain a good knowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity
+of examining his work at museums, etc., do so with the greatest care,
+not looking at _many_ things, but a long time at each. You must also
+provide yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert Dürer's. This
+you will not be able to copy; but you must keep it beside you, and refer
+to it as a standard of precision in line. If you can get one with a
+_wing_ in it, it will be best. The crest with the cock, that with the
+skull and satyr, and the "Melancholy," are the best you could have, but
+any will do. Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two
+masters, Rembrandt and Dürer. Rembrandt is often too loose and vague;
+and Dürer has little or no effect of mist or uncertainty. If you can see
+anywhere a drawing by Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the
+two characters; but there are no engravings which present this
+perfection, and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate
+study of Rembrandt and Dürer. Lean rather to Dürer; it is better, for
+amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on that of vagueness:
+and though, as I have just said, you cannot copy a Dürer, yet try every
+now and then a quarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer
+you can come; you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the
+"Melancholia" too often.
+
+91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Dürer, you may still learn
+much by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or
+Leech's wood-cuts in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and
+Richter's[20] on the severe side. But in so doing you will need to
+notice the following points:
+
+92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an
+artist does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,--that is to say,
+one in which no lines shall be prominently visible,--and he is reduced
+to show the black lines, either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is
+better to make these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of
+texture and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass
+or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech with
+zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that
+Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding
+of surfaces by the direction of the lines which shade them. All these
+various means of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can
+learn them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of
+shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way, but in the
+only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after use of
+such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to get as
+much record of the object as you can in a given time; and that you
+continually make efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions
+of the objects rightly.
+
+93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating that
+of surface, observe these few points:
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
+
+If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they
+_can_ indicate anything by their direction, they should explain rather
+than oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of
+wood-cut from Titian, Fig. 10, the lines are serviceable by expressing,
+not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the
+flow of its grain. And Albert Dürer, whose work was chiefly engraving,
+sets himself always thus to make his lines as _valuable_ as possible;
+telling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you
+were always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to
+express effects of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert
+Dürer's way of work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as
+the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and the great
+painters always conceive their subject as complete, even when they are
+sketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not limited
+in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will often
+scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines,
+that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to
+themselves. When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is
+one inclining from the left upwards to the right, or vice versâ, from
+the right downwards to the left; and when done very quickly, the line is
+hooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next. Hence,
+you will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a _very_ great
+master full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you
+will find him using simple straight lines from left to right, when an
+inferior master would have used curved ones. Fig. 11 is a fair facsimile
+of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits these characters very
+distinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded
+most commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a
+point increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master
+if you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded
+with straight lines.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
+
+94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest
+dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Fig. 11, and pass
+them for the work of great masters; and how the power of determining the
+genuineness of a drawing depends entirely on your knowing the facts of
+the objects drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is _all_
+conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's work, at
+its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity, but
+the _economy_ of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to
+judge of this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do,
+otherwise you cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,
+you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All
+judgment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature.
+
+95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous
+execution is never affectedly impetuous. If a great man is not in a
+hurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he
+puts none into his hand; if he thinks his effect would be better got
+with _two_ lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with
+one. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),
+that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution
+of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the
+easy execution will fall from your hand as it did from his: but if you
+merely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will
+not only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every
+judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and
+despise you accordingly.
+
+96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:
+
+All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an
+artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his
+outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he
+can by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so
+restricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad
+draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This
+hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state
+in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded
+with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure
+outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up
+afterwards with color, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or
+tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing
+wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves
+it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and
+his work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist
+habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his
+drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade
+than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched
+with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
+
+97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the English
+imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad
+work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste. And of such outlines,
+the worst are those which are darkened in some part of their course by
+way of expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such
+others; because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately
+represents the form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus,
+the outline _a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12, are both _true_ outlines
+of a ball; because, however thick the line may be, whether we take the
+interior or exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true
+circle. But _c_ is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner
+or outer edge of the black line must be an untrue circle, else the line
+could not be thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force," as it
+is called, is gained by falsification of the contours; so that no artist
+whose eye is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed
+often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and
+again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the
+first line by setting others beside and across it; and then a careless
+observer supposes it has been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes also,
+at a place where shade is afterwards to inclose the form, the painter
+will strike a broad dash of this shade beside his outline at once,
+looking as if he meant to thicken the outline; whereas this broad line
+is only the first installment of the future shadow, and the outline is
+really drawn with its inner edge.[21] And thus, far from good
+draughtsmen darkening the lines which turn away from the light, the
+_tendency_ with them is rather to darken them towards the light, for it
+is there in general that shade will ultimately inclose them. The best
+example of this treatment that I know is Raphael's sketch, in the
+Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows
+part of the left eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate the
+nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones
+behind the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will see in
+Fig. 11 the same principle variously exemplified; the principal dark
+lines, in the head and drapery of the arms, being on the side turned to
+the light.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
+
+98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not
+affect your drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines
+as _equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two
+following purposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II.,
+for if you cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to
+terminate your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is
+absent; or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are
+pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined,
+for the most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer
+one being shown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more
+distant one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required
+to round each tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot
+often get time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each
+tree as is done by Dürer in Fig. 13, you will get a most useful
+memorandum of their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only
+observe in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick
+one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of
+Dürer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately
+descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a
+shape, definitely observed and set down; it contains a true
+"signalement" of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of
+hedge, all round that village. If you have not time to draw thus
+carefully, do not draw at all--you are merely wasting your work and
+spoiling your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice you
+may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet;
+except sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell you
+presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to
+objects which have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone,
+when it rises against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline
+folds in drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at
+all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no
+good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute.
+You see, in that wood-cut of Dürer's, his reason for even limiting
+himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains,
+is that he may leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more
+by the dark sky and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real
+and sunny only by the addition of these shades.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
+
+99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go
+back to our question about tree-drawing left unanswered at page 48.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
+
+We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it
+is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the
+difficulty is to keep organization in the midst of mystery. And you will
+never succeed in doing this unless you lean always to the definite side,
+and allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through all
+your early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your first
+step must be to conditions like Figs. 14 and 15, which are careful
+facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful wood-cut of Dürer's, the
+"Flight into Egypt." Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a
+time, but thoroughly; then trace the Dürer, and apply it to your
+drawing, and do not be content till the one fits the other, else your
+eye is not true enough to carry you safely through meshes of real
+leaves. And in the course of doing this, you will find that not a line
+nor dot of Dürer's can be displaced without harm; that all add to the
+effect, and either express something, or illumine something, or relieve
+something. If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree
+drawing, of which so many rich examples are given constantly in our
+cheap illustrated periodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last
+year's _Illustrated News_ or others are full of them), you will see
+that, though good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are
+thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might just as well
+go one way as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce
+all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a
+little careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near
+the same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor
+any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will
+imitate so much as one leaf of Dürer's. Yet there is considerable
+intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine
+leaves of his, as well as of the grass.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
+
+100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner, you may draw
+from Nature as much as you like in the same way; and when you are tired
+of the intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more
+easy massing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10 (p. 55). This is facsimilëd
+from an engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in
+manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough
+model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even
+so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig.
+16,[22] taking care always to have thorough command over your hand;
+that is, not to let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran
+glibly over the paper, but because in Nature it has actually a free and
+noble shape, and you have faithfully followed the same.
+
+101. And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as well as
+true shape, and that we are going to draw from Nature at our pleasure,
+other considerations enter into the business, which are by no means
+confined to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this
+letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting
+of correspondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only
+to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one--tiresomeness inseparable
+from directions touching the beginning of any art,--and to believe me,
+even though I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,
+
+                                      Very faithfully yours,
+
+                                                         J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] (_N.B._--This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous
+    or curious readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are
+    willing to take the statement in the text on trust.)
+
+    The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We
+    see nothing but flat colors; and it is only by a series of
+    experiments that we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates
+    the dark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates
+    that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical
+    power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the
+    _innocence of the eye_; that is to say, of a sort of childish
+    perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such, without
+    consciousness of what they signify,--as a blind man would see them
+    if suddenly gifted with sight.
+
+    For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain
+    directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat
+    dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly
+    endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by
+    the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and
+    part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the color of primroses); and, if
+    there were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass
+    was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow color. We
+    should try to gather some of them, and then find that the color went
+    away from the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not
+    from the primroses; and by a series of experiments we should find
+    out that the sun was really the cause of the color in the one,--not
+    in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
+    unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions
+    touching the signification of certain colors, we always suppose that
+    we _see_ what we only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the
+    real aspect of the signs we have learned to interpret. Very few
+    people have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow.
+
+    Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as
+    nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the
+    colors of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at
+    once in the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two
+    colors that form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade
+    and light, but bluish green barred with gold.
+
+    Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great
+    fact about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience
+    and touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white,
+    variously gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by
+    experience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of
+    brown, variously darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art
+    of Painting consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of
+    these patches of color, and putting patches of the same size, depth,
+    and shape on canvas. The only obstacle to the success of painting
+    is, that many of the real colors are brighter and paler than it is
+    possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to represent
+    them.
+
+  [2] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate
+    drawing, than india-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper
+    less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides,
+    you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not
+    for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very
+    lightly; or, if heavily, pressing it only, not passing it over the
+    paper, and leave what pencil marks will not come away so, without
+    minding them. In a finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often
+    serviceable, helping the general tone, and enabling you to take out
+    little bright lights.
+
+  [3] What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is
+    the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose
+    hand is so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can
+    let it fly as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of
+    a great master at real _work_ is _never_ free: its swiftest dash is
+    under perfect government. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause
+    within a hair's breadth of any appointed mark, in their fastest
+    touches; and follow, within a hair's breadth, the previously
+    intended curve. You must never, therefore, aim at freedom. It is not
+    required of your drawing that it should be free, but that it should
+    be right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and then your
+    work will be free in the best sense; but there is no merit in doing
+    wrong easily.
+
+    These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,
+    which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible.
+    The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter
+    it is at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other
+    lines, and concealed by them; the object in perfect shading being to
+    conceal the lines as much as possible.
+
+    And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of
+    hand than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in
+    Nature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he
+    draws them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find
+    mistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present
+    if you find your hand gaining command over the curves.
+
+  [4] If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed,
+    they will be useful models.
+
+  [5] Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this
+    permission. My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that
+    the pupil's eye should be trained to accurate perception of the
+    relations of curve and right lines, by having the latter absolutely
+    true, than that he should practice drawing straight lines. But also,
+    I believe, though I am not quite sure of this, that he never _ought_
+    to be able to draw a straight line. I do not believe a perfectly
+    trained hand ever can draw a line without some curvature in it, or
+    some variety of direction. Prout could draw a straight line, but I
+    do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great draughtsman can,
+    as far as I have observed, draw every line _but_ a straight one.
+
+  [6] Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused
+    quick touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of
+    twigs round the main branches; but do not take much trouble about
+    them.
+
+  [7] It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow
+    gradation than an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as
+    with the pen, to make the gradation go _far_.
+
+  [8] Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.
+
+  [9] The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is
+    always indicated by the color of the solid cake in the box.
+
+  [10] The figure _a_, Fig. 5, is very dark, but this is to give an
+    example of all kinds of depths of tint, without repeated figures.
+
+  [11] Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite
+    different tones in its neutrality, according to the colors of the
+    various reflected rays that compose it.
+
+  [12] If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might
+    perhaps be able to show you some metaphysical ones for the
+    enjoyment, by truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by
+    light and shade and perspective in patterned surfaces; but this is
+    at present not to the point; and all that you need to know is that
+    the drawing of such things is good exercise, and moreover a kind of
+    exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner,
+    all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.
+
+  [13] The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be
+    able, when you begin to color, to let one hue be seen in minute
+    portions, gleaming between the touches of another.
+
+  [14] William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.
+
+  [15] At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal
+    examples of Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most
+    neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of
+    his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the
+    larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark
+    of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a
+    minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated
+    to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will
+    begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid
+    in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focused to
+    two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on
+    the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing
+    child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same
+    thing.
+
+  [16] I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as
+    they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not
+    by difference of method.
+
+  [17] If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will
+    know why; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the
+    statement, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and
+    much loss of time. See, however, Note 1, in Appendix I.
+
+  [18] The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See
+    note at the end of Appendix I. The letters mean as follows:--
+
+    _a_ stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns,
+         cottages, etc.
+    _c_ clouds, including mist and aërial effects.
+    _f_ foliage.
+    _g_ ground, including low hills, when not rocky.
+    _l_ effects of light.
+    _m_ mountains, or bold rocky ground.
+    _p_ power of general arrangement and effect.
+    _q_ quiet water.
+    _r_ running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their
+         line of flow is beautifully marked.
+
+    _From the England Series._
+
+    _a c f r._ Arundel.                   _a f p._ Lancaster.
+      _a f l._ Ashby de la Zouche.      _c l m r._ Lancaster Sands.*
+    _a l q r._ Barnard Castle.*           _a g f._ Launceston.*
+      _f m r._ Bolton Abbey.            _c f l r._ Leicester Abbey.
+      _f g r._ Buckfastleigh.*              _f r._ Ludlow.
+      _a l p._ Caernarvon.                _a f l._ Margate.
+      _c l q._ Castle Upnor.              _a l q._ Orford.
+      _a f l._ Colchester.                  _c p._ Plymouth.
+        _l q._ Cowes.                         _f._ Powis Castle.
+      _c f p._ Dartmouth Cove.*           _l m q._ Prudhoe Castle.
+      _c l q._ Flint Castle.*           _f l m r._ Chain Bridge over
+    _a f g l._ Knaresborough.*                      Tees.*
+        _m r._ High Force of Tees.*         _m q._ Ulleswater.
+      _a f q._ Trematon.                    _f m._ Valle Crucis.
+
+    _From the Keepsake._
+
+      _m p q._ Arona.                         _p._ St. Germain en Laye.
+        _l m._ Drachenfels.*              _l p q._ Florence.
+        _f l._ Marly.*                      _l m._ Ballyburgh Ness.*
+
+    _From the Bible Series._
+
+        _f m._ Mount Lebanon.             _a c g._ Joppa.
+          _m._ Rock of Moses at         _c l p q._ Solomon's Pools.*
+                Sinai.                      _a l._ Santa Saba.
+      _a l m._ Jericho.                     _a l._ Pool of Bethesda.
+
+    _From Scott's Works._
+
+        _p r._ Melrose.*                    _c m._ Glencoe.
+        _f r._ Dryburgh.*                   _c m._ Loch Coriskin.*
+
+
+        _a l._ Caerlaverock.
+
+    _From the Rivers of France._
+
+        _a q._ Château of Amboise, with     _a p._ Rouen Cathedral.
+                large bridge on right.      _f p._ Pont de l'Arche.
+      _l p r._ Rouen, looking down the    _f l p._ View on the Seine,
+                river, poplars on right.*           with avenue.
+      _a l p._ Rouen, with cathedral      _a c p._ Bridge of Meulan.
+                and rainbow, avenue     _c g p r._ Caudebec.*
+                on left.
+
+  [19] As _well_;--not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on
+    the steel than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be
+    able to get tones as even, and touches as firm.
+
+  [20] See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be
+    studied."
+
+  [21] See Note 2 in Appendix I.
+
+  [22] This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it
+    looks like it. You will find it explained presently.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+SKETCHING FROM NATURE.
+
+
+102. MY DEAR READER,--The work we have already gone through together
+has, I hope, enabled you to draw with fair success either rounded and
+simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like
+those of leaves; provided only these masses or complexities will stay
+quiet for you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to
+baffle your patience. But if we are now to go out to the fields, and to
+draw anything like a complete landscape, neither of these conditions
+will any more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we copy
+their heaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to
+shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light
+where its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving in
+eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence; and instead of
+the small clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point,
+embarrassing enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as little
+to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its
+foam.
+
+103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation becomes
+more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it _is_
+possible; and when you have time and opportunity, some portions of a
+landscape may, as you gain greater skill, be rendered with an
+approximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you
+may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed
+to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive; and you must
+give more and more effort daily to the observance of characteristic
+points, and the attainment of concise methods.
+
+104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons.
+First, that it is always accessible as a study; and secondly, that its
+modes of growth present simple examples of the importance of leading or
+governing lines. It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot
+seize all, that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and
+grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form.
+I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive
+of the past history and present action of the thing. They show in a
+mountain, first, how it was built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is
+now being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it.
+In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its
+childhood: how troublesome trees have come in its way, and pushed it
+aside, and tried to strangle or starve it; where and when kind trees
+have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it
+bent; what winds torment it most; what boughs of it behave best, and
+bear most fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show
+the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which the
+water or vapor is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets shore,
+or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing
+distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always,
+whether in life or in art, _knowing the way things are going_. Your
+dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your
+wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so,--the
+animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course,
+the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a
+form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and
+will have power over its futurity. Those are its _awful_ lines; see that
+you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16
+(p. 63) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at
+Sestri near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their
+first budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every direction
+round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it. Then,
+when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up again; some
+of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of
+growing upright, if they can; and this struggle of theirs to recover
+their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow
+sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence
+their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, forky
+pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them,
+with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea; or if they are
+to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and
+the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy
+green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give that
+spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their
+chief beauty is in these.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
+
+105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small, you will notice
+that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there
+is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the
+tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at _c_,
+Fig. 17, is common to all trees that I know of, and it gives them a
+certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their
+branches which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely
+send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the
+branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and
+a path to take, which fills a definite place, and each terminates all
+its minor branches at its outer extremity, so as to form a greater outer
+curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for each species.
+That is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as _a_, Fig.
+17, but as _b_, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor
+divisions right out to the bounding curve; not but that smaller
+branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart of the tree, but the idea
+and main purpose in every branch are to carry all its child branches
+well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however small, take
+its part in filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the
+type of each separate bough is again not _a_, but _b_, Fig. 18;
+approximating, that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of
+broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to a
+rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless habit of
+drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging
+to the other, as in Fig. 19. If you look at the tree-boughs in any
+painting of Wilson's you will see this structure, and nearly every other
+that is to be avoided, in their intensest types. You will also notice
+that Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it
+had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing pines seem to fancy,
+in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two sides of the
+trunk, instead of all round it: always, therefore, take more pains in
+trying to draw the boughs of trees that grow _towards_ you than those
+that go off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the
+foreshortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing them to
+observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, though not
+of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and approximates, in its
+position, to the look of a hand held out to receive something, or
+shelter something. If you take a looking-glass, and hold your hand
+before it slightly hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers
+open, as if you were going to support the base of some great bowl,
+larger than you could easily hold; and sketch your hand as you see it in
+the glass with the points of the fingers towards you; it will materially
+help you in understanding the way trees generally hold out their hands:
+and if then you will turn yours with its palm downwards, as if you were
+going to try to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will
+get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such
+other spreading trees.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
+
+106. Fig. 20 will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which
+these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it
+carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group
+together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the
+springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the
+ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers
+of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimilëd from an etching of
+Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure
+and firm lines; it will also show you how the particular action in
+foliage, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, may be
+intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look
+more tall and upright still, because their line is continued below by
+the figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes on the
+bank are made to look more rounded because their line is continued in
+one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These
+figures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully
+hereafter when we come to talk about composition; but, if you please,
+we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
+about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with
+composition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive
+representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking
+forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the
+"Law of Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth:
+indeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here
+than there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles
+of composition somewhat awkwardly.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
+
+107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite
+so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon
+enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old
+house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw
+the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good
+draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are
+weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the
+run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where
+it lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful, however few
+slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those
+hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them), and crowd
+gradually together at the top of the gable, partly diminishing in
+perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most
+English old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always
+the direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the
+earth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in any bank or height
+worth drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides.
+Figure 20 will give you some idea of the way in which such facts may be
+expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground
+all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people always
+turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how the
+water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the
+roots of the trees?
+
+108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature to aim
+exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts of form;
+using the pen--not now the steel, but the quill--firmly and steadily,
+never scrawling with it, but saying to yourself before you lay on a
+single touch,--"_that_ leaf is the main one, _that_ bough is the guiding
+one, and this touch, _so_ long, _so_ broad, means that part of
+it,"--point or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you
+look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it, and never
+let your hand run away with you, or get into any habit or method of
+touch. If you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from
+one end of it to the other without a tremor; if you want a shaking and
+broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a
+musician's finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that
+there is no general way of doing _any_ thing; no recipe can be given you
+for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be
+ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or
+rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to
+draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody "told you to _do_ grass."
+So a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all over
+like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of
+Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field
+puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's hawser, or kneaded like
+hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus saber, or fused like a glass
+bottle, or crystallized like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf:
+look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you to "do a
+stone."
+
+109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, and that
+you can render any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of
+Turner's or Dürer's work,[24] you must add a simple but equally careful
+light and shade to your pen drawing, so as to make each study as
+complete as possible; for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if
+you have the means, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber
+Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note
+below.[25] If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any
+of these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell
+you presently); but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You
+will see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint
+shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched part of it
+accurately; to which end put the print against the window, and trace
+slowly with the greatest care every black line; retrace this on smooth
+drawing-paper; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at
+the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the
+right side, not making a line which is too curved or too straight
+already in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over it.
+And in doing this, never work after you are tired, nor to "get the thing
+done," for if it is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true
+zeal and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and
+inattentive labor of a whole day. If you have not made the touches right
+at the first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with
+little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they need: you
+cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this etched
+outline by you in order to study at your ease the way in which Turner
+uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow;[26] it is only
+in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this.
+Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this
+etching which you like, and put on the light and shade with the brush,
+and any brown color that matches that of the plate;[27] working it with
+the point of the brush as delicately as if you were drawing with pencil,
+and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the paper,
+till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving.
+
+110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked
+to close resemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject
+carelessly done. Not that in drawing afterwards from Nature you are to
+be obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having
+fully accomplished the drawing _something_ rightly, you will
+thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you could
+otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out
+quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which
+it would have wholly refused if you had not put it to severest work.
+Nothing is more strange in art than the way that chance and materials
+seem to favor you, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make
+yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it,
+and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you would have
+them. Show the camel's hair, and the color in it, that no bending nor
+blotting is of any use to escape your will; that the touch and the shade
+_shall_ finally be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that
+hour of corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to all
+your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its appointed border.
+If you cannot obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a
+photograph[28] of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a
+village or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some calm water
+of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
+any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working, as I have
+just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of
+the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, however; first,
+there are portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at
+present to be at all able to copy; and, secondly, there are portions
+always more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene, and
+involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher.
+Both these characters will be advantageous to you for future study,
+after you have gained experience, but they are a little against you in
+early attempts at tinting; still you must fight through the difficulty,
+and get the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or gray,
+like those of the photograph.
+
+111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like
+photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long
+as your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not
+perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete
+results in tints merely, requires both long time and consummate skill;
+and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over
+or under them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any
+other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber
+Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest
+shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with
+the most subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the
+expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
+ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most
+tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist, or cloud.
+Most of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this
+principle, the touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of
+transparency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by
+great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good
+public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios
+either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss
+to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of
+photographs also are now taken from the best drawings by the old
+masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes and other societies
+organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to possess
+themselves of examples of these, and to make them accessible to students
+of drawing in the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
+the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
+photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre,
+to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be
+all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more
+serviceable than a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery
+of second-rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
+because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk
+separately, or color separately, may be seen by the poorest student in
+any cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity of
+tinting with line he cannot generally see but by some special inquiry,
+and in some out of the way places he could not find a single example of
+it. Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that you
+cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make the matter out
+alone, thus:
+
+112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to
+express its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid
+color instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and
+laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your
+bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or
+gray, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the
+photograph; and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife or
+blotting paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by
+a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen
+may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of
+texture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you
+have, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with
+the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two.
+Practice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes
+only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,
+sometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in
+full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the
+parts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you
+will do well to repeat frequently, whether you can get prints and
+drawings as well as photographs, or not.
+
+113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or
+its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in
+your power of working from Nature on all subjects that interest you,
+which you should do in four different ways.
+
+First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay
+quiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly
+perfect as you can, with gray or brown color of any kind, reinforced and
+defined with the pen.
+
+114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in
+detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and
+shade, make a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time
+to a Düreresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to you
+interesting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,
+try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
+memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
+sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your
+experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look
+of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of
+tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to
+prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,
+however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
+carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your
+Düreresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing
+be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or
+disguised.
+
+115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with
+a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of
+gray, which will fix the pencil. While this fixing color is wet, take
+out the higher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry,
+scratch out the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes,
+carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper is
+to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well; for you can
+get more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on
+cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with body-color
+white, unless you are consummately skillful. There is no objection to
+your making your Düreresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
+touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend much on your
+white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake.
+
+116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for
+Düreresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the
+shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can
+at once, and to get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more
+color again and again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
+which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out your
+chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the color off
+here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the
+wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it
+off with your sponge, etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and
+mark the outline characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber
+Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying away
+pieces of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on
+complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky,
+etc.; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or
+slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
+endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for
+display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable; there are a velocity
+and a dash which not only are compatible with perfect drawing, but
+obtain certain results which cannot be had otherwise. And it is
+perfectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed and decision,
+while your continual course of practice is such as to insure your
+retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
+circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find
+yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
+
+117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape
+scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making
+memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of
+no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
+study, nor a Düreresque one, may yet become of singular value in
+consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens
+often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
+element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21, seen
+within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers
+to which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's
+distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
+painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and
+the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without indication of their
+cause, as in Fig. 22 _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
+it would appear, as in Fig. 22 _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
+strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of gray on the light
+hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
+continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
+singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
+touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
+accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
+
+118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are in haste, with
+an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure
+your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very
+subtle; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so
+everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you
+are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is
+both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the
+gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the
+sharp touches, on which the best of the detail depends, getting
+gradually deadened by time, or to find the places where force was wanted
+look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the
+steady use of the pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it;
+keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
+well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but
+never being without this.
+
+119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to
+draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
+note one or two points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and
+the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
+means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
+peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
+to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
+There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
+only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
+nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
+will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
+a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
+pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of
+beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:
+
+120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account of their
+associations; or at least do not draw them because you love them; but
+merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw
+places that you love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat
+brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset
+hedges; besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor to
+make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your
+progress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious
+that the drawing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it
+is done. All you have to care about is to make it _right_, and to learn
+as much in doing it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in
+your friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you
+may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or
+the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it _is_ for practice, and not
+because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor
+because you wish to please your friend by drawing her room.
+
+121. Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am
+addressing you as a beginner--a time may come when your work will be
+precious to everybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know
+that it is worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will
+know that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing,
+send them a couple of cakes of color and a piece of Bristol board: those
+materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than if you
+had spread the one over the other.
+
+The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will much
+protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings
+pretty.
+
+122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if
+complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments,
+chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of
+furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret
+yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do not
+shine.
+
+(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw,
+and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things
+as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or
+profitless study than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study
+than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general,
+everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.
+
+(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen
+through another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before
+your chosen cottage, or between you and the turn of the river; its near
+branches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to
+represent this; and though, when the tree _is_ there, you must not
+imaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look
+for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,
+rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a
+thin tree in front of it, rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and
+rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems.
+
+(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps
+nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque
+and unmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge,
+with trees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the
+cattle line.
+
+Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that
+the subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that
+you should think you had entirely mastered _it_. But at first, and even
+for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure;
+which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.
+
+123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may,
+perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all banks
+are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large landscapes.
+If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places where the
+ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots of
+trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things within your
+reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, etc.
+Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful
+bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and color than high
+chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the flowery ground
+below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study: a not very
+thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up
+it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
+
+124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always
+beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of
+pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric porticoes. Any old
+English village, or cluster of farmhouses, drawn with all its ins and
+outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a
+French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to English as
+Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is
+incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have
+recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their
+expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty
+of component lines.
+
+In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden
+is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of
+cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,
+and bossy roses; you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
+anything in purer thoughts.
+
+Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood, and
+study them ripple by ripple.
+
+Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a
+peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old
+manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and
+cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in
+England from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an
+impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring
+vergerism about them.
+
+125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is
+redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece
+of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its
+complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
+color. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching
+among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
+hills will be comparatively easy.
+
+126. When you have practiced for a little time from such of these
+subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find
+difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a
+master's help: these difficulties will vary according to the character
+of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to
+another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would
+make this too large a book if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate;
+you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her
+own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on
+your own part will make some difficulties disappear; and that others
+will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists' work as
+may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
+a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are
+somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks may, I think, be
+conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing
+of vegetation, water, and skies.
+
+127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said
+enough about trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and
+tried to draw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be
+ready by this time to hear a little more of them. You will also
+recollect that we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing
+intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so
+because I wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing
+them for yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle
+considerations as to method in drawing them. And by this time, I
+imagine, you must have found out two principal things, universal facts,
+about leaves; namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their
+lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law
+of radiation, already referred to;[29] and the second, that this
+divergence is never formal, but carried out with endless variety of
+individual line. I must now press both these facts on your attention a
+little farther.
+
+128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of
+the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with
+the passages referring to them in Modern Painters, in which they are
+highly praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only
+works by a modern[30] draughtsman which express in any wise the energy
+of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There
+are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general character,
+obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame,
+Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether
+inferior in power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you
+must not take even Harding for a model, though you may use his works for
+occasional reference; and if you can afford to buy his Lessons on
+Trees,[31] it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at
+present help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well
+that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,
+because their great influence on young students renders it desirable
+that their real character should be thoroughly understood.
+
+129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on Trees, a
+pretty wood-cut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and
+in a very interesting arrangement of lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy
+of Mr. Harding, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think
+everything depends on black dots; still, the main lines are good, and
+very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we come to the
+point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil
+that he may practice from them till his hand gets into the habit of
+arranging lines freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr.
+Harding to be universal in application; "all outlines expressive of
+foliage," he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
+groups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23 below; and the
+characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner
+ends to a common center;" that "their ends terminate in [are inclosed
+by] ovoid curves;" and that "the outer ends are most emphatic."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
+
+130. Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and
+inclosure, the main principle of this method of execution confirms, in a
+very interesting way, our conclusions respecting foliage composition.
+The reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be
+most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one end
+of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other: but
+ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
+more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and,
+as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as
+any mere habit of touch _can_ express. But, unfortunately, there is
+another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,
+which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose
+sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be
+carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual
+individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the
+moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the
+leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of
+growth with its companions in the radiating group.
+
+131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster
+may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one
+than _b_ in Fig. 9, p. 47, nor a less formal one than this shoot of
+Spanish chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24; but in either of them,
+even the general reader, unpracticed in any of the previously
+recommended exercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed
+with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if
+he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will
+find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free
+touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch
+whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it;
+but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
+the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close
+to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw
+the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it,
+and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point
+of a leaf here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
+by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
+through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really
+_can_ see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig.
+9 nor Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as
+Fig. 25.[32]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
+
+132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these
+_three_ laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is,
+first, the organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism,
+or concurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of
+rocks, and clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the
+members subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under
+which the separate character of each is more or less concealed.
+
+I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This
+is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your
+common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they
+were moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;
+he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps
+of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;
+and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
+unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,
+or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is
+the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of
+government; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of
+their authority rather than in its denial.
+
+133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and
+liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great
+masters separate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the
+men of inferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice
+of individuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep
+of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or
+mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has
+great feeling for masses of form and harmony of color; but in the detail
+gives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species
+of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible.
+Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are
+essential to masterly work, the individuality is the _more_ essential,
+and the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment
+separates the great masters _finally_ from the inferior ones. It is the
+more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in
+visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a
+lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no
+government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common
+affection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it
+possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to
+have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
+dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in
+which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than
+himself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than
+himself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be
+relieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be
+instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a
+stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
+walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in everlasting
+multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.
+Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of
+form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some
+great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and
+their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life.
+
+134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you enjoy the pursuit
+of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning
+them, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters
+in a piece of painting by merely considering what are the noble
+characters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of
+manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and
+refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What
+advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness
+in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
+of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial
+composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or
+relieve human souls; that power precisely in the same relative degree,
+play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of
+a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in
+companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
+simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of
+goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its
+color, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.
+
+135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too
+far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete,
+that the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the
+more useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one
+particular, or in any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice, no
+moral virtue, which has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of
+painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the
+art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness,
+and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and
+modesty, and all other such habits, and every conceivable modification
+and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness,
+by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable vices
+and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character and
+passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king to the
+innocent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
+
+136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the
+investigation of the higher branches of composition, matters which it
+would be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to
+them here, in order that you may understand how the utmost noblenesses
+of art are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in
+your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the
+most noble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of
+individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,
+whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
+
+137. Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein
+consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the
+tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly
+observes, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great
+laws of growth and action in trees: it fails,--and observe, not in a
+minor, but in the principal point,--because it cannot rightly render any
+one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not
+from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true
+drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to a hand which has
+contracted a _habit_ of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,
+and stops, and says calmly,--That leaf is of such and such a character;
+I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers
+what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend.
+This process may be as quick as lightning when the master is great--one
+of the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process
+is always gone through; no touch or form is ever added to another by a
+good painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
+the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf No. 2; you
+cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or
+rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and
+pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully;
+make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it
+shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders;
+otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may
+therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[33] and you
+may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand
+so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you must
+never copy it; otherwise your progress will be at once arrested. The
+utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's manner,
+but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil to gain
+his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides
+drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding
+what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and
+complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand the one
+and love the other more and more, whether you can draw well yourself or
+not.
+
+138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above
+stated, that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen
+perfectly, but only by fragments, and under various conditions of
+obscurity.[34] This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature
+complete as a type of the human nature. We have, observe, first,
+Subordination; secondly, Individuality; lastly, and this not the least
+essential character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every
+serrated point and shining vein which escapes or deceives our sight
+among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or
+judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all
+that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at first think
+we understand, a closer and more loving watchfulness would show to be
+full of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
+
+139. The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
+completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at
+all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try
+always when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in
+light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
+definitely; preparing for the after development of the forms by
+chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future
+arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings
+of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples, and so peculiar. The
+character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains
+that Turner has taken. Thus the Æsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with
+the greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the near tree is
+etched as in Fig. 26. The work looks at first like a scholar's instead
+of a master's; but when the light and shade are added, every touch falls
+into its place, and a perfect expression of grace and complexity
+results. Nay, even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be
+able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the
+expression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are
+more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before
+Turner's time, had been employed, even by the best masters, in their
+distant masses. Fig. 27 is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of
+the old wood-cuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are too
+much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs too completely
+seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery in aspect, owing to the
+want of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat
+conventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses; and
+their exquisite delineation of the foreground, kept their
+conventionalism from degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and
+other derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and
+sinks gradually into scrawled work, like Fig. 28, about the worst which
+it is possible to get into the habit of using, though an ignorant person
+might perhaps suppose it more "free," and therefore better than Fig. 26.
+Note also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a
+bough is wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally
+somewhere, as in Fig. 26, just above the foliage. Very often the
+muscular action which is to be expressed by the line runs into the
+middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the branch at that place
+may be dimly seen, or not at all; and it is then only by the future
+shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappearance, will be
+indicated.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
+
+140. One point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In
+the minds of our ordinary water-color artists a distant tree seems only
+to be conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other
+masses, and giving cool color to the landscape, but differing no wise,
+in texture, from the blots of other shapes which these painters use to
+express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn
+trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed
+more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their
+_softness_ of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of
+color, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture,
+partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely
+softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to
+reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the
+surface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form
+and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife
+passed lightly _over_ this careful drawing will do a good deal; but you
+must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim much at this softness
+in the lines of the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and
+more or less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,
+according to the character of tree, various modes of execution adapted
+to express its texture; but always keep this character of softness in
+your mind, and in your scope of aim; for in most landscapes it is the
+intention of Nature that the tenderness and transparent infinitude of
+her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the most
+distinct opposition to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or
+buildings.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
+
+141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of
+representing water, of which important feature of landscape I have
+hardly said anything yet.
+
+Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional lines, whose
+horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In
+paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose.
+
+But these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of
+calm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection
+of the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these
+reflections, disturbing them here and there as you see the breeze or
+current disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you
+have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give you a
+true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate
+drawing as the picture above the pool; except only that if there be the
+least motion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be
+diffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and
+the oblique ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.
+
+142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing you
+need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturbance on the
+surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current
+plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to
+get the _curves_ of these lines true; the whole value of your careful
+drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false
+curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if
+you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and
+delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they
+are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking
+pains, work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by motion
+in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as may be; but when you
+are in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with vertical
+lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated reflection is with
+horizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw the descending
+shades delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best always
+when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you are not, to use the
+vertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflections become
+shaken, and must be drawn with bold undulatory descending lines.
+
+143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest
+possible importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their
+perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more stringent than that of
+any other lines in Nature. It will not be detected by the general
+observer, if you miss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or
+the perspective of a building;[36] but every intelligent spectator will
+feel the difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or shingle,
+and a false one. _Absolutely_ right, in difficult river perspectives
+seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and
+observe, there is NO rule for them. To develop the curve mathematically
+would require a knowledge of the exact quantity of water in the river,
+the shape of its bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even
+with these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician could
+solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it; nothing
+else.
+
+144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great
+differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the
+object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is
+simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water _actually_ reversed
+(not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the
+same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,
+whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid
+objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection,
+always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.
+
+If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror,
+lay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and
+draw them and their reflections; moving them about, and watching how
+their reflections alter, and chiefly how their reflected colors and
+shades differ from their own colors and shades, by being brought into
+other oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
+character in water-painting than mere difference in form.
+
+145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows
+on the bottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections;
+and in a clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of
+effect resulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it,
+mingling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
+water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand,
+do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything
+that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect.
+There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted
+always by refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone
+shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will
+be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the
+stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen
+through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which; and wherever the
+reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best,[37] and
+_vice versâ_. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these
+images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective,
+and where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of the
+water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it: but whether
+you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of
+the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye.
+The more you look down into the water, the better you see objects
+through it; the more you look along it, the eye being low, the more you
+see the reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given space
+of surface in a stream will entirely change while you stand still in the
+same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colors
+with which water is painted are an indication of the position of the
+spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of the shores.
+The most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is
+when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich
+reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an angle which
+exactly divides the visible colors between those of the stones and that
+of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple,
+obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the
+play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.
+
+146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if there be a strong
+color in the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss lakes,
+all these phenomena are doubly involved; for the darker reflections now
+become of the color of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for
+instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther,
+the color of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on the
+surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where the waves let
+light through them, at their edges; and the third, shown as a change of
+color on the objects seen through the water. Thus, the same wave that
+makes a white object look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will
+take a red or violet-colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure
+emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. With all this,
+however, you are not much concerned at present, but I tell it you partly
+as a preparation for what we have afterwards to say about color, and
+partly that you may approach lakes and streams with reverence,[38] and
+study them as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
+few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.[39] Not but
+that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you know precisely what
+you mean by them, as you will see by many of the Turner sketches, which
+are now framed at the National Gallery; but you must have painted water
+many and many a day--yes, and all day long--before you can hope to do
+anything like those.
+
+147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the
+clouds, I say nothing special about _ground_.[40] But there is too much
+to be said about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the
+principal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume
+of Modern Painters; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
+Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will
+give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of
+ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in
+irregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of
+the perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and
+much also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks
+on any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised
+to find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on
+which they fall.
+
+148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity
+about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject;--that the
+clouds, not being much liable to man's interference, are always
+beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of this in any other features
+of landscape. The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene
+especially depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts
+or the landlord quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a
+special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most
+delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer plows or builds upon.
+But the clouds, though we can hide them with smoke, and mix them with
+poison, cannot be quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore
+gloriously arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers
+of memory you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that
+interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united
+influence of every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn
+together in a marvelous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its
+appointed place, or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not
+able to recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is
+impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all the clouds
+at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will
+not fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before
+another.
+
+149. You must try therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching
+at the utmost possible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by
+any shorthand or symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character
+of each, as transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving
+afterwards such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable
+you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting from its
+general aspect; at other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a
+single cloud: sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes
+quite steady enough to let you mark out his principal masses; and one or
+two white or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay
+without serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in
+drawing them, practice occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will
+teach you better than any other stable thing the kind of softness there
+is in clouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies
+of sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
+artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding
+the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones
+tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as
+vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have
+done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or
+in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
+solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy
+nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;
+sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more _drifted_
+into form than they are _carved_ into form, the warm air around them
+cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain
+limits; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
+swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that
+of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is,
+that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms,
+especially considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn
+also at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the
+force of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that if we
+put shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed
+in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
+Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
+them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage.
+
+150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and
+there; one of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much the
+memorandum so obtained, as the lesson you will get respecting the
+softness of the cloud-outlines. You will always find yourself at a loss
+to see where the outline really is; and when drawn it will always look
+hard and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square,
+however often you alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the
+other and back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean
+between roundness and squareness in all its coils or battlements. I
+speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud: the lighter
+wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined;--they can only
+be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly
+developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough, and
+may be drawn with decision. When you have thus accustomed yourself a
+little to the placing and action of clouds, try to work out their light
+and shade, just as carefully as you do that of other things, looking
+exclusively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy
+and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some
+examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet drew the sky:
+even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in
+the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among the
+best of Turner's storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes
+to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.
+
+151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the
+present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to
+master the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for
+drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,
+which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the
+fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
+single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
+whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the
+subjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate
+work addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two
+things to be said on composition which may set the young artist's mind
+somewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defense from the urgency of
+ill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter here;
+trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your
+serious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book
+with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or
+
+                                           Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                         J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [23] It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."
+
+  [24] I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Dürer in their
+    strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design.
+    But you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.
+
+  [25] The following are the most desirable plates:--
+
+    Grande Chartreuse.               Little Devil's Bridge.
+    Æsacus and Hesperie.             River Wye (_not_ Wye and Severn).
+    Cephalus and Procris.            Holy Island.
+    Source of Arveron.               Clyde.
+    Ben Arthur.                      Lauffenburg.
+    Watermill.                       Blair Athol.
+    Hindhead Hill.                   Alps from Grenoble.
+    Hedging and Ditching.            Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook,
+    Dumblane Abbey.                   trees, and castle on the right.)
+    Morpeth.
+    Calais Pier.
+    Pembury Mill.
+
+    If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be
+    serviceable, except only the twelve following, which are quite
+    useless:--
+
+      1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.
+      2. Interior of church.
+      3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing
+          a pipe.
+      4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.
+      5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church
+          seen through them.
+      6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.
+      7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.
+      8. Rivaulx Abbey.
+      9. Wye and Severn.
+     10. Scene with castle in center, cows under trees on the left.
+     11. Martello Towers.
+     12. Calm.
+
+    It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original
+    etchings; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself
+    alone, for it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by
+    Turner, but to a very careful one; only observe, the Source of
+    Arveron, Raglan, and Dumblane were not etched by Turner; and the
+    etchings of those three are not good for separate study, though it
+    is deeply interesting to see how Turner, apparently provoked at the
+    failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and Raglan, took the plates
+    up himself, and either conquered or brought into use the bad etching
+    by his marvelous engraving. The Dumblane was, however, well etched
+    by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully engraved by him. The finest Turner
+    etching is of an aqueduct with a stork standing in a mountain
+    stream, not in the published series; and next to it, are the
+    unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to
+    have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouching and
+    finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via
+    Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest
+    of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that
+    of the aqueduct. Figure 20, above, is part of another fine
+    unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published
+    etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, Æsacus, Cephalus, and Stone
+    Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the
+    more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth,
+    are also very desirable.
+
+  [26] You will find more notice of this point in the account of
+    Harding's tree-drawing, a little farther on.
+
+  [27] The impressions vary so much in color that no brown can be
+    specified.
+
+  [28] You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a
+    Liber print as well.
+
+  [29] See the closing letter in this volume.
+
+  [30] [In 1857.]
+
+  [31] If you are not acquainted with Harding's works, (an unlikely
+    supposition, considering their popularity,) and cannot meet with the
+    one in question, the diagrams given here will enable you to
+    understand all that is needful for our purposes.
+
+  [32] I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it
+    being impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant
+    foliage in a wood-cut.
+
+  [33] His lithographic sketches, those for instance in the Park and
+    the Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater
+    merit than the more ambitious engravings in his Principles and
+    Practice of Art. There are many useful remarks, however, dispersed
+    through this latter work.
+
+  [34] On this law you do well, if you can get access to it, to look
+    at the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters.
+
+  [35] See Note 3 in Appendix I.
+
+  [36] The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of
+    buildings is of little consequence; but he will find it so
+    ultimately. See the remarks on this point in the Preface.
+
+  [37] See Note 4 in Appendix I.
+
+  [38] See Note 5 in Appendix I.
+
+  [39] It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in
+    water, so as to make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white
+    basin with the solution, and put anything you like to float on it,
+    or lie in it; walnut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc.
+    Then study the effects of the reflections, and of the stems of the
+    flowers or submerged portions of the floating objects, as they
+    appear through the blue liquid; noting especially how, as you lower
+    your head and look along the surface, you see the reflections
+    clearly; and how, as you raise your head, you lose the reflections,
+    and see the submerged stems clearly.
+
+  [40] Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works
+    of Prout in the Appendix.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION.
+
+
+152. MY DEAR READER,--If you have been obedient, and have hitherto done
+all that I have told you, I trust it has not been without much subdued
+remonstrance, and some serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when
+you were led by the course of your study to observe closely such things
+as are beautiful in color, you had not longed to paint them, and felt
+considerable difficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of
+black, or blue, or gray. You _ought_ to love color, 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 color because you think
+painting a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may color
+well. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce anything more than
+pleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in color,
+unless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other
+vocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and
+masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well, requires your
+life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is
+increased--not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more--by
+the addition of color to your work. For the chances are more than a
+thousand to one against your being right both in form and color with a
+given touch: it is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend
+to that only; but when you have to attend, at the same moment, to a much
+more subtle thing than the form, the difficulty is strangely
+increased,--and multiplied almost to infinity by this great fact, that,
+while form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any
+line that it is either right or wrong, color is wholly _relative_. Every
+hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add in other
+places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you have
+put a hotter color in another place, and what was in harmony when you
+left it, becomes discordant as you set other colors beside it; so that
+every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but
+with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is
+afterwards to be done being previously considered. You may easily
+understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and
+great genius besides, can make a colorist.
+
+153. But though you cannot produce finished colored drawings of any
+value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and be of great use to other
+people, by occasionally sketching with a view to color only; and
+preserving distinct statements of certain color facts--as that the
+harvest moon at rising was of such and such a red, and surrounded by
+clouds of such and such a rosy gray; that the mountains at evening were
+in truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's side were indeed
+of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have an eye for
+color; but you may presume that you have this, if you enjoy color.
+
+154. And, though of course you should always give as much form to your
+subject as your attention to its color will admit of, remember that the
+whole value of what you are about depends, in a colored sketch, on the
+color merely. If the color is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if
+you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true the
+words are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly; and if you color
+at all, you must color rightly. Give up all the form, rather than the
+slightest part of the color: just as, if you felt yourself in danger of
+a false note, you would give up the word, and sing a meaningless sound,
+if you felt that so you could save the note. Never mind though your
+houses are all tumbling down,--though your clouds are mere blots, and
+your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like crooked
+sixpences,--so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon, are of
+the right colors. Of course, the discipline you have gone through will
+enable you to hint something of form, even in the fastest sweep of the
+brush; but do not let the thought of form hamper you in the least, when
+you begin to make colored memoranda. If you want the form of the
+subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its color, take its
+color, and be sure you _have_ it, and not a spurious, treacherous,
+half-measured piece of mutual concession, with the colors all wrong, and
+the forms still anything but right. It is best to get into the habit of
+considering the colored work merely as supplementary to your other
+studies; making your careful drawings of the subject first, and then a
+colored memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in
+hue, and entirely minding its own business. This principle, however,
+bears chiefly on large and distant subjects: in foregrounds and near
+studies, the color cannot be had without a good deal of definition of
+form. For if you do not map the mosses on the stones accurately, you
+will not have the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pattern,
+and then none of the colors will look right; but it always simplifies
+the work much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied,
+when necessary, to fail of all but that.
+
+155. Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting coloring,
+which is the beginning and end of a painter's craft, I should need to
+make this a work in three volumes instead of three letters, and to
+illustrate it in the costliest way. I only hope, at present, to set you
+pleasantly and profitably to work, leaving you, within the tethering of
+certain leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from the
+works of art of which every year brings a greater number within your
+reach;--and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists
+will be more ready to give kindly, and better able to give wisely.
+
+156. And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colors, not moist colors:
+grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette every morning,
+keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for colors to be used in
+broad washes, and wash both plate and palette every evening, so as to be
+able always to get good and pure color when you need it; and force
+yourself into cleanly and orderly habits about your colors. The two best
+colorists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,[41] afford us, I am
+sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice. Turner
+was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures as men can
+well be; but the result of this was, with Turner, that the colors have
+altered in all his pictures, and in many of his drawings; and the result
+of it with Rossetti is, that though his colors are safe, he has
+sometimes to throw aside work that was half done, and begin over again.
+William Hunt, of the Old Water-color, is very neat in his practice; so,
+I believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the leading
+Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there can be no doubt about
+the goodness of the advice, if it were only for this reason, that the
+more particular you are about your colors the more you will get into a
+deliberate and methodical habit in using them, and all true speed in
+coloring comes of this deliberation.
+
+157. Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colors in order to
+pale them, instead of a quantity of water. You will thus be able to
+shape your masses more quietly, and play the colors about with more
+ease; they will not damp your paper so much, and you will be able to go
+on continually, and lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or
+delicately shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time.
+
+158. This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render them
+opaque, constitutes body-color drawing as opposed to transparent-color
+drawing, and you will, perhaps, have it often said to you that this
+body-color is "illegitimate." It is just as legitimate as oil-painting,
+being, so far as handling is concerned, the same process, only without
+its uncleanliness, its unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience; for oil
+will not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects of
+atmosphere without tenfold labor. And if you hear it said that the
+body-color looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, think so
+yourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain effects of glow
+and transparencies of gloom are not to be reached without transparent
+color, those glows and glooms are _not_ the noblest aim of art. After
+many years' study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in
+Italy, and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am now
+entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done in art
+must be done in dead color. The habit of depending on varnish or on
+lucid tints for transparency, makes the painter comparatively lose sight
+of the nobler translucence which is obtained by breaking various colors
+amidst each other: and even when, as by Correggio, exquisite play of hue
+is joined with exquisite transparency, the delight in the depth almost
+always leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro; it leads him
+to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,[42] and to enjoy, in
+general, quality of color more than grandeur of composition, and
+confined light rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest
+thoughts of the greatest men have always, so far as I remember, been
+reached in dead color, and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and
+Veronese are those which are likest frescoes.
+
+159. Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little
+chalky and coarse-looking body-color is, in a sketch, infinitely liker
+Nature than transparent color: the bloom and mist of distance are
+accurately and instantly represented by the film of opaque blue (_quite_
+accurately, I think, by nothing else); and for ground, rocks, and
+buildings, the earthy and solid surface is, of course, always truer than
+the most finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can
+ever be.
+
+160. Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. All kinds
+of color are equally illegitimate, if you think they will allow you to
+alter at your pleasure, or blunder at your ease. There is _no_ vehicle
+or method of color which admits of alteration or repentance; you must be
+right at once, or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle
+bullet in your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong, as to
+recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good color in oil, water,
+or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence spoken to me by
+Mulready: "Know what you have to do." The process may be a long one,
+perhaps: you may have to ground with one color; to touch it with
+fragments of a second; to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth
+into the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and
+to re-enforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have one, or ten,
+or twenty processes to go through, you must go _straight_ through them
+knowingly and foreseeingly all the way; and if you get the thing once
+wrong, there is no hope for you but in washing or scraping boldly down
+to the white ground, and beginning again.
+
+161. The drawing in body-color will tend to teach you all this, more
+than any other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling
+into the pestilent habit of sponging to get texture; a trick which has
+nearly ruined our modern water-color school of art. There are sometimes
+places in which a skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get
+certain conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could
+otherwise; and sometimes a skillfully rased piece of paper will, in the
+midst of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky
+body-color in representing the surfaces of rocks or building. But
+artifices of this kind are always treacherous in a tyro's hands,
+tempting him to trust in them: and you had better always work on white
+or gray paper as smooth as silk;[43] and never disturb the surface of
+your color or paper, except finally to scratch out the very highest
+lights if you are using transparent colors.
+
+162. I have said above that body-color drawing will teach you the use of
+color better than working with merely transparent tints; but this is not
+because the process is an easier one, but because it is a more complete
+one, and also because it involves some working with transparent tints in
+the best way. You are not to think that because you use body-color you
+may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get out of it. But you
+are to avail yourself of the characters of your material, which enable
+you most nearly to imitate the processes of Nature. Thus, suppose you
+have a red rocky cliff to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You
+paint your cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such a
+tint (and here is a great part of the skill needed) that when it is laid
+over the red, in the thickness required for the effect of the mist, the
+warm rock-color showing through the blue cloud-color, may bring it to
+exactly the hue you want (your upper tint, therefore, must be mixed
+colder than you want it); then you lay it on, varying it as you strike
+it, getting the forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done,
+with exquisite quality of color, from the warm tint's showing through
+and between the particles of the other. When it is dry, you may add a
+little color to retouch the edges where they want shape, or heighten the
+lights where they want roundness, or put another tone over the whole:
+but you can take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by
+any untoward accident mix the under and upper colors together, all is
+lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from the ground again if you
+like, or throw it into the fire if you like. But do not waste time in
+trying to mend it.[44]
+
+163. This discussion of the relative merits of transparent and opaque
+color has, however, led us a little beyond the point where we should
+have begun; we must go back to our palette, if you please. Get a cake of
+each of the hard colors named in the note below[45] and try experiments
+on their simple combinations, by mixing each color with every other. If
+you like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared piece of
+pasteboard, and put the pure colors in columns at the top and side; the
+mixed tints being given at the intersections, thus (the letters standing
+for colors):
+
+      b       c      d      e      f     etc.
+    a a b    a c    a d    a e    a f
+    b --     b c    b d    b e    b f
+    c --     --     c d    c e    c f
+    d --     --     --     d e    d f
+    e --     --     --     --     e f
+    etc.
+
+This will give you some general notion of the characters of mixed tints
+of two colors only, and it is better in practice to confine yourself as
+much as possible to these, and to get more complicated colors, either by
+putting the third _over_ the first blended tint, or by putting the third
+into its interstices. Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the
+effects that colors have on each other when thus put over, or beside,
+each other.
+
+164. When you have got a little used to the principal combinations,
+place yourself at a window which the sun does not shine in at,
+commanding some simple piece of landscape: outline this landscape
+roughly; then take a piece of white cardboard, cut out a hole in it
+about the size of a large pea; and supposing R is the room, _a d_ the
+window, and you are sitting at _a_, Fig. 29, hold this cardboard a
+little outside of the window, upright, and in the direction _b d_,
+parallel to the side of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch
+more light, as at _a d_, never turned as at _c d_, or the paper will be
+dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular
+hole. Match the colors of each important bit as nearly as you can,
+mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. When matched, put a
+touch of the same tint at the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark
+tree color," "hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash
+the tint away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will be ready
+to match another piece of the landscape.[46] When you have got the
+colors of the principal masses thus indicated, lay on a piece of each in
+your sketch in its right place, and then proceed to complete the sketch
+in harmony with them, by your eye.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
+
+165. In the course of your early experiments, you will be much struck by
+two things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy of light in sky and in
+sunlighted things; and the second, that among the tints which you can
+imitate, those which you thought the darkest will continually turn out
+to be in reality the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us,
+under ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by sight;
+thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be thought of darker
+green than an elm or oak near us; because we know by experience that the
+peculiar color they exhibit, at that distance, is the _sign_ of darkness
+of foliage. But when we try them through the cardboard, the near oak
+will be found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar,
+perhaps, pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and gray in Nature is,
+by the way, another somewhat surprising subject of discovery.
+
+166. Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may proceed
+to fill up your sketch; in doing which observe these following
+particulars:
+
+(1.) Many portions of your subject appeared through the aperture in the
+paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted grass, etc. Leave
+these portions, for the present, white; and proceed with the parts of
+which you can match the tints.
+
+(2.) As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must have
+observed how many changes of hue took place over small spaces. In
+filling up your work, try to educate your eye to perceive these
+differences of hue without the help of the cardboard, and lay them
+deliberately, like a mosaic-worker, as separate colors, preparing each
+carefully on your palette, and laying it as if it were a patch of
+colored cloth, cut out, to be fitted neatly by its edge to the next
+patch; so that the _fault_ of your work may be, not a slurred or misty
+look, but a patched bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out with
+scissors. For instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch tree, there will
+be probably white high lights, then a pale rosy gray round them on the
+light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper gray on the dark side,
+varied by reflected colors, and, over all, rich black strips of bark and
+brown spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray, leaving white for the high
+lights _and for the spots of moss_, and not touching the dark side. Then
+lay the gray for the dark side, fitting it well up to the rosy gray of
+the light, leaving also in this darker gray the white paper in the
+places for the black and brown moss; then prepare the moss colors
+separately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left for it.
+Not one grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights,
+must be visible when the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass,
+so cunningly must you fit the edges to each other. Finally, take your
+background colors, and put them on each side of the tree trunk, fitting
+them carefully to its edge.
+
+167. Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you, if you had not
+learned to draw first, and could not now draw a good outline for the
+stem, much less terminate a color mass in the outline you wanted?
+
+Your work will look very odd for some time, when you first begin to
+paint in this way, and before you can modify it, as I shall tell you
+presently how; but never mind; it is of the greatest possible importance
+that you should practice this separate laying on of the hues, for all
+good coloring finally depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and
+sometimes desirable, to lay one color and form boldly over another:
+thus, in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large
+pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through the
+interstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians constantly lay their
+blue ground first, and then, having let it dry, strike the golden brown
+over it in the form of the leaf, leaving the under blue to shine through
+the gold, and subdue it to the olive-green they want. But in the most
+precious and perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round
+it; and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is
+equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the color.
+Either your ground must be laid firmly first, and then your upper color
+struck upon it in perfect form, forever, thenceforward, unalterable; or
+else the two colors must be individually put in their places, and led up
+to each other till they meet at their appointed border, equally,
+thenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves absolute
+decision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or try this
+way and that with your color, it is all over with it and with you. You
+will continually see bad copyists trying to imitate the Venetians, by
+daubing their colors about, and retouching, and finishing, and
+softening: when every touch and every added hue only lead them farther
+into chaos. There is a dog between two children in a Veronese in the
+Louvre, which gives the copyists much employment. He has a dark ground
+behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then when it was dry,
+or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with some
+half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and forever. Had
+one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would have been wrong forever;
+no retouching could have mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some
+background, and then some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then
+the hair; work for hours at it, expecting it always to come right
+to-morrow--"when it is finished." They _may_ work for centuries at it,
+and they will never do it. If they can do it with Veronese's allowance
+of work, half a dozen sweeps of the hand over the dark background, well;
+if not, they may ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right,
+and get true answer from him--on Launce's conditions: "If he say 'ay,'
+it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing,
+it will."
+
+168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure that however
+large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. No color exists
+in Nature under ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not
+see this, it is the fault of your inexperience: you will see it in due
+time, if you practice enough. But in general you may see it at once. In
+the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray _must_ be gradated by the
+roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side; similarly the
+shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, whether by
+adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you
+will do at pleasure, according to the texture you wish to produce), you
+must, in every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than
+another, and get an even gradation between the two depths. This is very
+like laying down a formal law or recipe for you; but you will find it is
+merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically
+impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of color, but it is so
+supremely improbable, that you had better get into the habit of asking
+yourself invariably, when you are going to copy a tint--not "Is that
+gradated?" but "Which way is that gradated?" and at least in ninety-nine
+out of a hundred instances, you will be able to answer decisively after
+a careful glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that you
+did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of
+color may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one
+part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for it is not
+merely because the natural fact is so, that your color should be
+gradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the color itself depends
+more on this than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is to
+colors just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful
+by the pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as types,
+expressing the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul
+itself. What the difference is in mere beauty between a gradated and
+ungradated color, may be seen easily by laying an even tint of
+rose-color on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The victorious
+beauty of the rose as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the
+delicacy and quantity of its color gradations, all other flowers being
+either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less
+tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.
+
+169. (4.) But observe, it is not enough in general that color should be
+gradated by being made merely paler or darker at one place than another.
+Generally color changes as it diminishes, and is not merely darker at
+one spot, but also purer at one spot than anywhere else. It does not in
+the least follow that the darkest spots should be the purest; still less
+so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often the two gradations
+more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction from
+paleness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to
+dullness, but there will almost always be both of them, however
+reconciled; and you must never be satisfied with a piece of color until
+you have got both: that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on
+must be _quite_ blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot; and
+must be gradated from that into less pure blue,--grayish blue, or
+greenish blue, or purplish blue,--over all the rest of the space it
+occupies. And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while the
+color is wet, mix with it the color which is to subdue it, adding
+gradually a little more and a little more; or else, when the color is
+quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another color over it, leaving
+only a point of the first tint visible; or else, lay the subduing tints
+on in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board. Of
+each of these methods I have something to tell you separately; but that
+is distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without
+once more pressing upon you the preëminent necessity of introducing it
+everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like habit of hand, and
+yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get
+into a habit of never touching paper with color, without securing a
+gradation. You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six
+or seven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of color as large
+as a grain of wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice, that
+brilliancy of hue, and vigor of light, and even the aspect of
+transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character
+alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more from
+_equality_ of color than from nature of color. Give me some mud off a
+city crossing, some ocher out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and
+some coal-dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me
+time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red
+of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for
+the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep the masses of
+those colors unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth.
+
+170. (5.) Next, note the three processes by which gradation and other
+characters are to be obtained:
+
+A. Mixing while the color is wet.
+
+You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the hues in
+separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues together as you lay
+them on: but the separate masses are to be laid, when colors distinctly
+oppose each other at a given limit; the hues to be mixed, when they
+palpitate one through the other, or fade one into the other. It is
+better to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint
+the dark and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in
+reality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light,
+gradually one into the other; and, after being laid separately on, will
+need some farther touching to harmonize them: but they do so in a very
+narrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the trunk, and it is
+easier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate at first. Whereas it
+often happens that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one
+being continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of it:
+blue and green often do so in water; blue and gray, or purple and
+scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and
+truthful results may be obtained by laying one color into the other
+while wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with
+the brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color; only
+observe, never mix in this way two _mixtures_; let the color you lay
+into the other be always a simple, not a compound tint.
+
+171. B. Laying one color over another.
+
+If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and after it is quite dry,
+strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much
+more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly,
+if you lay a dark color first, and strike a little blue or white
+body-color lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by
+mixing the color and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
+artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not have you
+trust much to them: they are apt to make you think too much of quality
+of color. I should like you to depend on little more than the dead
+colors, simply laid on, only observe always this, that the _less_ color
+you do the work with, the better it will always be:[47] so that if you
+had laid a red color, and you want a purple one above, do not mix the
+purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red,
+but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over
+the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus produce the
+required purple; and if you want a green hue over a blue one, do not lay
+a quantity of green on the blue, but a _little_ yellow, and so on,
+always bringing the under color into service as far as you possibly can.
+If, however, the color beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have to
+lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must
+either remove the required parts of the under color daintily first with
+your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white over it massively,
+and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white with the upper color.
+This is better, in general, than laying the upper color itself so thick
+as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it be a transparent color,
+you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of
+trees over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places
+left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first in
+solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ocher, than to mix the
+sienna and white; though, of course, the process is longer and more
+troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches required are very
+delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must then mix the warm
+color thick at once, and so use it: and this is often necessary for
+delicate grasses, and such other fine threads of light in foreground
+work.
+
+172. C. Breaking one color in small points through or over another.
+
+This is the most important of all processes in good modern[48] oil and
+water-color painting, but you need not hope to attain very great skill
+in it. To do it well is very laborious, and requires such skill and
+delicacy of hand as can only be acquired by unceasing practice. But you
+will find advantage in noting the following points:
+
+173. (_a._) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or rippled water,
+or broken clouds, much may be done by touches or crumbling dashes of
+rather dry color, with other colors afterwards put cunningly into the
+interstices. The more you practice this, when the subject evidently
+calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of
+color. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of
+separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of color
+in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up
+minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the color you fill
+them with to show brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point
+of it, with a little white left beside or round it in the interstice,
+than to put a pale tint of the color over the whole interstice. Yellow
+or orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show
+brightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.
+
+174. (_b._) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed portions of
+another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost color in
+rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under
+one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons: the first, that the
+play of the two colors together is pleasant to the eye; the second, that
+much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the upper
+dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken
+crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose; in clouds they
+may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the
+cloud masses; and in water, the minor waves. All noble effects of dark
+atmosphere are got in good water-color drawing by these two expedients,
+interlacing the colors, or retouching the lower one with fine darker
+drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is
+barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for passages
+of delicate atmospheric light.
+
+175. (_c._) When you have time, practice the production of mixed tints
+by interlaced touches of the pure colors out of which they are formed,
+and use the process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get
+rich and luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old
+Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent
+memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower
+completely, but laying the ground color of one petal, and painting the
+spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of
+lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their
+position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds
+besides those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of the
+spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like; and
+work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute
+grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise you will never get their
+richness or bloom. You will be surprised to find as you do this, first,
+the universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon;
+secondly, that Nature is just as economical of _her_ fine colors as I
+have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way she paints,
+that her colors cost her something enormous; she will only give you a
+single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light; but down in
+the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the
+showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look
+close, only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the world
+at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the center of it.
+And so with all her colors. Sometimes I have really thought her
+miserliness intolerable: in a gentian, for instance, the way she
+economizes her ultramarine down in the bell is a little too bad.[49]
+
+176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for the sake
+of students, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments;
+but if you mean to be a colorist, you must lay a tax on them yourself
+when you begin to use true color; that is to say, you must use them
+little, and make of them much. There is no better test of your color
+tones being good, than your having made the white in your picture
+precious, and the black conspicuous.
+
+177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering
+or brilliant: it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of black clouds,
+and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew; but when white is well managed,
+it ought to be strangely delicious,--tender as well as bright,--like
+inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to
+seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space
+of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the
+colors. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint,
+by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need
+it, and by keeping the white itself subdued by gray, except at a few
+points of chief luster.
+
+178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a
+point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is
+too heavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some
+_color_,--never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently
+and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among
+them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points
+indicative of intense shade in the very center of masses of shadow.
+Shadows of absolutely negative gray, however, may be beautifully used
+with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued
+strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the
+spectator should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and
+enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold color and the
+white which it relieves. Of all the great colorists Velasquez is the
+greatest master of the black chords. His black is more precious than
+most other people's crimson.
+
+179. It is not, however, only white and black which you must make
+valuable; you must give rare worth to every color you use; but the white
+and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the
+other colors should be continually passing one into the other, being all
+evidently companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and
+neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You may
+melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue, and your blue into
+green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should,
+however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and
+this especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work,
+and giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine coloring,
+like fine drawing, is delicate; and so delicate that if, at last, you
+_see_ the color you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You
+ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone, by touches of color
+which individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom of
+any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom
+hurts it.
+
+180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are _odd_ colors.
+You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work ten minutes before you
+know what to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you feel that
+it is red; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it; presently
+afterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will
+always find your color too warm or too cold--no color in the box will
+seem to have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it
+were laid at a single touch with a single color.
+
+181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general, if you cannot
+choose and harmonize them by instinct, you will never do it at all. If
+you need examples of utterly harsh and horrible color, you may find
+plenty given in treatises upon coloring, to illustrate the laws of
+harmony; and if you want to color beautifully, color as best pleases
+yourself at _quiet times_, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as if it
+were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the color may
+be pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful. Look much at the
+morning and evening sky, and much at simple flowers--dog-roses,
+wood-hyacinths, violets, poppies, thistles, heather, and such like,--as
+Nature arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever any scientific
+person tells you that two colors are "discordant," make a note of the
+two colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have actually
+heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colors
+which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be
+felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!--a peacock's
+neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green
+lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds
+at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good eye for
+colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and
+green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral
+gray, and the like; and how she strikes these color-concords for general
+tones, and then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and
+you will gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and
+beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you enjoy them,
+depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at
+least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If
+color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it,
+you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color,
+whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.
+
+182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend much on your
+state of health and right balance of mind; when you are fatigued or ill
+you will not see colors well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not
+choose them well: thus, though not infallibly a test of character in
+individuals, color power is a great sign of mental health in nations;
+when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring always
+gets dull.[50] You must also take great care not to be misled by
+affected talk about colors from people who have not the gift of it:
+numbers are eager and voluble about it who probably never in all their
+lives received one genuine color-sensation. The modern religionists of
+the school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and
+chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
+strawberries and plums.
+
+183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea that color can help
+or display _form_; color[51] always disguises form, and is meant to do
+so.
+
+184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm
+colors" (reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold
+colors" (blue and gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this
+from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so
+great as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colors, as such,
+are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality (as
+depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue
+bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch
+farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always
+appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is
+quite true that in certain objects, blue is a _sign_ of distance; but
+that is not because blue is a retiring color, but because the mist in
+the air is blue, and therefore any warm color which has not strength of
+light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue
+is no more, on this account, a "retiring color," than brown is a
+retiring color, because, when stones are seen through brown water, the
+deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow is a retiring
+color, because, when objects are seen through a London fog, the farther
+off they are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red,
+can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or
+distance: they express them only under the peculiar circumstances which
+render them at the moment, or in that place, _signs_ of nearness or
+distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if
+you put the orange a great way off, its color will not look so bright;
+but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get
+the color of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a
+hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look at them the
+more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance,
+because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or gray. It
+may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale color will more
+or less express distance, and a powerful or dark color nearness; but
+even this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and
+tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far away; the rose
+color of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet, deep and full
+on the snow in the distance; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in
+the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak
+six miles from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong
+light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting intense
+reflections, all its colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint;
+while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole
+foreground with intense darks of purple, blue green, or ultramarine
+blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hopeless and absurd to expect
+any help from laws of "aërial perspective." Look for the natural
+effects, and set them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and
+_never_ alter a color because it won't look in its right place. Put the
+color strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it be faint,
+though close to you. Why should you suppose that Nature always means you
+to know exactly how far one thing is from another? She certainly intends
+you always to enjoy her coloring, but she does not wish you always to
+measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted
+the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance
+in "aërial perspective."
+
+185. There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which has some
+claims to be considered a constant one: namely, that dullness and
+heaviness of color are more or less indicative of nearness. All distant
+color is _pure_ color: it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely,
+not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any
+earthy or imperfect color, purify or harmonize it; hence a bad colorist
+is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do not of course mean
+that you are to use bad colors in your foreground by way of making it
+come forward; but only that a failure in color, there, will not put it
+out of its place; while a failure in color in the distance will at once
+do away with its remoteness; your dull-colored foreground will still be
+a foreground, though ill-painted; but your ill-painted distance will not
+be merely a dull distance,--it will be no distance at all.
+
+186. I have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to color
+petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, if you attend
+properly to your coloring, to get anything like the quantity of form you
+could in a chiaroscuro sketch; nevertheless, if you do not dash or rush
+at your work, nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be
+satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness
+over the course of the whole study, may just make the difference between
+a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If you
+determine well beforehand what outline each piece of color is to have,
+and, when it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as
+you can, into the form required; and then, after it is dry, consider
+thoroughly what touches are needed to complete it, before laying one of
+them on; you will be surprised to find how masterly the work will soon
+look, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered sketch. In no process
+that I know of--least of all in sketching--can time be really gained by
+precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in all sorts of
+ways; for not only truth of form, but force of light, is always added by
+an intelligent and shapely laying of the shadow colors. You may often
+make a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a
+complicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss
+cottages, for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows,
+and general character of shingly eaves, are expressed in Fig. 30 with
+one tint of gray, and a few dispersed spots and lines of it; all of
+which you ought to be able to lay on without more than thrice dipping
+your brush, and without a single touch after the tint is dry.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
+
+187. Here, then, for I cannot without colored illustrations tell you
+more, I must leave you to follow out the subject for yourself, with
+such help as you may receive from the water-color drawings accessible to
+you; or from any of the little treatises on their art which have been
+published lately by our water-color painters.[52] But do not trust much
+to works of this kind. You may get valuable hints from them as to
+mixture of colors; and here and there you will find a useful artifice or
+process explained; but nearly all such books are written only to help
+idle amateurs to a meretricious skill, and they are full of precepts and
+principles which may, for the most part, be interpreted by their
+_precise_ negatives, and then acted upon with advantage. Most of them
+praise boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is
+caution;--advise velocity, when the first condition of success is
+deliberation;--and plead for generalization, when all the foundations of
+power must be laid in knowledge of speciality.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+188. And now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you
+respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate art,--COMPOSITION. For
+though it is quite unnecessary for you yet awhile to attempt it, and it
+_may_ be inexpedient for you to attempt it at all, you ought to know
+what it means, and to look for and enjoy it in the art of others.
+
+Composition means, literally and simply, putting several things
+together, so as to make _one_ thing out of them; the nature and goodness
+of which they all have a share in producing. Thus a musician composes an
+air, by putting notes together in certain relations; a poet composes a
+poem, by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter a
+picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colors in pleasant order.
+
+In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of
+composition. A pavior cannot be said to compose the heap of stones which
+he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he
+scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that
+everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part,
+and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected
+with it.
+
+189. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the
+arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the world.[53] It is
+an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or colors, or forms, of the
+advantage of perfect fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a
+well-composed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared, but the
+least is as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is
+tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration:
+no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others prepare for, and are
+benefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered; the
+others prepare for, and sympathize with, its humility: and the result
+is, that each and every note has a value in the position assigned to it,
+which, by itself, it never possessed, and of which, by separation from
+the others, it would instantly be deprived.
+
+190. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value
+of those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a
+loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its
+position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly
+recognize it.
+
+Much more in a great picture; every line and color is so arranged as to
+advantage the rest. None are inessential, however slight; and none are
+independent, however forcible. It is not enough that they truly
+represent natural objects; but they must fit into certain places, and
+gather into certain harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red
+chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but
+that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces
+of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we ought to see that
+the work is masterly, merely by the positions and quantities of these
+patches of green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders it
+perfectly impossible to determine what the colors represent: or to see
+whether the red is a chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the
+blue is smoke, sky, or water.
+
+191. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we do, of
+the great laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition
+in the arts should strongly affect every order of mind, however
+unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the popular delight in rhythm and meter,
+and in simple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that _power_ of
+composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of great
+intellect. All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or
+less, remember it: powers of reflection and investigation are also
+common to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in these rests
+only on questions of _degree_. A. has a better memory than B., and C.
+reflects more profoundly than D. But the gift of composition is not
+given _at all_ to more than one man in a thousand; in its highest range,
+it does not occur above three or four times in a century.
+
+192. It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to
+give rules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily
+receive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty
+by rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were
+possible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have
+been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and
+Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of composition lies
+precisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in its being the
+operation of an individual mind of range and power exalted above others.
+
+But though no one can _invent_ by rule, there are some simple laws of
+arrangement which it is well for you to know, because, though they will
+not enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to
+set forth what goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than
+you could have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of good
+composers, you may better understand the grasp of their imagination,
+and the power it possesses over their materials. I shall briefly state
+the chief of these laws.
+
+
+1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.
+
+193. The great object of composition being always to secure unity; that
+is, to make out of many things one whole; the first mode in which this
+can be effected is, by determining that _one_ feature shall be more
+important than all the rest, and that the others shall group with it in
+subordinate positions.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
+
+This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of
+two leaves, _a_, Fig. 31, is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading
+leaf; but that at _b_ _is_ prettier, because it has a head or master
+leaf; and _c_ more satisfactory still, because the subordination of the
+other members to this head leaf is made more manifest by their gradual
+loss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we
+have in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.
+
+194. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger and brighter
+than the other lights, or one figure more prominent than the other
+figures, or one mass of color dominant over all the other masses; and in
+general you will find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that
+there shall be one light on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the
+sky, which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above
+all others. But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly
+concealed by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first
+traceable; and you will generally find they are vulgar pictures in which
+the law is strikingly manifest.
+
+195. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody: for instance, in
+such phrases as this--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+one note (here the upper G) rules the whole passage, and has the full
+energy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, corresponding to
+completely subordinated compositions in painting, are apt to be
+wearisome if often repeated. But, in such a phrase as this--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The A in the
+last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very equal current of
+power running through the whole; and such passages rarely weary. And
+this principle holds through vast scales of arrangement; so that in the
+grandest compositions, such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or
+Raphaels Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal figure;
+and very commonly the figure which is really chief does not catch the
+eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more conspicuous as
+we gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the
+figure meant to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose
+portrait it was evidently the painter's object to make as interesting as
+possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a drifting banner,
+and many figures more, occupy the center of the picture, and first
+catch the eye; little by little we are led away from them to a gleam of
+pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from the head which it
+shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more.
+
+196. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more or
+less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of explaining
+them to analyze one composition thoroughly, than to give instances from
+various works. I shall therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which
+will allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate each
+law by it as we proceed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 32.]
+
+Fig. 32 is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole subject; the
+old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the town of Coblentz on the
+right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. The leading or master feature is, of
+course, the tower on the bridge. It is kept from being _too_ principal
+by an important group on each side of it; the boats, on the right, and
+Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more forcible
+in color, but they are broken into small divisions, while the tower is
+simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its
+mass, but so reduced by aërial perspective of color that it cannot
+contend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the
+key of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects which
+seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly, to
+increase its preëminence.
+
+
+2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.
+
+197. Another important means of expressing unity is to mark some kind of
+sympathy among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest,
+because most surprising, kind of sympathy, is when one group imitates or
+repeats another; not in the way of balance or symmetry, but
+subordinately, like a far-away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted
+much on this law in all his writings on composition; and I think it is
+even more authoritatively present in the minds of most great composers
+than the law of principality.[54] It is quite curious to see the pains
+that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important passage of color; in
+the Pembroke Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with
+a red, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on the beach,
+are two fish in precisely the same relative positions; one red and one
+white. It is observable that he uses the artifice chiefly in pictures
+where he wishes to obtain an expression of repose: in my notice of the
+plate of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbors of England, I have
+already had occasion to dwell on this point; and I extract in the
+note[55] one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the
+composition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication is
+employed to a singular extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first
+repeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this
+lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of
+Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality
+does not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the
+towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were
+chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement of these towers
+would have been too easily seen, were it not for the little one which
+pretends to make a triad of the last group on the right, but is so faint
+as hardly to be discernible: it just takes off the attention from the
+artifice, helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which,
+however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.[56] Then
+there is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is
+divided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has two
+figures in it; while two figures are also sitting together on the great
+rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. Then, finally, the
+great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no
+answering form, has almost its _facsimile_ in the bank on which the girl
+is sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion of
+the picture as any object in the whole series. All this is done to
+deepen the effect of repose.
+
+198. Symmetry, or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal
+opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment under the law of
+Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical object, is of like
+things reflecting each other: it is not the balance of contrary natures
+(like that of day and night), but of like natures or like forms; one
+side of a leaf being set like the reflection of the other in water.
+
+Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. She takes the
+greatest care to secure some difference between the corresponding things
+or parts of things; and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only
+permitted in animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference
+between the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold your arms in
+precisely the same position at each side, your head upright, your body
+straight; divide your hair exactly in the middle and get it as nearly as
+you can into exactly the same shape over each ear; and you will see the
+effect of accurate symmetry: you will see, no less, how all grace and
+power in the human form result from the interference of motion and life
+with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with its
+changefulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest type
+of symmetry as understood by modern architects.
+
+199. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance of
+harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power:
+almost any works of the early painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto,
+etc., will furnish you with notable instances of it. The Madonna of
+Perugino in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and
+Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have.
+
+In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried out, in
+proportion to the wish of the painter to express disciplined calmness.
+In bad compositions, as in bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one
+side answering a tree on the other; but in good compositions, as in
+graceful statues, it is always easy and sometimes hardly traceable. In
+the Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how the
+boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other are set in
+nearly equal balance; the tower, as a central mass, uniting both.
+
+
+3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.
+
+200. Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, is by
+giving some orderly succession to a number of objects more or less
+similar. And this succession is most interesting when it is connected
+with some gradual change in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus
+the succession of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting
+when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more obscure in
+distance: so the succession of mountain promontories one behind another,
+on the flanks of a valley; so the succession of clouds, fading farther
+and farther towards the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of
+different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed
+order. If there be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects,
+there is no continuity; there is only repetition--monotony. It is the
+change in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually free,
+and able to escape, if they like, from the law that rules them, and yet
+submitting to it.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
+
+201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a moment to
+take up another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of
+Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset; so
+delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for
+me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a wood-cut; but the
+rough sketch, Fig. 33, is enough to give an idea of its arrangement.
+The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
+repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud
+and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun,
+meeting towards that point in the horizon where he has set; and the
+tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy
+haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just
+folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled
+silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap their hands,
+and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed
+arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting. But all
+this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old
+pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves,
+and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts
+escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.
+
+202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of
+this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our general
+illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the retiring
+arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint the subject at all;
+and it was this same principle which led him always to seize on subjects
+including long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially,
+observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather
+than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general
+laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I
+may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the
+study of composition.
+
+203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to
+lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels
+deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to
+sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to
+play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and
+another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves,
+and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers
+in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for
+play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and
+transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the
+other side when they set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers
+are just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good
+rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships
+can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping irregularly under their
+banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row
+over without being twisted against the rocks; and pools like wells,
+which no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the
+bottom; but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of
+sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-mason therefore
+throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great
+door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens
+through; a great arch for the great current, to give it room in flood
+time, and little arches for the little currents along the shallow shore.
+This, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great
+current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the
+smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two
+arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the
+same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that,
+where the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many
+and low: as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build
+his piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he
+comes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that,
+he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little
+one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they
+must be higher, or they will not stand; so the roadway must rise as the
+arches widen. And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its
+highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches
+running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank at the
+river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the
+side of the small ones: and the bend of the river assuredly concave
+towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or,
+if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the
+steep end of the bridge.
+
+Now this kind of bridge, sympathizing, as it does, with the spirit of
+the river, and marking the nature of the thing it has to deal with and
+conquer, is the ideal of a bridge; and all endeavors to do the thing in
+a grand engineer's manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are
+barbarous; not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves,
+but because the mind perceives at once that there has been cost
+uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.[57]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 34.]
+
+204. Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Turnerian bridge
+in Fig. 32 is of the absolutely perfect type, and is still farther
+interesting by having its main arch crowned by a watch-tower. But as I
+want you to note especially what perhaps was not the case in the real
+bridge, but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the
+arches diminish gradually, not one is _regularly_ diminished--they are
+all of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this clearly in Fig.
+32, but in the larger diagram, Fig. 34, over leaf, you will with ease.
+This is indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral
+currents near the shore are of course irregular in size, and a simple
+builder would naturally vary his arches accordingly; and also, if the
+bottom was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as
+a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition,
+that this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises the
+object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid law to the
+greater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and human souls, each
+different, each obedient, and each in harmonious service.
+
+
+4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.
+
+205. There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge of
+Turner's. Not only does it slope away unequally at its sides, but it
+slopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. And if you substitute a
+straight line for this curve (drawing one with a rule from the base of
+the tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in Fig. 34, and
+effacing the curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered
+grievously. You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects
+whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, except where
+the straight line is indispensable to their use or stability; and that
+when a complete system of straight lines, throughout the form, is
+necessary to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists,
+is in color and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape of any
+crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily,
+and you will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective
+of added color, or other interfering elements of beauty.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 35.]
+
+206. Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is
+necessary to a good composition that its continuities of object, mass,
+or color should be, if possible, in curves, rather than straight lines
+or angular ones. Perhaps one of the simplest and prettiest examples of a
+graceful continuity of this kind is in the line traced at any moment by
+the corks of a net as it is being drawn: nearly every person is more or
+less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now, it is almost
+always possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrangement
+or boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of
+the net, are actually connected with each other, but--and this is a
+still more noble and interesting kind of continuity--among features
+which appear at first entirely separate. Thus the towers of
+Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 32, appear at first independent of
+each other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. 35,
+the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and
+harmony among them. The reason of this is, that they are all bounded by
+one grand curve, traced by the dotted line; out of the seven towers,
+four precisely touch this curve, the others only falling hack from it
+here and there to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
+
+207. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of this
+kind: it is, in drawing large forests or mountain forms, essential to
+truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall
+into such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand
+did; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor
+covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these
+great curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to
+produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has been able to
+sketch at all among mountains; if not, let him merely draw for himself,
+carefully, the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where they
+are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them. The steeper
+shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at Brighton or
+Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills), is easily
+accessible to a Londoner; and he will soon find not only how constant,
+but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distinguished
+from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation, that is to
+say, its close approach to straightness in some part of its course;[58]
+and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never remaining
+equal in degree at different parts of its course.
+
+208. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
+
+A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line, from less to
+more curvature, or more to less, so that _no_ part of the line is a
+segment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses in any way whatever.
+Thus, in Fig. 36, _a_ is a bad curve because it is part of a circle, and
+is therefore monotonous throughout; but _b_ is a good curve, because it
+continually changes its direction as it proceeds.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
+
+The _first_ difference between good and bad drawing of tree boughs
+consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put leaves on the line
+_b_, as in Fig. 37, you can immediately feel the springiness of
+character dependent on the changefulness of the curve. You may put
+leaves on the other line for yourself, but you will find you cannot make
+a right tree spray of it. For _all_ tree boughs, large or small, as well
+as all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it
+is a point of primal necessity that your eye should always seize and
+your hand trace it. Here are two more portions of good curves, with
+leaves put on them at the extremities instead of the flanks, Fig. 38;
+and two showing the arrangement of masses of foliage seen a little
+farther off, Fig. 39, which you may in like manner amuse yourself by
+turning into segments of circles--you will see with what result. I hope
+however you have beside you, by this time, many good studies of tree
+boughs carefully made, in which you may study variations of curvature in
+their most complicated and lovely forms.[59]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
+
+209. B. Not only does every good curve vary in general tendency, but it
+is modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate curves. Thus the
+outlines of a tree trunk are never as at _a_, Fig. 40, but as at _b_. So
+also in waves, clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another
+essential difference between good and bad drawing, or good and bad
+sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement of minor curvatures
+carried, by good work, into the great lines. Strictly speaking, however,
+this is not variation in large curves, but composition of large curves
+out of small ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the beautiful
+element, but not a change in its nature.
+
+
+5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.
+
+210. We have hitherto been concerned only with the binding of our
+various objects into beautiful lines or processions. The next point we
+have to consider is, how we may unite these lines or processions
+themselves, so as to make groups of _them_.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 42.]
+
+Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in which, moving
+more or less side by side, they variously, but evidently with consent,
+retire from or approach each other, intersect or oppose each other;
+currents of melody in music, for different voices, thus approach and
+cross, fall and rise, in harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they
+approach the shore, flow into one another or cross, but with a great
+unity through all; and so various lines of composition often flow
+harmoniously through and across each other in a picture. But the most
+simple and perfect connection of lines is by radiation; that is, by
+their all springing from one point, or closing towards it; and this
+harmony is often, in Nature almost always, united with the other; as the
+boughs of trees, though they intersect and play amongst each other
+irregularly, indicate by their general tendency their origin from one
+root. An essential part of the beauty of all vegetable form is in this
+radiation; it is seen most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a
+convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf; but more beautifully in the
+complicated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is
+only a flat piece of radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all
+sides, and even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation
+more or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beautiful,
+because varied by the freedom of the separate branches. I believe it has
+been ascertained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their
+leaves, the lateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately
+the same at which the branches leave the great stem; and thus each
+section of the tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own
+leaf, were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses of
+foliage. This force in proportion to their age, and the lateral
+leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as
+before noticed, the lower the bough grows on the stem, the more it
+droops (Fig. 17, p. 67); besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a
+tendency to divide into two or more principal masses, which give a
+prettier and more complicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way
+up the center. Fig. 41 may thus be considered the simplest type of tree
+radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all
+secondary ramification is unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but
+if we take one half of such a tree, and merely give two secondary
+branches to each main branch (as represented in the general branch
+structure shown at _b_, Fig. 18, p. 68), we shall have the form Fig. 42.
+This I consider the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is
+curiously connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic
+ornamentation, into the discussion of which, however, we must not enter
+here. It will be observed, that both in Figs. 41 and 42 all the branches
+so spring from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their united
+radiation from the root R. This is by no means universally the case; but
+if the branches do not bend towards a point in the root, they at least
+converge to some point or other. In the examples in Fig. 43, the
+mathematical center of curvature, _a_, is thus, in one case, on the
+ground, at some distance from the root, and in the other, near the top
+of the tree. Half, only, of each tree is given, for the sake of
+clearness: Fig. 44 gives both sides of another example, in which the
+origins of curvature are below the root. As the positions of such points
+may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines is also
+farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing for the most
+part in a spiral order round the tree, and at proportionate distances,
+the systems of curvature which regulate the form of vegetation are quite
+infinite. Infinite is a word easily said, and easily written, and people
+do not always mean it when they say it; in this case I _do_ mean it: the
+number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish anything like a
+representative number of types, I should have to give several hundreds
+of figures such as Fig. 44.[60]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 43.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
+
+211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great
+relations of stem and branches. The forms of the branches themselves are
+regulated by still more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate
+position between the form of the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a
+flat ramification; the tree a completely rounded one; the bough is
+neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between
+the two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in
+shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir
+cone; by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves
+compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general
+resemblance of these branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be
+more accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a
+very broad-headed and flattened boat applied by its keel to the end of a
+main branch,[61] as in Fig. 45, the lines which its ribs will take,
+supposing them outside of its timbers instead of inside, and the general
+contour of it, as seen in different directions, from above and below,
+will give you the closest approximation to the perspectives and
+foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig. 25 above, p. 89, is
+an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young oak; and, if you
+compare it with Fig. 45, you will understand at once the action of the
+lines of leafage; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are
+too nearly parallel to each other at the sides, while the bough sends
+all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may
+accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always
+securing the compliance with the great universal law that the branches
+nearest the root bend most back; and, of course, throwing _some_ always
+back as well as forwards; the appearance of reversed action being much
+increased, and rendered more striking and beautiful, by perspective.
+Fig. 25 shows the perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below;
+Fig. 46 gives rudely the look it would have from above.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 46.]
+
+212. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what
+subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved in the
+drawing of these branch-flakes, as you see them in different directions
+and actions; now raised, now depressed: touched on the edges by the
+wind, or lifted up and bent back so as to show all the white under
+surfaces of the leaves shivering in light, as the bottom of a boat rises
+white with spray at the surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards
+the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down
+under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. Snow time, by the way, is
+one of the best for practice in the placing of tree masses; but you will
+only be able to understand them thoroughly by beginning with a single
+bough and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in Fig. 38, p. 149.
+First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at _a_;
+then with five, as at _b_, and so on; directing your whole attention to
+the expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat-like
+arrangements, which, in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal
+confused, partly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of
+shade, or absolute blackness of mass required in those studies.
+
+213. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out of the
+wood. You see that in every generally representative figure I have
+surrounded the radiating branches with a dotted line: such lines do
+indeed terminate every vegetable form; and you see that they are
+themselves beautiful curves, which, according to their flow, and the
+width or narrowness of the spaces they inclose, characterize the species
+of tree or leaf, and express its free or formal action, its grace of
+youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her
+wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit;
+and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of
+its branches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and
+being bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn
+back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you
+must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well
+to state here, as connected with the unity of the branches in the great
+trees. You must have noticed, I should think, that whenever a leaf is
+compound,--that is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way
+repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,--those leaflets are not
+symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side
+towards the point of the great leaf, so as to express their
+subordination to it, and show, even when they are pulled off, that they
+are not small independent leaves, but members of one large leaf.
+
+214. Fig. 47, which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, without its
+minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the principle clearly. It
+is composed of a central large mass, A, and two lateral ones, of which
+the one on the right only is lettered, B. Each of these masses is again
+composed of three others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe,
+the minor one, _a_ of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the
+minor _b_ 1 of B is larger than its opposite _b_ 2. Again, each of these
+minor masses is divided into three; but while the central mass, A of A,
+is symmetrically divided, the B of B is unsymmetrical, its largest
+side-lobe being lowest. Again, in _b_ 2, the lobe _c_ 1 (its lowest lobe
+in relation to B) is larger than _c_ 2; and so also in _b_ 1. So that
+universally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger than the other,
+and the smaller lobe is that which is nearer the central mass; the lower
+leaf, as it were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power,
+in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf, and always
+expressing, therefore, its own subordination and secondary character.
+This law is carried out even in single leaves. As far as I know, the
+upper half, towards the point of the spray, is always the smaller; and a
+slightly different curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the
+lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf;
+so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every subordinate
+leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its confession of its own
+lowliness and subjection.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
+
+215. And now, if we bring together in one view the principles we have
+ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be summed under four great
+laws; and that all perfect[62] vegetable form is appointed to express
+these four laws in noble balance of authority.
+
+1. Support from one living root.
+
+2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given point, either in
+the root or in some stated connection with it.
+
+3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and happiness
+according to its needs, by irregularities of action both in its play and
+its work, either stretching out to get its required nourishment from
+light and rain, by finding some sufficient breathing-place among the
+other branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for
+any load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress
+of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and thither
+as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided
+states of mind about their future life.
+
+4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits,
+expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in
+its neighborhood; and to work with them according to its power,
+magnitude, and state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of
+the great curve, and circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.
+
+216. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral analogies
+of these laws; you may, perhaps, however, be a little puzzled to see the
+meaning of the second one. It typically expresses that healthy human
+actions should spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart
+motive; the most beautiful systems of action taking place when this
+motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is clearly
+seen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful secondary systems of
+action taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some
+beautiful subordinate connection with the central or life motive.
+
+The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally
+significative; and as you draw trees more and more in their various
+states of health and hardship, you will be every day more struck by the
+beauty of the types they present of the truths most essential for
+mankind to know;[63] and you will see what this vegetation of the earth,
+which is necessary to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and
+then as food, and just as necessary to our joy in all places of the
+earth,--what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we
+contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or
+spoken for us, not in frightful black letters nor in dull sentences, but
+in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed
+brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom,
+and playful morality.
+
+217. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may
+be; but leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day.
+
+This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from,
+or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of
+composition, the most influential in producing the beauty of groups of
+form. Other laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally
+is chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in
+pictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers; but, like the
+law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperativeness, the
+point to which the lines of main curvature are directed being very
+often far away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system of
+curves will be employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the
+value of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough.
+
+218. In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have
+seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined that his system of
+curvature should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram
+Fig. 34, p. 145, compared with Fig. 32, p. 137, will show how this is
+done. One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of
+the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a
+limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a considerable
+part of it with the edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the
+eye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of a
+ledge in the bank; then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be
+missed.
+
+219. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its
+course by the rudder; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of
+the figures, and leads accurately to the tower angle. The gunwales of
+both the boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point;
+and all are centralized by the long reflection which continues the
+vertical lines.
+
+220. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun
+by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the
+rudder; continued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits,
+interrupted forcibly beyond it,[64] but taken up again by the water-line
+leading to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate shadows under the
+arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other
+extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating
+that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old times
+under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is told us by
+a long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down by some
+minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a
+landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of
+which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the
+great tower. A common composer would have put these bales to one side or
+the other, but Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his
+tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns
+a pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throwing
+the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the great
+composers have this same feeling about sustaining their vertical masses:
+you will constantly find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,
+for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the great tower, in
+the sketch of St. Nicholas, at Prague, and the white group of figures
+under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg[65]); and Veronese, Titian,
+and Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of
+pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most prominent
+instance of his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
+from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose Fig. 20, already given to
+illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because, being another instance of
+precisely the same arrangement, it will serve to convince you of its
+being intentional. There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is
+continued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller
+trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of the bushes
+radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's
+head; but their outline curves are carried on and repeated, under the
+law of continuity, by the curves of the dog and boy--by the way, note
+the remarkable instance in these of the use of darkest lines towards the
+light--all more or less guiding the eye up to the right, in order to
+bring it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object of
+the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which
+the boy climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction and
+character, with these greater curves; thus corresponding as nearly as
+possible to the minor tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however,
+introduces us to another law, which we must consider separately.
+
+
+6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.
+
+221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested by
+Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labor; sound to be heard
+clearly, must rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness,
+darkness by light; and so on in all things. Now in art every color has
+an opponent color, which, if brought near it, will relieve it more
+completely than any other; so, also, every form and line may be made
+more striking to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved
+line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so
+on; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any given color
+or form would have uncombined, is given to each by contrast.[66]
+
+In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
+vulgarizes a picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly,
+admit violent contrast. They introduce it by stealth, and with
+intermediate links of tender change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to
+tell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.[67]
+
+222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35, the main current of
+the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped
+at the lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly
+straight across them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great
+curvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines
+below, which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
+get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No
+passage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a good
+artist without _some_ slight counter current of this kind; so much,
+indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will
+even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give
+greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's
+versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior
+because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all
+were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
+if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and
+he purposely introduces the laboring or discordant verse, that the full
+ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his
+chosen rhythm.[68] And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy
+their work by giving too much of all that they think is good, while the
+great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite
+kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of enjoyment: he gives a
+passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought color, then passes away
+into slight, and pale, and simple color; he paints for a minute or two
+with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spectator thinks,
+slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have _taken_ any more
+decision from him just then; you have had as much as is good for you:
+he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded
+and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you
+a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most
+exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow
+point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair of
+Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very little contrast will
+sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms interesting which would
+otherwise have been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque
+material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48, tiles and
+stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would have
+been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be that iron ring on
+the inner wall, which by its vigorous black _circular_ line precisely
+opposes all the square and angular characters of the battlements and
+roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see what a difference it will
+make.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
+
+223. One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
+association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle
+break in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and
+perpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises
+of change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
+design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the
+good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two
+written columns of an early fourteenth century MS., and at the first
+glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of
+a winding tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud.
+Presently, however, we see that, in order to observe the law of
+principality, there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly
+half-way up, which forms a center to the whole rod; and when we begin to
+examine the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A
+stand for scarlet bud, _b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one
+stalk, _s_ for a stalk without a leaf, and R, for the large red leaf.
+Then, counting from the ground, the order begins as follows:
+
+_b_, _b_, A; _b_, _s_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; and we think we
+shall have two _b_'s and an A all the way, when suddenly it becomes _b_,
+A; _b_, R; _b_, A; _b_, A; _b_, A; and we think we are going to have
+_b_, A continued; but no: here it becomes _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, A;
+_b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _c_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; and we think we are
+surely going to have _b_, _s_ continued, but behold it runs away to the
+end with a quick _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, _b_, _b_![69] Very often,
+however, the designer is satisfied with _one_ surprise, but I never saw
+a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
+kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a
+snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with
+the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series:
+the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below
+through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
+otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.
+
+224. If you look back to Fig. 48 you will see, in the arrangement of the
+battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole
+top of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the
+eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left,
+somewhat square and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the
+tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there
+is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant; and the last
+battlement, therefore, is a little higher than the first two,--a little
+lower than the second two,--and different in shape from either. Hide it
+with your finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements
+look.
+
+225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the
+laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the walls' mass being
+square, it is well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not
+only by the element of curvature, in the ring, and lines of the roof
+below, but by that of sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes
+in the projecting point of the roof. Also, because the walls are thick
+and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with weakness;
+therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks
+between them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting
+shadow somewhere; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This
+shade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass,
+necessary to the first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior
+angle with your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the
+law of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in
+the feeling with which you look at the battlements; there is a certain
+pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one side down to the
+left, on the other to the right. Still less would you think the law of
+radiation had anything to do with the matter: but if you take the
+extreme point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow
+first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you
+continue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow the second curve,
+the top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the
+right-hand battlement; then draw a curve from the highest point of the
+angled battlement on the left, through the points of the roof and its
+dark echo; and you will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from
+this lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these main
+ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the
+upper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement; and
+the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more
+extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct expression of
+sympathy, such as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general
+flow of the curves from left to right.
+
+226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are
+indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But, as you study
+longer, you will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by
+the powerful composers in every _touch_: that literally, there is never
+a dash of their pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of
+this kind in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much
+difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of the great
+composers ruling his colors, and a common painter confused by them, as
+there is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old
+lady carried off her feet by a mob.
+
+
+7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.
+
+227. Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which enforces
+the unity of opposite things, by giving to each a portion of the
+character of the other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two
+masses of color, all the way down--suppose blue and white, and put a
+bar, or figure of an animal, partly on one division, partly on the
+other, you will find it pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the
+animal blue which comes upon the white half, and white which comes upon
+the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the sake of perfect
+intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in interchange of
+color, since, in all ornamentation whatever, the practice is continual,
+in the ages of good design.
+
+228. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts; as
+that, after red has been for some time on one side, and blue on the
+other, red shall pass to blue's side and blue to red's. This kind of
+alternation takes place simply in four-quartered shields; in more subtle
+pieces of treatment, a little bit only of each color is carried into the
+other, and they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most
+curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn
+some time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of
+intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind are
+produced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as
+long as it comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely
+at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all
+her masses of shade and color, is so great, that if you only follow her
+closely, every one who looks at your drawing with attention will think
+that you have been inventing the most artificially and unnaturally
+delightful interchanges of shadow that could possibly be devised by
+human wit.
+
+229. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length by
+Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade: it seems of all his principles
+of composition to be the one he is most conscious of; many others he
+obeys by instinct, but this he formally accepts and forcibly declares.
+
+The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us
+how opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each,
+as far as they can, some impress or reflection, or imparted power, from
+the other.
+
+
+8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.
+
+230. It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while contrast
+exhibits the _characters_ of things, it very often neutralizes or
+paralyzes their _power_. A number of white things may be shown to be
+clearly white by opposition of a black thing, but if we want the full
+power of their gathered light, the black thing may be seriously in our
+way. Thus, while contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy
+which employ them, concentrating the power of several into a mass. And,
+not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is
+continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of
+exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change he gives
+them pleasantness, and by consistency value; by change he is refreshed,
+and by perseverance strengthened.
+
+231. Hence many compositions address themselves to the spectator by
+aggregate force of color or line, more than by contrasts of either; many
+noble pictures are painted almost exclusively in various tones of red,
+or gray, or gold, so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of
+flush, or glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only
+by slight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some
+compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and
+graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of contrary
+character. And, in general, such compositions possess higher sublimity
+than those which are more mingled in their elements. They tell a special
+tale, and summon a definite state of feeling, while the grand
+compositions merely please the eye.
+
+232. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most to the
+works of the greatest men; their separate pictures have all separate
+aims. We have not, in each, gray color set against somber, and sharp
+forms against soft, and loud passages against low: but we have the
+bright picture, with its delicate sadness; the somber picture, with its
+single ray of relief; the stern picture, with only one tender group of
+lines; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank;
+and so on. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its
+impressiveness. The principal bearing of this law, however, is on the
+separate masses or divisions of a picture: the character of the whole
+composition may be broken or various, if we please, but there must
+certainly be a tendency to consistent assemblage in its divisions. As an
+army may act on several points at once, but can only act effectually by
+having somewhere formed and regular masses, and not wholly by
+skirmishers; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but must be
+somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good composers are always
+associating their colors in great groups; binding their forms together
+by encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexterities of
+expedient, what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a large
+gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light being gathered to
+light, darkness to darkness, and color to color. If, however, this be
+done by introducing false lights or false colors, it is absurd and
+monstrous; the skill of a painter consists in obtaining breadth by
+rational arrangement of his objects, not by forced or wanton treatment
+of them. It is an easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another
+all black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the
+circumstances which will naturally produce white in one place, and brown
+in another. Generally speaking, however, breadth will result in
+sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature is always broad; and if
+you paint her colors in true relations, you will paint them in majestic
+masses. If you find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all
+probability, not only ill composed, but untrue.
+
+233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of
+light and color, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally
+introduced with exquisite effect by good composers.[70] Still it is
+never the mere scattering, but the order discernible through this
+scattering, which is the real source of pleasure; not the mere
+multitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the
+work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not
+unshepherded, speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad
+painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
+it to be wished they were also of dissolution.
+
+
+9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.
+
+234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition
+as of truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore,
+to be stated in this place.
+
+Good drawing is, as we have seen, an _abstract_ of natural facts; you
+cannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling
+short, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature.
+Now, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the
+depth of color in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler.
+If you paint all the colors proportionately paler, as if an equal
+quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, you still
+obtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible, statement of
+natural fact. But if you take away the colors unequally, and leave some
+tints nearly as deep as they are in Nature, while others are much
+subdued, you have no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the
+observer, "Fancy all those colors a little deeper, and you will have the
+actual fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes away, something
+is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of harmony.
+
+235. It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you have to
+darken the whole system of colors, than to make them paler. You
+remember, in your first studies of color from Nature, you were to leave
+the passages of light which were too bright to be imitated, as white
+paper. But, in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to put color
+into them; and then the other colors must be made darker, in some fixed
+relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately, though the whole
+scene is darker than reality, it is only as if you were looking at the
+reality in a lower light: but if, while you darken some of the tints,
+you leave others undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not
+give the impression of truth.
+
+236. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen _all_ the colors so much as
+to relieve the lights in their natural degree, you would merely sink
+most of your colors, if you tried to do so, into a broad mass of
+blackness: but it is quite possible to lower them harmoniously, and yet
+more in some parts of the picture than in others, so as to allow you to
+show the light you want in a visible relief. In well-harmonized pictures
+this is done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards the
+lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the very dark
+parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of course, to include large
+masses of middle tints. But the principal point to be observed in doing
+this, is to deepen the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring
+them. It is easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over
+with gray or brown; and easy to see the effect of the landscape, when
+its colors are thus universally polluted with black, by using the black
+convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying
+Nature and degrading art which ever was put into an artist's hand.[71]
+For the thing required is not to darken pale yellow by mixing gray with
+it, but to deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing black
+with it, but by making it deeper and richer crimson: and thus the
+required effect could only be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass
+of the color of every object in your landscape, and of every minor hue
+that made up those colors, and then could see the real landscape through
+this deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with
+glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to say, you
+can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in
+the proportion you need; and then you may paint as forcibly as you
+choose, but your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of
+Caravaggio or Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of
+painting.[72]
+
+237. Supposing those scales of color, which I told you to prepare in
+order to show you the relations of color to gray, were quite accurately
+made, and numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order
+to obtain a deeper tone in any given mass of color, than to substitute
+for each of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you
+wanted, that is to say, if you wanted to deepen the whole two degrees,
+substituting for the yellow No. 5 the yellow No. 7, and for the red No.
+9 the red No. 11, and so on: but the hues of any object in Nature are
+far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so
+mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole
+matter clearly by taking a group of colors out of your scale, arranging
+them prettily, and then washing them all over with gray: that represents
+the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group
+of colors, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale; and
+that will represent the treatment of Nature by Titian.
+
+238. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the
+thing by working from Nature.
+
+The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a
+good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in
+it. Paint the clouds in true and tenderly gradated white; then give the
+sky a bold full blue, bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and
+leaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and
+brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to more complicated
+studies, matching the colors carefully first by your old method; then
+deepening each color with its own tint, and being careful, above all
+things, to keep truth of equal change when the colors are connected with
+each other, as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much more
+aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with which you
+observe the relation of colors in dark sides and light sides, and the
+influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy of added depth
+in independent colors.
+
+239. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most
+important of those which the artist has to regard. But there are all
+kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to its mode of production.
+There is even a harmony of touch. If you paint one part of it very
+rapidly and forcibly, and another part slowly and delicately, each
+division of the picture may be right separately, but they will not agree
+together: the whole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony.
+Similarly, if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day,
+and another by a gray light in a cold day, though both may have been
+sunlight, and both may be well toned, and have their relative shadows
+truly cast, neither will look like light; they will destroy each other's
+power, by being out of harmony. These are only broad and definable
+instances of discordance; but there is an extent of harmony in all good
+work much too subtle for definition; depending on the draughtsman's
+carrying everything he draws up to just the balancing and harmonious
+point, in finish, and color, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral
+feeling, and style of touch, all considered at once; and never allowing
+himself to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing
+at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly in
+another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's etchings, you will be
+able, I think, to feel the nature of harmonious treatment in a simple
+kind, by comparing them with any of Richter's illustrations to the
+numerous German story-books lately published at Christmas, with all the
+German stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in
+character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is _perfect_ in
+harmony. The pure and simple effects of daylight which he gets by his
+thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unrivaled, as
+far as I know, by any other work executed with so few touches. His
+vignettes to Grimm's German stories, already recommended, are the most
+remarkable in this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary,
+are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human character,
+with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy; but, as drawings,
+they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in one place
+being continually opposed to trenchant white in another; and, as is
+almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the local color hardly
+felt anywhere. All German work is apt to be out of harmony, in
+consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its
+willful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind of
+excitement, which dwells violently on particular points, and makes all
+the lines of thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a
+cat's fur electrified; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant
+leopard, and as strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+240. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which occur to
+me as capable of being illustrated or defined; but there are multitudes
+of others which, in the present state of my knowledge, I cannot define,
+and others which I never hope to define; and these the most important,
+and connected with the deepest powers of the art. I hope, when I have
+thought of them more, to be able to explain some of the laws which
+relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that ignobleness especially which
+we commonly call "vulgarity" and which, in its essence, is one of the
+most curious subjects of inquiry connected with human feeling. Others I
+never hope to explain, laws of expression, bearing simply on simple
+matters; but, for that very reason, more influential than any others.
+These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are;
+it being just as impossible, I think, to show, finally, why one
+succession of musical notes[73] shall be lofty and pathetic, and such as
+might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why another succession is
+base and ridiculous, and would be fit only for the reasonably good ear
+of Bottom, as to explain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness.
+The best part of every great work is always inexplicable: it is good
+because it is good; and innocently gracious, opening as the green of the
+earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.
+
+241. But though you cannot explain them, you may always render yourself
+more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline
+which you generally give to your character, and this especially with
+regard to the choice of incidents; a kind of composition in some sort
+easier than the artistical arrangements of lines and colors, but in
+every sort nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.
+
+242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last vignette to
+Rogers's Poems, the plow in the foreground has three purposes. The first
+purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it
+brighter by opposition; but any dark object whatever would have done
+this. Its second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of
+the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression of
+repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its third and
+chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the
+vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of
+human labor closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the
+hand leans are brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief
+dark of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of
+man as a punishment: but they make the soft light of the setting sun
+brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never
+occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design; and yet their under
+current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the painter
+meant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace.
+
+243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates I have
+marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which
+falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in
+need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the
+incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull
+at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his
+feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected
+boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of
+the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plow told us of the
+ceased labor of the day.
+
+244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of
+this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the
+whole subject, that the mind of a great composer is known. A single
+incident may be suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto
+might be for the heading of a chapter. But the great composers so
+arrange _all_ their designs that one incident illustrates another, just
+as one color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham," of the Yorkshire
+series, which, as to its locality, may be considered a companion to the
+last drawing we have spoken of, the "Lancaster Sands," presents as
+interesting an example as we could find of Turner's feeling in this
+respect. The subject is a simple north-country village, on the shore of
+Morecambe Bay; not in the common sense a picturesque village; there are
+no pretty bow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the
+rustic doors, or quaint gables; nothing but a single street of thatched
+and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous line,
+the roofs so green with moss that at first we hardly discern the houses
+from the fields and trees. The village street is closed at the end by a
+wooden gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through
+it, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in which a
+right of way lies through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is
+full of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken banks
+of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few inclosures which
+surround the village; they can hardly be called gardens: but a decayed
+fragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line,
+with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is
+stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows; a _very_ small
+haystack and pig-sty being seen at the back of the cottage beyond. An
+empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge
+wooden collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the
+leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about
+country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house,
+with three chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of
+stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt
+the clergyman's: there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from
+any other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney at the
+back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire
+not having been long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's
+house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the cottages
+only by its low two-arched belfry, a little neater than one would expect
+in such a village; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite incumbent:[74]
+and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two fragments of a border
+war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn on its brow deep into
+edges and furrows by the feet of the village children. On the bank of
+moor, which forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's dog
+barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding another, a gentle
+white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of a handful of fresh
+hay, which she has brought for it in her blue apron, fastened up round
+her waist; she stands with her pail on her head, evidently the village
+coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under
+the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, bare-footed,
+stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is thistly and
+not pleasurable to bare feet);--whether boy or girl we are not sure: it
+may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of
+ragged trousers on; probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently
+useful to keep the sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed
+cows among the moorland hollows, and helps us at present to watch
+(holding the bonnet's edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish cow with
+the dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow to proceed without
+any interference. A little to the right the hay is being got in, of
+which the milkmaid has just taken her apronful to the white cow; but the
+hay is very thin, and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks; we
+must glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the
+willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneeling
+against the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart without
+dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky hill, deep set with
+brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone emerging here and there,
+with pleasant turf on their brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds
+against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as golden as the moss,
+stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows
+its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seawards: perhaps one of the
+village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it there,
+that his mother may first see the sails of his ship whenever it runs
+into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the border tower, is the
+blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the sand in long curved lines
+slowly; shadows of cloud, and gleams of shallow water on white sand
+alternating--miles away; but no sail is visible, not one fisher-boat on
+the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon. Beyond all are the
+Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy light on all their
+crags.
+
+245. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of harmony there
+is in this composition; the entire purpose of the painter to give us the
+impression of wild, yet gentle, country life, monotonous as the
+succession of the noiseless waves, patient and enduring as the rocks;
+but peaceful, and full of health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the
+pure mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between
+days of toil and nights of innocence.
+
+246. All noble composition of this kind can be reached only by
+instinct; you cannot set yourself to arrange such a subject; you may see
+it, and seize it, at all times, but never laboriously invent it. And
+your power of discerning what is best in expression, among natural
+subjects, depends wholly on the temper in which you keep your own mind;
+above all, on your living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely
+sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly
+incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty. If you go down
+into Cumberland by the railroad, live in some frequented hotel, and
+explore the hills with merry companions, however much you may enjoy your
+tour or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so much
+as one pictorial subject rightly; you will not see into the depth of
+any. But take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's
+journeys,--ten or twelve miles a day--taking a week from some
+starting-place sixty or seventy miles away: sleep at the pretty little
+wayside inns, or the rough village ones; then take the hills as they
+tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart
+guides, wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything
+which it is the ordinary traveler's duty to see, or pride to do. Never
+force yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humor; but
+never force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of
+anything better; and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world
+will unfold themselves to you in still increasing fullness of passionate
+power; and your difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose
+subjects, but only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious
+thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which will of course
+be noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and
+general power of mind; for it is not so much by the consideration you
+give to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers
+of thought, that the character of your composition will be determined.
+Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty
+of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will
+make you enjoy coarse colors and affected forms. Habits of patient
+comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they
+will make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in
+your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
+the works of your hands.--Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                          J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [41] I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading
+    Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over color in the
+    abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest
+    for rendering color under effects of light; and of these two,
+    Rossetti composes with richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of
+    beauty, Hunt's stern realism leading him continually into harshness.
+    Rossetti's carelessness, to do him justice, is only in water-color,
+    never in oil.
+
+  [42] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the
+    rise of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown
+    trees would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to
+    work in dead color. Any color will do for some people, if it is
+    browned and shining; but fallacy in dead color is detected on the
+    instant. I even believe that whenever a painter begins to _wish_
+    that he could touch any portion of his work with gum, he is going
+    wrong.
+
+    It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish
+    between translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have
+    said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but
+    luster or _shininess_ is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of
+    my best painter-friends (the "best" being understood to attach to
+    both divisions of that awkward compound word,) tried the other day
+    to persuade me that luster was an ignobleness in anything; and it
+    was only the fear of treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain
+    streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from yielding the point
+    to him. One is apt always to generalize too quickly in such matters;
+    but there can be no question that luster is destructive of
+    loveliness in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever
+    may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes
+    shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she
+    would be sorry if her cheeks did; and which of us would wish to
+    polish a rose?
+
+  [43] But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed
+    imperial, or gray paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is
+    best. Coarse, gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and
+    blunderers; no good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner
+    worked much on a thin tough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his
+    sketches in tight bundles that would go deep into his pockets.
+
+  [44] I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I
+    address you as a beginner, or an amateur: a great artist can
+    sometimes get out of a difficulty with credit, or repent without
+    confession. Yet even Titian's alterations usually show as stains on
+    his work.
+
+  [45] It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few
+    colors: it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing,
+    and you may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange
+    them in your color-box in the order I have set them down, you will
+    always easily put your finger on the one you want.
+
+    Cobalt         Smalt                  Antwerb blue     Prussian blue
+    Black          Gamboge                Emerald green    Hooker's green
+    Lemon yellow   Cadmium yellow         Yellow ocher     Roman ocher
+    Raw sienna     Burnt sienna           Light red        Indian red
+    Mars orange    Extract of vermilion   Carmine          Violet carmine
+    Brown madder   Burnt umber            Vandyke brown    Sepia
+
+    Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but
+    you need not care much about permanence in your work as yet, and
+    they are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more
+    fugitive still, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color,
+    put in the box merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and
+    Prussian blue. No. 1 is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a
+    noble color for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into
+    afterwards with other colors.
+
+    If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's
+    "Chromatography" at once; only do not attend to anything it says
+    about principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements
+    of practical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on
+    each other when mixed, etc.
+
+  [46] A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly
+    prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the
+    sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip
+    of cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening,
+    and match each color beside one of the circular openings. You will
+    thus have no occasion to wash any of the colors away. But the first
+    rough method is generally all you want, as, after a little practice,
+    you only need to _look_ at the hue through the opening in order to
+    be able to transfer it to your drawing at once.
+
+  [47] If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should
+    have many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer
+    I would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except
+    black, Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I
+    would leave for students. I don't say this jestingly; I believe such
+    a tax would do more to advance real art than a great many schools of
+    design.
+
+  [48] I say _modern_, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors,
+    which is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any
+    artist. The best color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not
+    quite right.
+
+  [49] See Note 6 in Appendix I.
+
+  [50] The worst general character that color can possibly have is a
+    prevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a
+    decaying heap of vegetables; this color is _accurately_ indicative
+    of decline or paralysis in missal-painting.
+
+  [51] That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The
+    gradations of color in the various shadows belonging to various
+    lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colorist can ever
+    draw _forms_ perfectly (see Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at
+    the end); but all notions of explaining form by superimposed color,
+    as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color adorns form, but
+    does not interpret it. An apple is prettier because it is striped,
+    but it does not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because
+    it is flushed, but you would see the form of the cheek bone better
+    if it were not. Color may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as
+    in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance
+    of projection, and whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or
+    green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just as clearly or
+    just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colors are of equal
+    depth. The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch
+    more than the red one.
+
+  [52] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one
+    more point connected with the management of color, under the head
+    "Law of Harmony."
+
+  [53] See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap.
+    viii. § 6.
+
+  [54] See Note 7 in Appendix I.
+
+  [55] "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are
+    peaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in
+    events; that one day should be like another day, or one history the
+    repetition of another history, being more or less results of
+    quietness, while dissimilarity and non-succession are results of
+    interference and disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually
+    increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of the note or
+    syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence
+    also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a
+    cuckoo."
+
+  [56] This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, the masts being so
+    delicate that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In
+    the original they have orange light upon them, relieved against
+    purple behind.
+
+  [57] The cost of art in getting a bridge level is _always_ lost, for
+    you must get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and
+    you only can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther
+    back, and pretending to have got rid of it when you have not, but
+    have only wasted money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of
+    course, the bridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep,
+    but the necessary slope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge
+    itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and not pushed aside into
+    the approach, as in our Waterloo road; the only rational excuse for
+    doing which is that when the slope must be long it is inconvenient
+    to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any restiveness
+    of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment.
+    To this I answer: first, it is not more dangerous in reality, though
+    it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective
+    parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a
+    useless rail; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on
+    the bridge and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be
+    quite safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss,
+    but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground; and so my
+    picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to
+    see them built again some day instead of the frightful
+    straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the
+    pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind.
+
+  [58] I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in
+    other books; but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the
+    notices of this part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv.
+    chap xvii.; and Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8.
+
+  [59] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without
+    having gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch
+    of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4, p. 17, and examine the
+    curves of its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here
+    stated under the heads A and B.
+
+  [60] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these
+    figures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by
+    compasses.
+
+  [61] I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely
+    facsimiles of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to
+    illustrate my meaning as I write--often sadly scrawled if I want to
+    get on to something else. This one is really a little too careless;
+    but it would take more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of
+    so odd a boat than the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose
+    well enough as it is.
+
+  [62] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature
+    dependent, as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of
+    continual injury without materially losing the power of giving
+    pleasure by its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I
+    have not, of course, space here to explain these minor distinctions,
+    but the laws above stated apply to all the more important trees and
+    shrubs likely to be familiar to the student.
+
+  [63] There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of
+    leaves upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to
+    attract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine
+    them, you will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the
+    leaves, but that, through each interstice, the light falls, at a
+    little distance, in the form of a round or oval spot; that is to
+    say, it produces the image of the sun itself, cast either vertically
+    or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of the
+    ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they
+    fall through any small aperture: but the openings between leaves are
+    the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to
+    attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think
+    what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun; and how it
+    may show us that, even when the opening through which the earth
+    receives light is too small to let us see the Sun Himself, the ray
+    of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear
+    with it His image.
+
+  [64] In the smaller figure (32), it will be seen that this
+    interruption is caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge;
+    and this object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves
+    leading out of the picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as
+    not to be easily represented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the
+    explanation of our point here, it has been omitted in the larger
+    diagram, the direction of the curve it begins being indicated by the
+    dashes only.
+
+  [65] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.
+
+  [66] If you happen to meet with the plate of Dürer's representing a
+    coat-of-arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the
+    concave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage
+    carried round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of
+    the shield in opposing the rich folds of the dress.
+
+  [67] Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light
+    to oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never
+    set behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the
+    mountain's edge.
+
+  [68]       "A prudent chief not always must display
+              His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
+              But with the occasion and the place comply,
+              Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
+              Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
+              Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."
+
+                                                  _Essay on Criticism._
+
+  [69] I am describing from an MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's
+    Decretalia, in my own possession.
+
+  [70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice,
+    is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes
+    of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe
+    great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being
+    marked through this division.
+
+  [71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by
+    considerable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art,
+    must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French
+    landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the
+    dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the
+    veil of its perversion.
+
+  [72] Various other parts of this subject are entered into,
+    especially in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern
+    Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.
+
+  [73] In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned
+    by their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be
+    reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but
+    cannot reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not:
+    and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good
+    taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music.
+
+  [74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
+    but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called
+    ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated
+    condition, forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use
+    this word regretfully, no other existing which will serve for
+    it,--had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long
+    before.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+I.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.
+
+  NOTE 1, p. 42.--"_Principle of the stereoscope._"
+
+247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists, that they can,
+in some degree, imitate in a picture the effect of the stereoscope, by
+confusion of lines. There are indeed one or two artifices by which, as
+stated in the text, an appearance of retirement or projection may be
+obtained, so that they partly supply the place of the stereoscopic
+effect, but they do not imitate that effect. The principle of the human
+sight is simply this:--by means of our two eyes we literally see
+everything from two places at once; and, by calculated combination, in
+the brain, of the facts of form so seen, we arrive at conclusions
+respecting the distance and shape of the object, which we could not
+otherwise have reached. But it is just as vain to hope to paint at once
+the two views of the object as seen from these two places, though only
+an inch and a half distant from each other, as it would be if they were
+a mile and a half distant from each other. With the right eye you see
+one view of a given object, relieved against one part of the distance;
+with the left eye you see another view of it, relieved against another
+part of the distance. You may paint whichever of those views you please;
+you cannot paint both. Hold your finger upright, between you and this
+page of the book, about six inches from your eyes, and three from the
+book; shut the right eye, and hide the words "inches from," in the
+second line above this, with your finger; you will then see "six" on one
+side of it, and "your," on the other. Now shut the left eye and open the
+right without moving your finger, and you will see "inches," but not
+"six." You may paint the finger with "inches" beyond it, or with "six"
+beyond it, but not with both. And this principle holds for any object
+and any distance. You might just as well try to paint St. Paul's at once
+from both ends of London Bridge as to realize any stereoscopic effect in
+a picture.
+
+
+  NOTE 2, p. 59.--"_Dark lines turned to the light._"
+
+248. It ought to have been farther observed, that the inclosure of the
+light by future shadow is by no means the only reason for the dark lines
+which great masters often thus introduce. It constantly happens that a
+local color will show its own darkness most on the light side, by
+projecting into and against masses of light in that direction; and then
+the painter will indicate this future force of the mass by his dark
+touch. Both the monk's head in Fig. 11 and dog in Fig. 20 are dark
+towards the light for this reason.
+
+
+  NOTE 3, p. 98.--"_Softness of reflections._"
+
+249. I have not quite insisted enough on the extreme care which is
+necessary in giving the tender evanescence of the edges of the
+reflections, when the water is in the least agitated; nor on the
+decision with which you may reverse the object, when the water is quite
+calm. Most drawing of reflections is at once confused and hard; but
+Nature's is at once intelligible and tender. Generally, at the edge of
+the water, you ought not to see where reality ceases and reflection
+begins; as the image loses itself you ought to keep all its subtle and
+varied veracities, with the most exquisite softening of its edge.
+Practice as much as you can from the reflections of ships in calm
+water, following out all the reversed rigging, and taking, if anything,
+more pains with the reflection than with the ship.
+
+
+  NOTE 4, p. 100.--"_Where the reflection is darkest, you will see
+     through the water best._"
+
+250. For this reason it often happens that if the water be shallow, and
+you are looking steeply down into it, the reflection of objects on the
+bank will consist simply of pieces of the bottom seen clearly through
+the water, and relieved by flashes of light, which are the reflection of
+the sky. Thus you may have to draw the reflected dark shape of a bush:
+but, inside of that shape, you must not draw the leaves of the bush, but
+the stones under the water; and, outside of this dark reflection, the
+blue or white of the sky, with no stones visible.
+
+
+  NOTE 5, p. 101.--"_Approach streams with reverence._"
+
+251. I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents or waterfalls,
+as I do not consider them subjects for beginners to practice upon; but,
+as many of our younger artists are almost breaking their hearts over
+them, it may be well to state at once that it is physically impossible
+to draw a running torrent quite rightly, the luster of its currents and
+whiteness of its foam being dependent on intensities of light which art
+has not at its command. This also is to be observed, that most young
+painters make their defeat certain by attempting to draw running water,
+which is a lustrous object in rapid motion, without ever trying their
+strength on a lustrous object standing still. Let them break a coarse
+green-glass bottle into a great many bits, and try to paint those, with
+all their undulations and edges of fracture, as they lie still on the
+table; if they cannot, of course they need not try the rushing crystal
+and foaming fracture of the stream. If they can manage the glass bottle,
+let them next buy a fragment or two of yellow fire-opal; it is quite a
+common and cheap mineral, and presents, as closely as anything can, the
+milky bloom and color of a torrent wave: and if they can conquer the
+opal, they may at last have some chance with the stream, as far as the
+stream is in any wise possible. But, as I have just said, the bright
+parts of it are _not_ possible, and ought, as much as may be, to be
+avoided in choosing subjects. A great deal more may, however, be done
+than any artist has done yet, in painting the gradual disappearance and
+lovely coloring of stones seen through clear and calm water.
+
+Students living in towns may make great progress in rock-drawing by
+frequently and faithfully drawing broken edges of common roofing slates,
+of their real size.
+
+
+  NOTE 6, p. 125.--"_Nature's economy of color._"
+
+252. I heard it wisely objected to this statement, the other day, by a
+young lady, that it was not through economy that Nature did not color
+deep down in the flower bells, but because "she had not light enough
+there to see to paint with." This may be true; but it is certainly not
+for want of light that, when she is laying the dark spots on a foxglove,
+she will not use any more purple than she has got already on the bell,
+but takes out the color all round the spot, and concentrates it in the
+middle.
+
+
+  NOTE 7, p. 138.--"_The law of repetition._"
+
+253. The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful picture of
+Vandyck's in the Manchester Exhibition, representing three children in
+court dresses of rich black and red. The law in question was amusingly
+illustrated, in the lower corner of that picture, by the introduction of
+two crows, in a similar color of court dress, having jet black feathers
+and bright red beaks.
+
+254. Since the first edition of this work was published, I have
+ascertained that there are two series of engravings from the Bible
+drawings mentioned in the list at p. 50. One of these is inferior to the
+other, and in many respects false to the drawing; the "Jericho," for
+instance, in the false series, has common bushes instead of palm trees
+in the middle distance. The original plates may be had at almost any
+respectable printseller's; and ordinary impressions, whether of these or
+any other plates mentioned in the list at p. 50, will be quite as useful
+as proofs: but, in buying Liber Studiorum, it is always well to get the
+best impressions that can be had, and if possible impressions of the
+original plates, published by Turner. In case these are not to be had,
+the copies which are in course of publication by Mr. Lupton (4 Keppel
+Street, Russell Square) are good and serviceable; but no others are of
+any use.--[Note of 1857.]
+
+I have placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's College) some
+photographs from the etchings made by Turner for the Liber; the original
+etchings being now unobtainable, except by fortunate accident. I have
+selected the subjects carefully from my own collection of the etchings;
+and though some of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the
+photographs, the student will find these proofs the best lessons in
+pen-drawing accessible to him.--[Note of 1859]
+
+
+II.
+
+THINGS TO BE STUDIED.
+
+255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is
+that of liking things that he should not. It is not so much his
+difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set himself to conquer: and
+although, under the guidance of a master, many works of art may be made
+instructive, which are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of
+them being duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies
+alone, will be in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way,
+so free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously
+mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which he knows
+to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will therefore set
+down, in clear order, the names of the masters whom you may safely
+admire, and a few of the books which you may safely possess. In these
+days of cheap illustration, the danger is always rather of your
+possessing too much than too little. It may admit of some question, how
+far the looking at bad art may set off and illustrate the characters of
+the good; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always on
+quite wholesome food, and that our enjoyment of it will never be made
+more acute by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste
+the ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course the works
+of the great masters can only be serviceable to the student after he has
+made considerable progress himself. It only wastes the time and dulls
+the feelings of young persons, to drag them through picture galleries;
+at least, unless they themselves wish to look at particular pictures.
+Generally, young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there
+is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of it; and
+they had better do that in the garden below. If, however, they have any
+real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the
+principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
+them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the
+least use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones),
+but what interests them; and therefore, though it is of great importance
+to put nothing but good art into their possession, yet, when they are
+passing through great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to
+look precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as art,
+it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in which art can
+interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it
+represents something they like in Nature. If a boy has had his heart
+filled by the life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck
+portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in
+which he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains, and
+dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a likeness to a
+Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which
+he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's mind is filled with
+dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because
+she thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for her
+to begin the study of religious art.
+
+256. When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and
+every picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own
+work, it is of great importance that he should never look, with even
+partial admiration, at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to
+trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In
+which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the
+epistolary address, as being the more convenient.
+
+
+  First, in Galleries of Pictures:
+
+1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
+Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
+authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
+proper authority.
+
+2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however, question of right
+and wrong,[75] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
+Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[76] You had better
+look at no other painters than these, for you run a chance, otherwise,
+of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the
+other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens; and of being,
+besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo, Salvator,
+Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may look, however,
+for examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation, being sure
+that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the Carracci, Bronzino,
+and the figure pieces of Salvator.
+
+Among those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,
+nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds,
+Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting
+especially fond of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you
+must be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to
+like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for
+color; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be getting
+too fond of rigid detail; and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough
+especially, you must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.
+
+257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you
+may be able to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops,
+the works of the following masters are the most desirable, after the
+Turners, Rembrandts, and Dürers, which I have asked you to get first:
+
+
+  1. Samuel Prout.[77]
+
+All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value,
+wholly unrivaled in power of composition, and in love and feeling of
+architectural subject. His somewhat mannered linear execution, though
+not to be imitated in your own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally
+copied, for discipline's sake, with great advantage: it will give you a
+peculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way;
+and there is no fear of your getting into any faultful mannerism as long
+as you carry out the different modes of more delicate study above
+recommended.
+
+If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it your chief
+study, you should draw much from photographs of it; and then from the
+architecture itself, with the same completion of detail and gradation,
+only keeping the shadows of due paleness,--in photographs they are
+always about four times as dark as they ought to be,--and treat
+buildings with as much care and love as artists do their rock
+foregrounds, drawing all the moss, and weeds, and stains upon them. But
+if, without caring to understand architecture, you merely want the
+picturesque character of it, and to be able to sketch it fast, you
+cannot do better than take Prout for your exclusive master; only do not
+think that you are copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at
+the end of them. Get first his "Rhine," and draw the subjects that have
+most hills, and least architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper,
+till you can lay on his broad flat tints, and get his gradations of
+light, which are very wonderful; then take up the architectural subjects
+in the "Rhine," and draw again and again the groups of figures, etc., in
+his "Microcosm," and "Lessons on Light and Shadow." After that, proceed
+to copy the grand subjects in the "Sketches in Flanders and Germany;" or
+"in Switzerland and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the
+Switzerland is very far inferior. Then work from Nature, not trying to
+Proutize Nature, by breaking smooth buildings into rough ones, but only
+drawing _what you see_, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't
+copy his colored works. They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk
+and pencil drawings; and you will become a mere imitator, and a very
+feeble imitator, if you use color at all in Prout's method. I have not
+space to explain why this is so, it would take a long piece of
+reasoning; trust me for the statement.
+
+
+  2. John Lewis.
+
+His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very valuable. Get
+them, if you can, and also some engravings (about eight or ten, I think,
+altogether) of wild beasts, executed by his own hand a long time ago;
+they are very precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is
+rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by himself;
+still it is well worth having.
+
+But let _no_ lithographic work come into the house, if you can help it,
+nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those sketches of Lewis's.
+
+
+  3. George Cruikshank.
+
+If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of "Grimm's German
+Stories," which were illustrated by him long ago, pounce upon them
+instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to
+Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was
+invented. You cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.
+
+All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when they touch on
+the worst vulgarities of modern life; and often much spoiled by a
+curiously mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to the
+mouth and eyes and leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set
+about two thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But his
+manner of work is always right; and his tragic power, though rarely
+developed, and warped by habits of caricature, is, in reality, as great
+as his grotesque power.
+
+There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your principal
+work lies among art of so totally different a character as most of that
+which I Have recommended to you; and you may, therefore, get great good
+by copying almost anything of his that may come in your way; except only
+his illustrations, lately published, to "Cinderella," and "Jack and the
+Bean-stalk," and "Tom Thumb," which are much overlabored, and confused
+in line. You should get them, but do not copy them.
+
+
+  4. Alfred Rethel.
+
+I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance of Death," with
+text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be had now of any London
+bookseller for the sum, I believe, of eighteen pence, and containing six
+plates full of instructive character; the other, of two plates only,
+"Death the Avenger," and "Death the Friend." These two are far superior
+to the "Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will be enough in
+themselves to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you dislike ghastly
+subjects, get "Death the Friend" only.
+
+
+  5. Bewick.
+
+The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly
+thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is worked just as Paul Veronese
+would have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too
+coarse in execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies,
+show, nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and there
+are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which
+have never since been equaled in illustrations of this simple kind; the
+bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which characterizes
+some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.
+
+
+  6. Blake.
+
+The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in
+certain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of
+obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a very useful example
+to you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake
+is greater than Rembrandt.
+
+
+  7. Richter.
+
+I have already told you what to guard against in looking at his works. I
+am a little doubtful whether I have done well in including them in this
+catalogue at all; but the imaginations in them are so lovely and
+numberless, that I must risk, for their sake, the chance of hurting you
+a little in judgment of style. If you want to make presents of
+story-books to children, his are the best you can now get; but his most
+beautiful work, as far as I know, is his series of Illustrations to the
+Lord's Prayer.
+
+
+  8. Rossetti.
+
+An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood-cuts from
+drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite masters. They are
+terribly spoiled in the cutting, and generally the best part, the
+expression of feature, _entirely_ lost;[78] still they are full of
+instruction, and cannot be studied too closely. But observe, respecting
+these wood-cuts, that if you have been in the habit of looking at much
+spurious work, in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or
+artificial, you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work,
+which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely art, such as
+Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances are that
+you will not care about it; but genuine works of feeling, such as "Maud"
+or "Aurora Leigh" in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in
+painting, are sure to offend you: and if you cease to work hard, and
+persist in looking at vicious and false art, they will continue to
+offend you. It will be well, therefore, to have one type of entirely
+false art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman's outlines to
+Dante contain, I think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and
+feebleness which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in
+thought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution. Base or
+degraded choice of subject, such as you will constantly find in Teniers
+and others of the Dutch painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against;
+you will simply turn away from it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble
+drawing, which makes mistakes in every direction at once, cannot teach
+you the particular sort of educated fallacy in question. But, in these
+designs of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling, and fair knowledge
+of anatomy, and firm setting down of lines, all applied in the
+foolishest and worst possible way; you cannot have a more finished
+example of learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with
+a steady hand.[79] Retzsch's outlines have more real material in them
+than Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy and power; in artistic
+principle they are nearly as bad, and in taste, worse. All outlines from
+statuary, as given in works on classical art, will be very hurtful to
+you if you in the least like them; and _nearly_ all finished line
+engravings. Some particular prints I could name which possess
+instructive qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them,
+and the best way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether.[80]
+If you happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them, and if
+you are fond of the large finished prints from Raphael, Correggio, etc.,
+it is wholly impossible that you can make any progress in knowledge of
+real art till you have sold them all,--or burnt them, which would be a
+greater benefit to the world. I hope that, some day, true and noble
+engravings will be made from the few pictures of the great schools,
+which the restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign
+galleries may leave us; but the existing engravings have nothing
+whatever in common with the good in the works they profess to represent,
+and, if you like them, you like in the originals of them hardly anything
+but their errors.
+
+258. Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by your
+taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who have the purest
+taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon
+which puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false
+taste in books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest
+importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake,
+in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of
+literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a spring
+and a lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice
+of your library to you: every several mind needs different books; but
+there are some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read
+Homer,[81] Plato, Æschylus, Herodotus, Dante,[82] Shakspeare, and
+Spenser, as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of
+shelves to right and left of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among
+modern books avoid generally magazine and review literature. Sometimes
+it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism;
+but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead
+you. If you want to understand any subject whatever, read the best book
+upon it you can hear of: not a review of the book. If you don't like the
+first book you try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to understand
+the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that
+class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous
+of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and
+awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers
+coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or
+love something with your whole heart. It is not always easy to
+distinguish the satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of
+the noble and pure ones; but in general you may notice that the
+cold-blooded, Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment;
+and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the more
+you can restrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry,
+history, and natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the
+healthier your mind will become. Of modern poetry, keep to Scott,
+Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings, Thomas Hood,
+Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore, whose "Angel in the House" is
+a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess
+of quiet modern domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
+is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has produced
+in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless;
+and Shelley, as shallow and verbose; Byron, until your taste is fully
+formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from the
+wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself;
+there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world already.
+
+259. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps.
+Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners," because his
+teaching, though to some of us vitally necessary, may to others be
+hurtful. If you understand and like him, read him; if he offends you,
+you are not yet ready for him, and perhaps may never be so; at all
+events, give him up, as you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you,
+till you are stronger. Of fiction, read "Sir Charles Grandison," Scott's
+novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young lady, Madame de
+Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making these, I mean, your constant
+companions. Of course you must, or will, read other books for amusement
+once or twice; but you will find that these have an element of
+perpetuity in them, existing in nothing else of their kind; while their
+peculiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of the greatest
+value in teaching you to feel the same characters in art. Read little at
+a time, trying to feel interest in little things, and reading not so
+much for the sake of the story as to get acquainted with the pleasant
+people into whose company these writers bring you. A common book will
+often give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which will
+give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of less importance to
+you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be clever than
+that they should be right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively
+instructive; but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the
+feelings they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the
+wittiest or the most suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear
+what is already known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature of
+the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a
+tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too
+frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible
+state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It may, indeed, become
+necessary for you, as you advance in life, to set your hand to things
+that need to be altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to
+what must be pitied in it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the
+safest temper is one of reverence, and the safest place one of
+obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your
+teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet virtue, and that
+literature and art are best for you which point out, in common life, and
+in familiar things, the objects for hopeful labor, and for humble love.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [75] I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in
+    saying that this second class of painters have questionable
+    qualities. The greatest men have often many faults, and sometimes
+    their faults are a part of their greatness; but such men are not, of
+    course, to be looked upon by the student with absolute implicitness
+    of faith.
+
+  [76] Including, under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the
+    Old Water-color, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of
+    still life, I believe, that ever existed.
+
+  [77] The order in which I place these masters does not in the least
+    imply superiority or inferiority. I wrote their names down as they
+    occurred to me; putting Rossetti's last because what I had to say of
+    him was connected with other subjects; and one or another will
+    appear to you great, or be found by you useful, according to the
+    kind of subjects you are studying.
+
+  [78] This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first
+    illustration to the "Palace of Art," which would have been the best
+    in the book had it been well engraved. The whole work should be
+    taken up again, and done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly
+    from Pre-Raphaelite designs, with which no other modern work can
+    bear the least comparison.
+
+  [79] The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in
+    the "Seven Lamps," and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from
+    Nature, and simple groups in marble, which were always good and
+    interesting. Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and
+    it is generally to be remembered that, in speaking of artists whose
+    works I cannot be supposed to have specially studied, the errors I
+    fall into will always be on the side of praise. For, of course,
+    praise is most likely to be given when the thing praised is above
+    one's knowledge; and, therefore, as our knowledge increases, such
+    things may be found less praiseworthy than we thought. But blame can
+    only be justly given when the thing blamed is below one's level of
+    sight; and, practically, I never do blame anything until I have got
+    well past it, and am certain that there is demonstrable falsehood in
+    it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly trust-worthy,
+    having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory word
+    that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with
+    respect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far
+    by sudden admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or
+    other deceptive accidents; and this the more, because I never care
+    to check an expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that,
+    even if mistaken, it will do more good than harm; but I weigh every
+    word of blame with scrupulous caution. I have sometimes erased a
+    strong passage of blame from second editions of my books; but this
+    was only when I found it offended the reader without convincing him,
+    never because I repented of it myself.
+
+  [80] Large line engravings, I mean, in which the lines, as such, are
+    conspicuous. Small vignettes in line are often beautiful in figures
+    no less than landscape; as, for instance, those from Stothard's
+    drawings in Rogers's Italy; and, therefore, I have just recommended
+    the vignettes to Tennyson to be done by line engraving.
+
+  [81] Chapman's, if not the original.
+
+  [82] Gary's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which
+    are the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and Æschylus can only
+    be read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like
+    these for "beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for
+    all ages; and an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to
+    enjoy much, even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CORRECTION MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
+
+Page 58: 'Thus, the outline a and the outline d.' 'd' replaced by 'b.'
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30325 ***
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30325 ***</div>
+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Elements of Drawing, by John Ruskin</h1>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #dcdcdc; color: #696969; " summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr>
+<td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top">
+Transcriber's note:
+</td>
+<td class="norm">
+One typographical error has been corrected. It
+appears in the text <span class="correction" title="explanation will pop up">like this</span>, and the
+explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked
+passage. <br /><br /></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="norm">
+<a href="#error1">Error #1</a>: Page 58: 'Thus, the outline a and the outline d.' 'd' replaced by 'b.'<br /></td></tr>
+
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="pg" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<table class="allbctr" style="width: 60%; " summary="Front page">
+<tr>  <td class="pd" style="border-bottom: black 1px solid; " colspan="2"><h5>Library Edition</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-top: 3em; " colspan="2"><h3>THE COMPLETE WORKS</h3> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td colspan="2"><h6>OF</h6> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-bottom: 5em; " colspan="2"><h2>JOHN RUSKIN</h2> </td> </tr>
+
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-bottom: 5em; " colspan="2"><h5>ELEMENTS OF DRAWING AND<br />
+PERSPECTIVE<br />
+THE TWO PATHS<br />
+UNTO THIS LAST<br />
+MUNERA PULVERIS<br />
+SESAME AND LILIES<br />
+ETHICS OF THE DUST</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="border-top: black 1px solid; padding-top: 1.5em; " colspan="2"><h3>NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION</h3> </td> </tr>
+<tr>  <td><h3 style="text-align: left; padding-left: 3em; ">NEW YORK</h3></td>
+      <td><h3 style="text-align: right; padding-right: 3em; ">CHICAGO</h3></td> </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+
+<h3>THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING</h3>
+<h6>IN</h6>
+<h5>THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS.</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="90%" summary="Contents">
+<tr> <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><span class="sc">page</span> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Preface</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#pageix">ix</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">LETTER I. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">On First Practice</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page001">1</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">LETTER II. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Sketching from Nature</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page065">65</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">LETTER III. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">On Color and Composition</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page106">106</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2"><hr class="short" /> </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">APPENDIX I. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Illustrative Notes</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page183">183</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">APPENDIX II. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Things to be Studied</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page188">188</a> </td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<div style="font-size: 0.8em; ">
+<p>["The Elements of Drawing" was written during the winter of 1856.
+The First Edition was published in 1857; the Second followed in the same
+year, with some additions and slight alterations. The Third Edition consisted
+of sixth thousand, 1859; seventh thousand, 1860; and eighth thousand,
+1861.</p>
+
+<p>The work was partly reproduced in "Our Sketching Club," by the
+Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., 1874; with new editions in 1875, 1882,
+and 1886.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ruskin meant, during his tenure of the Slade Professorship at
+Oxford, to recast his teaching, and to write a systematic manual for the
+use of his Drawing School, under the title of "The Laws of Fésole." Of
+this only vol. i. was completed, 1879; second edition, 1882.</p>
+
+<p>As, therefore, "The Elements of Drawing" has never been completely
+superseded, and as many readers of Mr. Ruskin's works have expressed a
+desire to possess the book in its old form, it is now reprinted as it stood
+in 1859.]</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>ADVERTISEMENT</h3>
+
+<h5>TO</h5>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND EDITION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As one or two questions, asked of me since the publication
+of this work, have indicated points requiring elucidation, I
+have added a few short notes in the first Appendix. It is
+not, I think, desirable otherwise to modify the form or add
+to the matter of a book as it passes through successive editions;
+I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some
+obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains,
+and will remain, in its original form, which I had carefully
+considered. Should the public find the book useful, and
+call for further editions of it, such additional notes as may
+be necessary will be always placed in the first Appendix,
+where they can be at once referred to, in any library, by the
+possessors of the earlier editions; and I will take care they
+shall not be numerous.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 3, 1857.</i></p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageix"></a>ix</span></p>
+
+<h3>PREFACE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual
+of drawing, I ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing
+should be learned; but those reasons appear to me so many
+and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them.
+With the reader's permission, as this volume is too large already,
+I will waive all discussion respecting the importance
+of the subject, and touch only on those points which may
+appear questionable in the method of its treatment.</p>
+
+<p>ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use
+of children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not
+think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary
+practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will
+be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should
+be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being
+given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts.
+It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors almost
+as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely
+daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-box may be
+taken away till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting
+red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should
+have colors at command; and, without restraining its choice
+of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military
+tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite
+as valuable, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by
+their elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to try to
+draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can
+see and likes,&mdash;birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.</p>
+
+<p>iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should
+only be granted as a reward, after it has shown care and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagex"></a>x</span>
+progress in its drawings with pencil. A limited number of
+good and amusing prints should always be within a boy's
+reach: in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly possess
+a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in it,
+and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this
+kind; but should be firmly restricted to a <i>few</i> prints and to
+a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of
+them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely
+dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the
+number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected,
+and his attention concentrated. The parents need
+give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing
+is concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat
+habits with his colors and paper, showing him the best way
+of holding pencil and rule, and, so far as they take notice of
+his work, pointing out where a line is too short or too long,
+or too crooked, when compared with the copy; <i>accuracy</i> being
+the first and last thing they look for. If the child shows
+talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should
+neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it
+frankly, or show pleasure in what it has done, just as they
+show pleasure in seeing it well, or cheerful; but they must
+not praise it for being clever, any more than they would
+praise it for being stout. They should praise it only for
+what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;
+otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always
+badly. The best books to put into its hands are those
+illustrated by George Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.)
+At about the age of twelve or fourteen, it is quite
+time enough to set youth or girl to serious work; and then
+this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
+hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age
+wishing to know something of the first principles of art.</p>
+
+<p>iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended
+is not brought forward as absolutely the best, but only as the
+best which I can at present devise for an isolated student.
+It is very likely that farther experience in teaching may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexi"></a>xi</span>
+enable me to modify it with advantage in several important
+respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are sound,
+and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
+without a master's superintendence. The method differs,
+however, so materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters,
+that a word or two of explanation may be needed
+to justify what might otherwise be thought willful
+eccentricity.</p>
+
+<p>v. The manuals at present published on the subject of
+drawing are all directed, as far as I know, to one or other
+of two objects. Either they propose to give the student a
+power of dexterous sketching with pencil or water-color, so
+as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter work of
+our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such accurate
+command of mathematical forms as may afterwards
+enable him to design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures.
+When drawing is taught as an accomplishment, the first is
+the aim usually proposed; while the second is the object kept
+chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in the branch
+Government Schools of Design.</p>
+
+<p>vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those
+schools, to the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet
+possible; only, it seems to me, that we are all too much in
+the habit of confusing art as <i>applied</i> to manufacture, with
+manufacture itself. For instance, the skill by which an inventive
+workman designs and molds a beautiful cup, is skill
+of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
+afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture:
+and the faculties which enable one workman to design
+and elaborate his original piece, are not to be developed by
+the same system of instruction as those which enable another
+to produce a maximum number of approximate copies of it
+in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
+reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with
+the education of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture
+a Raphael; then let Raphael direct your manufacture.
+He will design you a plate, or cup, or a house, or a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexii"></a>xii</span>
+palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most
+convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to
+reach the platter and the cup interfere with your education
+of the Raphael. Obtain first the best work you can, and the
+ablest hands, irrespective of any consideration of economy or
+facility of production. Then leave your trained artist to determine
+how far art can be popularized, or manufacture
+ennobled.</p>
+
+<p>vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual
+temper and character) the excellence of an artist,
+as such, depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that
+it is this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach; so
+that while powers of invention distinguish man from man,
+powers of perception distinguish school from school. All
+great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of
+sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be
+without exception respecting art, is that all great art is
+delicate.</p>
+
+<p>viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following
+system is to obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost
+of the pupil's power, a delicate method of work, such as
+may insure his seeing truly. For I am nearly convinced,
+that when once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty
+in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that this
+difficulty be still great, 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. It is
+surely also a more important thing, for young people and unprofessional
+students, to know how to appreciate the art of
+others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the
+modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with
+this power of judgment. No person trained to the superficial
+execution of modern water-color painting, can understand
+the work of Titian or Leonardo; they must forever remain
+blind to the refinement of such men's penciling, and
+the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a degree
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiii"></a>xiii</span>
+of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the
+mode recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for
+it that he cannot go once through the advised exercises without
+beginning to understand what masterly work means; and,
+by the time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will
+have a pleasure in looking at the painting of the great schools,
+and a new perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery,
+such as would repay him for much more labor than I have
+asked him to undergo.</p>
+
+<p>ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is
+it possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil
+works unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight
+road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be
+dull as well as smooth; and the hedges need to be close and
+trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the erring
+traveler. The system followed in this work will, therefore,
+at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar
+with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College;
+for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate
+him from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead
+into, is <i>at once</i> set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds
+entertainment in his efforts and interest in his difficulties.
+Of course the simplest object which it is possible to set before
+the eye is a sphere; and, practically, I find a child's toy,
+a white leather ball, better than anything else; as the gradations
+on balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to
+try the strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are
+a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been
+objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the
+most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;<a name="FnAnchor_A" href="#Footnote_A"><span class="sp">[A]</span></a> but I do not
+want it to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to
+teach the pupil, is the way in which shade gives the appearance
+of projection. This he learns most satisfactorily from
+a sphere; because any solid form, terminated by straight lines
+or flat surfaces, owes some of its appearance of projection to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiv"></a>xiv</span>
+its perspective; but in the sphere, what, without shade, was
+a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade, the image
+of a solid ball; and this fact is just as striking to the learner,
+whether his circular outline be true or false. He is, therefore,
+never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes
+the ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply
+pointed out to him, and he does better next time, and better
+still the next. But his mind is always fixed on the gradation
+of shade, and the outline left to take, in due time, care
+of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of immediate intelligibility,&mdash;strictly
+speaking, it is merely the edge of the
+shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an
+outline, in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him,
+from the first, that Nature relieves one mass, or one tint,
+against another; but outlines none. The outline exercise,
+the second suggested in this letter, is recommended, not to
+enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only means by
+which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and discipline
+his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form
+and extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline,
+and the handling can be gradually corrected in details
+of the work. But the solitary student can only find out his
+own mistakes by help of the traced limit, and can only test
+the firmness of his hand by an exercise in which nothing but
+firmness is required; and during which all other considerations
+(as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely excluded.</p>
+
+<p>x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College,
+and that recommended here, agree, however, in one principle,
+which I consider the most important and special of all that
+are involved in my teaching: namely, the attaching its full
+importance, from the first, to local color. I believe that the
+endeavor to separate, in the course of instruction, the observation
+of light and shade from that of local color, has always
+been, and must always be, destructive of the student's
+power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much
+as it retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's
+time by any discussion of the principle here, but I wish him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexv"></a>xv</span>
+to note it as the only distinctive one in my system, so far as
+it <i>is</i> a system. For the recommendation to the pupil to copy
+faithfully, and without alteration, whatever natural object
+he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other reasons, just
+because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and teaches
+people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle
+or stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my
+pupils to hold their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes,
+never off."</p>
+
+<p>xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always
+been with regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything
+like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted
+student, such formalities are indispensable, and I am
+not without hope that the sense of secure advancement, and
+the pleasure of independent effort, may render the following
+out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible
+to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should
+be otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome,
+I can only desire him to consider whether the acquirement
+of so great a power as that of pictorial expression of thought
+be not worth some toil; or whether it is likely, in the natural
+order of matters in this working world, that so great a gift
+should be attainable by those who will give no price for it.</p>
+
+<p>xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will
+find I have not imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws
+of perspective. It would be worth while to learn them, if
+he could do so easily; but without a master's help, and in the
+way perspective is at present explained in treatises, the difficulty
+is greater than the gain. For perspective is not of the
+slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw
+the rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot
+draw the sweep of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of
+wood by it, but you cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are
+too gross and few to be applied to any subtle form; therefore,
+as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye, certainly
+you may draw the simple ones. No great painters
+ever trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvi"></a>xvi</span>
+them know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and,
+naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work
+rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would
+take about a month's labor to draw imperfectly, by laws of
+perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in
+five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round
+a head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among
+the folds of drapery. It is true that when perspective was
+first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it; and
+all the great painters put fine saloons and arcades behind
+their Madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in perspective:
+but even this was generally done by them only to
+catch the public eye, and they disdained the perspective so
+much, that though they took the greatest pains with the circlet
+of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of their
+picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and towers
+of churches about in the background in the most wanton
+way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they
+left just perspective enough to please the public.</p>
+
+<p>xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except
+David Roberts, knows so much perspective as would
+enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale at a given angle
+and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective
+to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed,
+and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in
+true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much
+perspective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective,
+and twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever
+shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would recommend
+the student at least to treat perspective with common
+civility, but to pay no court to it. The best way he can
+learn it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in a
+frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance
+at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen.
+Let the eye be placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle
+of the pane of glass, but as high or as low as the student likes;
+then with a brush at the end of a stick, and a little body-color
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvii"></a>xvii</span>
+that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the landscape may
+be traced on the glass, as you see them through it. When
+so traced they are all in true perspective. If the glass be
+sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true perspective,
+only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane, while
+common perspective always supposes the plane of the picture
+to be vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom
+yourself to inclose your subject, before sketching it, with a
+light frame of wood held upright before you; it will show
+you what you may legitimately take into your picture, and
+what choice there is between a narrow foreground near you,
+and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building
+you can properly take in, etc.<a name="FnAnchor_B" href="#Footnote_B"><span class="sp">[B]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following
+pages, because I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can
+be drawn to any good purpose by an amateur. As accessaries
+in landscape, they are just to be drawn on the same principles
+as anything else.</p>
+
+<p>xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to
+the student should be found obscure by him, or if at any
+stage of the recommended practice he find himself in difficulties
+which I have not enough provided against, he may
+apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under drawing-master
+at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond
+Street), and who will give any required assistance, on the
+lowest terms that can remunerate him for the occupation of
+his time. I have not leisure myself in general to answer
+letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do so; but
+Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to
+me when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexviii"></a>xviii</span>
+that enough guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence
+of any serious embarrassment; and I believe that
+the student who obeys its directions will find, on the whole,
+that the best answerer of questions is perseverance; and the
+best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.</p>
+
+<p>[1857.]</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_A" href="#FnAnchor_A">[A]</a> Or, more accurately, appears to be so, because any one can see an
+error in a circle.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_B" href="#FnAnchor_B">[B]</a> If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of
+perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 49
+Acacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and
+to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and
+rightly. [Mr. Runciman has died since this was written: Mr. Ward's
+present address is Bedford Chambers, 28 Southampton Street, Strand,
+London, W.C.]</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page001"></a>1</span></p>
+
+<h3>THE</h3>
+
+<h2>ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>LETTER I.</h3>
+
+<h5>ON FIRST PRACTICE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>1. <span class="sc">My dear Reader</span>,&mdash;Whether this book is to be of use
+to you or not, depends wholly on your reason for wishing to
+learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment,
+to be able to converse in a fluent manner about
+drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I
+cannot help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that you
+may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such
+things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your
+own memory of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to
+other people; if you wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the
+beauty of the natural world, and to preserve something like
+a true image of beautiful things that pass away, or which
+you must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to understand the
+minds of great painters, and to be able to appreciate their
+work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not
+merely taking up the thoughts of other people about it; then
+I <i>can</i> help you, or, which is better, show you how to help
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>2. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers,
+which indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without
+work. It is much easier to learn to draw well, than it is
+to learn to play well on any musical instrument; but you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page002"></a>2</span>
+know that it takes three or four years of practice, giving three
+or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command over
+the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly
+command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be
+done with it, can be acquired without painstaking, or in a
+<i>very</i> short time. The kind of drawing which is taught, or
+supposed to be taught, in our schools, in a term or two, perhaps
+at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not drawing
+at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not
+always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;
+profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a
+matter of vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If
+any young person, after being taught what is, in polite circles,
+called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece
+of real work&mdash;suppose a lithograph on the titlepage of a new
+opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper
+of the day,&mdash;they will find themselves entirely beaten. And
+yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk,
+much more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an
+accomplished young lady is supposed to have command; and
+that wood-cut was drawn in urgent haste, and half spoiled in
+the cutting afterwards; and both were done by people whom
+nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power; both
+were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than
+any simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.</p>
+
+<p>3. Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing,
+any more than a new language, without some hard and disagreeable
+labor. But do not, on the other hand, if you are
+ready and willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable
+to get on for want of special talent. It is indeed true
+that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw instinctively,
+and get on almost without teaching; though never
+without toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for
+drawing there are many degrees: it will take one person a
+much longer time than another to attain the same results, and
+the results thus painfully attained are never quite so satisfactory
+as those got with greater ease when the faculties are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page003"></a>3</span>
+naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in the
+experiments I have made, met with a person who could not
+learn to draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory
+and available power in every one to learn drawing if he
+wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning
+French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree,
+if their lot in life requires them to possess such knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>4. Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain
+amount of pains, and to bear a little irksomeness and a few
+disappointments bravely, I can promise you that an hour's
+practice a day for six months, or an hour's practice every
+other day for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way
+you find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours' practice,
+will give you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever
+you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point,
+of other people's work: of which hours if you have one to
+spare at present, we may as well begin at once.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE I.</p>
+
+<p>5. Everything that you can see in the world around you,
+presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches
+of different colors variously shaded.<a name="FnAnchor_1" href="#Footnote_1"><span class="sp">[1]</span></a> Some of these patches
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page004"></a>4</span>
+of color have an appearance of lines or texture within them,
+as a piece of cloth or silk has of threads, or an animal's skin
+shows texture of hairs: but whether this be the case or not,
+the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch of some
+definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to
+produce extents of smooth color, without texture.</p>
+
+<p>6. This can only be done properly with a brush; but a
+brush, being soft at the point, causes so much uncertainty in
+the touch of an unpracticed hand, that it is hardly possible
+to learn to draw first with it, and it is better to take, in early
+practice, some instrument with a hard and fine point, both
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page005"></a>5</span>
+that we may give some support to the hand, and that by working
+over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention
+may be properly directed to all the most minute parts of it.
+Even the best artists need occasionally to study subjects with
+a pointed instrument, in order thus to discipline their attention:
+and a beginner must be content to do so for a considerable
+period.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_1"><img src="images/img005.jpg" width="400" height="145" alt="Fig. 1." title="Fig. 1." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 1.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>7. Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about
+differences of color, we must be able to lay on <i>one</i> color properly,
+in whatever gradations of depth and whatever shapes we
+want. We will try, therefore, first to lay on tints or patches
+of gray, of whatever depth we want, with a pointed instrument.
+Take any finely pointed steel pen (one of Gillott's
+lithographic crowquills is best), and a piece of quite smooth,
+but not shining, note-paper, cream laid, and get some ink that
+has stood already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite
+black, and as thick as it can be without clogging the pen.
+Take a rule, and draw four straight lines, so as to inclose a
+square, or nearly a square, about as large as <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_1">Fig. 1.</a> I say
+nearly a square, because it does not in the least matter
+whether it is quite square or not, the object being merely to
+get a space inclosed by straight lines.</p>
+
+<p>8. Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines,
+so completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch
+of gray silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as
+at <i>b</i>. Cover it quickly, first with straightish lines, in any
+direction you like, not troubling yourself to draw them much
+closer or neater than those in the square <i>a</i>. Let them quite
+dry before retouching them. (If you draw three or four
+squares side by side, you may always be going on with one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page006"></a>6</span>
+while the others are drying.) Then cover these lines with
+others in a different direction, and let those dry; then in another
+direction still, and let those dry. Always wait long
+enough to run no risk of blotting, and then draw the lines as
+quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on as swiftly as
+the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to reach
+this great speed at first, you will go over the edge of the
+square, which is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to
+do so now and then than to draw the lines very slowly; for
+if you do, the pen leaves a little dot of ink at the end of each
+line, and these dots spoil your work. So draw each line
+quickly, stopping always as nearly as you can at the edge of
+the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge are
+afterwards to be removed with the penknife, but not till you
+have done the whole work, otherwise you roughen the paper,
+and the next line that goes over the edge makes a blot.</p>
+
+<p>9. When you have gone over the whole three or four times,
+you will find some parts of the square look darker than other
+parts. Now try to make the lighter parts as dark as the rest,
+so that the whole may be of equal depth or darkness. You
+will find, on examining the work, that where it looks darkest
+the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines than
+elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little
+scratches and dots, <i>between</i> the lines in the paler parts; and
+where there are any very conspicuous dark lines, scratch
+them out lightly with the penknife, for the eye must not be
+attracted by any line in particular. The more carefully and
+delicately you fill in the little gaps and holes the better; you
+will get on faster by doing two or three squares perfectly
+than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and begins
+to look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as
+hardly to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it
+is too dark, use the edge of your penknife very lightly, and
+for some time, to wear it softly into an even tone. You will
+find that the greatest difficulty consists in getting evenness:
+one bit will always look darker than another bit of your
+square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page007"></a>7</span>
+whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a
+mess, give it up and begin another square, but do not rest
+satisfied till you have done your best with every square. The
+tint at last ought at least to be as close and even as that in <i>b</i>,
+<a href="#fig_1">Fig. 1.</a> You will find, however, that it is very difficult to
+get a pale tint; because, naturally, the ink lines necessary to
+produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper more than you
+want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by leaving
+the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively
+fine, lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in;
+and, at last, passing the penknife over the whole. By keeping
+several squares in progress at one time, and reserving
+your pen for the light one just when the ink is nearly exhausted,
+you may get on better. The paper ought, at last, to
+look lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines distinctly
+visible.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE II.</p>
+
+<p>10. As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be
+well to vary it by proceeding with another at the same time.
+The power of shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of
+hand and keenness of sight; but there are other qualities required
+in drawing, dependent not merely on lightness, but
+steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect in its power,
+must be made accurate as well as keen, and not only see
+shrewdly, but measure justly.</p>
+
+<p>11. Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on
+botany containing <i>outline</i> plates of leaves and flowers, it does
+not matter whether bad or good: Baxter's British Flowering
+Plants is quite good enough. Copy any of the simplest outlines,
+first with a soft pencil, following it, by the eye, as
+nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,
+rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is
+right: when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper
+on the book; on this paper trace the outline you have been
+copying, and apply it to your own; and having thus ascertained
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page008"></a>8</span>
+the faults, correct them all patiently, till you have got
+it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with a very soft pencil,
+and do not rub out so hard<a name="FnAnchor_2" href="#Footnote_2"><span class="sp">[2]</span></a> as to spoil the surface of
+your paper; never mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not
+roughen it; and let the false outlines alone where they do not
+really interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom
+yourself to hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty
+piece of paper. When you have got it as right as you can,
+take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest your hand on
+a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen
+long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your
+pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more
+heavily on one part of the line than on another. In most
+outline drawings of the present day, parts of the curves are
+thickened to give an effect of shade; all such outlines are bad,
+but they will serve well enough for your exercises, provided
+you do not imitate this character: it is better, however, if you
+can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does not in the
+least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but
+it matters greatly that it should be <i>equal</i>, not heavier in one
+place than in another. The power to be obtained is that of
+drawing an even line slowly and in any direction; all dashing
+lines, or approximations to penmanship, are bad. The
+pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you
+should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it in any
+other direction, like a well-managed horse.</p>
+
+<p>12. As soon as you can copy every curve <i>slowly</i> and accurately,
+you have made satisfactory progress; but you will
+find the difficulty is in the slowness. It is easy to draw what
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page009"></a>9</span>
+appears to be a good line with a sweep of the hand, or with
+what is called freedom;<a name="FnAnchor_3" href="#Footnote_3"><span class="sp">[3]</span></a> the real difficulty and masterliness
+is in never letting the hand <i>be</i> free, but keeping it under
+entire control at every part of the line.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE III.</p>
+
+<p>13. Meantime, you are always to be going on with your
+shaded squares, and chiefly with these, the outline exercises
+being taken up only for rest.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_2"><img src="images/img009.jpg" width="500" height="58" alt="Fig. 2." title="Fig. 2." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 2.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>As soon as you find you have some command of the pen
+as a shading instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as
+you choose, try to produce gradated spaces like <a href="#fig_2">Fig. 2</a>, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page010"></a>10</span>
+dark tint passing gradually into the lighter ones. Nearly
+all expression of form, in drawing, depends on your power of
+gradating delicately; and the gradation is always most skillful
+which passes from one tint into another very little paler.
+Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work,
+as in <a href="#fig_2">Fig. 2</a>, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white
+to black, passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so
+that every part of the band may have visible change in it.
+The perception of gradation is very deficient in all beginners
+(not to say, in many artists), and you will probably, for some
+time, think your gradation skillful enough, when it is quite
+patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece of gray shaded
+ribbon, and comparing it with your drawing, you may arrive,
+in early stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction
+with it. Widen your band little by little as you get more
+skillful, so as to give the gradation more lateral space, and
+accustom yourself at the same time to look for gradated
+spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest and the most beautiful;
+watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and try to
+consider each pane of glass in the window you look through
+as a piece of paper colored blue, or gray, or purple, as it
+happens to be, and observe how quietly and continuously the
+gradation extends over the space in the window, of one or
+two feet square. Observe the shades on the outside and inside
+of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look
+round and hollow;<a name="FnAnchor_4" href="#Footnote_4"><span class="sp">[4]</span></a> and then on folds of white drapery; and
+thus gradually you will be led to observe the more subtle transitions
+of the light as it increases or declines on flat surfaces.
+At last, when your eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation
+on everything in Nature.</p>
+
+<p>14. But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw
+from any objects in which the gradations are varied and complicated;
+nor will it be a bad omen for your future progress,
+and for the use that art is to be made of by you, if the first
+thing at which you aim should be a little bit of sky. So take
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page011"></a>11</span>
+any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
+between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or
+through the corner of a pane in the window you like best to
+sit at, and try to gradate a little space of white paper as
+evenly as that is gradated&mdash;as <i>tenderly</i> you cannot gradate
+it without color, no, nor with color either; but you may do
+it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your spots and
+lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the sense
+you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
+for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen
+and ink; for all great painters, however delicate their perception
+of color, are fond of the peculiar effect of light which
+may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch, and in a wood-cut, by the
+gleaming of the white paper between the black lines; and if
+you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will never
+gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common
+wood-cuts, in the cheap publications of the day, you may see
+how gradation is given to the sky by leaving the lines farther
+and farther apart; but you must make your lines as fine as
+you can, as well as far apart, towards the light; and do not
+try to make them long or straight, but let them cross irregularly
+in any directions easy to your hand, depending on nothing
+but their gradation for your effect. On this point of
+direction of lines, however, I shall have to tell you more,
+presently; in the meantime, do not trouble yourself about it.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE IV.</p>
+
+<p>15. As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the
+pen, take an H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce
+shade, from the darkest possible to the palest, in exactly the
+same manner as the pen, lightening, however, now with india-rubber
+instead of the penknife. You will find that all
+<i>pale</i> tints of shade are thus easily producible with great precision
+and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark
+power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the
+shade is apt to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page012"></a>12</span>
+or sandy. Persevere, however, in trying to bring it to evenness
+with the fine point, removing any single speck or line
+that may be too black, with the <i>point</i> of the knife: you must
+not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink. If
+you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over
+with india-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively
+fine touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts
+that are too pale to perfect evenness with the darker spots.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in
+doing this; work with it as if you were drawing the down on
+a butterfly's wing.</p>
+
+<p>16. At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may
+be assured that some clever friend will come in, and hold up
+his hands in mocking amazement, and ask you who could set
+you to that "niggling;" and if you persevere in it, you will
+have to sustain considerable persecution from your artistical
+acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good drawing
+depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You
+do not hear them tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little
+hand with a crash among the keys, in imitation of the great
+masters: yet they might, as reasonably as they may tell you
+to be bold in the present state of your knowledge. Bold, in
+the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the sense of
+being careless, confident, or exhibitory,&mdash;no,&mdash;no, and a thousand
+times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would
+be bad advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be
+done quickly, but good and beautiful work is generally done
+slowly; you will find no boldness in the way a flower or a
+bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not bold at her work,
+do you think you ought to be at yours? So never mind what
+people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently;
+and if you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell
+you, that though there are all kinds and ways of art,&mdash;large
+work for large places, small work for narrow places, slow
+work for people who can wait, and quick work for people who
+cannot,&mdash;there is one quality, and, I think, only one, in
+which all great and good art agrees;&mdash;it is all delicate art.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page013"></a>13</span>
+Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this
+at present, because you do not know yet how much tender
+thought, and subtle care, the great painters put into touches
+that at first look coarse; but, believe me, it is true, and you
+will find it is so in due time.</p>
+
+<p>17. You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays
+at pencil drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations
+are got in an instant by a chance touch of the india-rubber,
+than by an hour's labor with the point; and you may wonder
+why I tell you to produce tints so painfully, which might, it
+appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two reasons:
+the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able
+to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and
+direction you wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the india-rubber
+does it: and, secondly, that all natural shadows are
+more or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness
+of ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust; in
+the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves; in the darkness
+of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:
+in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot
+be represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing,
+or by an instrument known to artists as the "stump."
+When you can manage the point properly, you will indeed
+be able to do much also with this instrument, or with your
+fingers; but then you will have to retouch the flat tints afterwards,
+so as to put life and light into them, and that can
+only be done with the point. Labor on, therefore, courageously,
+with that only.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page014"></a>14</span></p>
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE V.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_3"><img src="images/img014.jpg" width="400" height="228" alt="Fig. 3." title="Fig. 3." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 3.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>18. When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly
+with the pencil point, get a good large alphabet, and try to
+<i>tint</i> the letters into shape with the pencil point. Do not outline
+them first, but measure their height and extreme breadth
+with the compasses, as <i>a b</i>, <i>a c</i>, <a href="#fig_3">Fig. 3</a>, and then scratch in
+their shapes gradually; the letter A, inclosed within the
+lines, being in what Turner would have called a "state of
+forwardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the shape
+of the letter, draw pen-and-ink lines firmly round the tint, as
+at <i>d</i>, and remove any touches outside the limit, first with the
+india-rubber, and then with the penknife, so that all may
+look clear and right. If you rub out any of the pencil inside
+the outline of the letter, retouch it, closing it up to the inked
+line. The straight lines of the outline are all to be ruled,<a name="FnAnchor_5" href="#Footnote_5"><span class="sp">[5]</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page015"></a>15</span>
+but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand;
+and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting
+the curved letters, such as Bs, Cs, etc., to stand quite straight,
+and come into accurate form.</p>
+
+<p>19. All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not
+to be persisted in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect
+power in any of them. An entire master of the pencil
+or brush ought, indeed, to be able to draw any form at once,
+as Giotto his circle; but such skill as this is only to be expected
+of the consummate master, having pencil in hand all
+his life, and all day long,&mdash;hence the force of Giotto's proof
+of his skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully,
+without attaining even an approximation to such a power; the
+main point being, not that every line should be precisely what
+we intend or wish, but that the line which we intended or
+wished to draw should be right. If we always see rightly
+and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the hand may stagger
+a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it does
+not matter how firm the hand is. Do not therefore torment
+yourself because you cannot do as well as you would like;
+but work patiently, sure that every square and letter will give
+you a certain increase of power; and as soon as you can draw
+your letters pretty well, here is a more amusing exercise
+for you.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE VI.</p>
+
+<p>20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly
+bare of leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or
+against a pale wall, or other light ground: it must not be
+against strong light, or you will find the looking at it hurt
+your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or you will be puzzled
+by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in shade;
+and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or
+rainy day is the best for this practice.</p>
+
+<p>21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark
+against the sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page016"></a>16</span>
+be laid down in a map with absolute accuracy; and, without
+the least thought about the roundness of the stems, map them
+all out in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil, just as
+you did the limbs of your letters; then correct and alter them,
+rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your
+paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every
+bough is exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring
+it, right in curvature and in thickness. Look at the white
+interstices between them with as much scrupulousness as if
+they were little estates which you had to survey, and draw
+maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties
+if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them,
+or gave the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually
+to fancy the whole tree nothing but a flat ramification
+on a white ground. Do not take any trouble about the little
+twigs, which look like a confused network or mist; leave them
+all out,<a name="FnAnchor_6" href="#Footnote_6"><span class="sp">[6]</span></a> drawing only the main branches as far as you can see
+them distinctly, your object at present being not to draw a
+tree, but to learn how to do so. When you have got the thing
+as nearly right as you can,&mdash;and it is better to make one good
+study, than twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate,&mdash;take your
+pen, and put a fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to
+your letter, taking care, as far as possible, to put the outline
+within the edge of the shade, so as not to make the boughs
+thicker: the main use of the outline is to affirm the whole
+more clearly; to do away with little accidental roughnesses
+and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,
+or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement
+in this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline.
+It may perfectly well happen that in Nature it should
+be less distinct than your outline will make it; but it is better
+in this kind of sketch to mark the facts clearly. The temptation
+is always to be slovenly and careless, and the outline is
+like a bridle, and forces our indolence into attention and precision.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page017"></a>17</span>
+The outline should be about the thickness of that in
+<a href="#fig_4">Fig. 4</a>, which represents the ramification of a small stone
+pine, only I have not endeavored to represent the pencil shading
+within the outline, as I could not easily express it in a
+wood-cut; and you have nothing to do at present with the
+indication of foliage above, of which in another place. You
+may also draw your trees as much larger than this figure as
+you like; only, however large they may be, keep the outline
+as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer
+sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in
+this figure, otherwise you do not get good enough practice out
+of them.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_4"><img src="images/img017.jpg" width="400" height="479" alt="Fig. 4." title="Fig. 4." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 4.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every
+one will give you some new notion about trees. But when you
+are tired of tree boughs, take any forms whatever which are
+drawn in flat color, one upon another; as patterns on any
+kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance), executed in
+two colors only; and practice drawing them of the right shape
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page018"></a>18</span>
+and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the
+depth required.</p>
+
+<p>In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of
+representing depth of color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern
+of ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a
+darker tint of gray than a pattern of yellow.</p>
+
+<p>23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the
+mechanical use of the brush; and necessary for you to do so
+in order to provide yourself with the gradated scale of color
+which you will want. If you can, by any means, get acquainted
+with any ordinary skillful water-color painter, and
+prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a brush,
+by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long
+while yet, to begin to color, but because the brush is often
+more convenient than the pencil for laying on masses or tints
+of shade, and the sooner you know how to manage it as an
+instrument the better. If, however, you have no opportunity
+of seeing how water-color is laid on by a workman of any
+kind, the following directions will help you:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE VII.</p>
+
+<p>24. Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end
+of it in water so as to take up a drop, and rub it in a white
+saucer till you cannot rub much more, and the color gets dark,
+thick, and oily-looking. Put two teaspoonfuls of water to the
+color you have rubbed down, and mix it well up with a
+camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.</p>
+
+<p>25. Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol
+board or pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule,
+into squares as large as those of the very largest chess-board:
+they need not be perfect squares, only as nearly so as you can
+quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard on something sloping as
+much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your brush into
+the color you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid
+as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay
+a pond or runlet of color along the top edge. Lead this pond
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page019"></a>19</span>
+of color gradually downwards, not faster at one place than
+another, but as if you were adding a row of bricks to a building,
+all along (only building down instead of up), dipping
+the brush frequently so as to keep the color as full in that,
+and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only
+that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if
+it should, never mind; go on quietly with your square till
+you have covered it all in. When you get to the bottom,
+the color will lodge there in a great wave. Have ready a
+piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and with the
+dry brush take up the superfluous color as you would with a
+sponge, till it all looks even.</p>
+
+<p>26. In leading the color down, you will find your brush
+continually go over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps
+within it. Do not endeavor to retouch these, nor take much
+care about them; the great thing is to get the color to lie
+smoothly where it reaches, not in alternate blots and pale
+patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the square as fast as
+possible, with such attention to your limit as you are able to
+give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally
+to strike the color up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but
+the first thing is to get it even,&mdash;the power of rightly
+striking the edge comes only by time and practice: even the
+greatest artists rarely can do this quite perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>27. When you have done one square, proceed to do another
+which does not communicate with it. When you have thus
+done all the alternate squares, as on a chess-board, turn the
+pasteboard upside down, begin again with the first, and put
+another coat over it, and so on over all the others. The use of
+turning the paper upside down is to neutralize the increase
+of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would
+otherwise take place from the ponding of the color.</p>
+
+<p>28. Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag,
+instead of your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so,
+once acquired, will save you from much partial poisoning.
+Take care, however, always to draw the brush from root to
+point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe it as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page020"></a>20</span>
+you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing
+harm, provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good
+brush at first, and cherish it; it will serve you longer and
+better than many bad ones.</p>
+
+<p>29. When you have done the squares all over again, do
+them a third time, always trying to keep your edges as neat
+as possible. When your color is exhausted, mix more in the
+same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much as you can
+grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate
+squares three times over, as the paper will be getting very
+damp, and dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and
+bring them up to the same tint in the same way. The amount
+of jagged dark line which then will mark the limits of the
+squares will be the exact measure of your unskillfulness.</p>
+
+<p>30. As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses);
+and then draw straight lines irregularly across circles,
+and fill up the spaces so produced between the straight
+line and the circumference; and then draw any simple shapes
+of leaves, according to the exercise No. II., and fill up those,
+until you can lay on color quite evenly in any shape you want.</p>
+
+<p>31. You will find in the course of this practice, as you
+cannot always put exactly the same quantity of water to the
+color, that the darker the color is, the more difficult it becomes
+to lay it on evenly. Therefore, when you have gained
+some definite degree of power, try to fill in the forms required
+with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of laying
+several coats one over another; always taking care that the
+tint, however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid
+on, so much of it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black
+line at the edge as it dries. A little experience will teach you
+how apt the color is to do this, and how to prevent it; not
+that it needs always to be prevented, for a great master in
+water-colors will sometimes draw a firm outline, when he
+<i>wants</i> one, simply by letting the color dry in this way at the
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>32. When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms
+with the darker color, no rapidity will prevent the tint from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page021"></a>21</span>
+drying irregularly as it is led on from part to part. You
+will then find the following method useful. Lay in the color
+very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that you can only just
+see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the outlines,
+and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet everywhere.
+Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker color,
+and lay some of it <i>into</i> the middle of the liquid color. It will
+spread gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now
+lead it up to the outlines already determined, and play it
+with the brush till it fills its place well; then let it dry, and
+it will be as flat and pure as a single dash, yet defining all the
+complicated forms accurately.</p>
+
+<p>33. Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably
+flat tint, you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare
+the color with three or four teaspoonfuls of water; then,
+when it is mixed, pour away about two-thirds of it, keeping
+a teaspoonful of pale color. Sloping your paper as before,
+draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space
+between them of the width of a square on your chess-board.
+Begin at the top of your paper, between the lines; and having
+struck on the first brushful of color, and led it down a
+little, dip your brush deep in water, and mix up the color
+on the plate quickly with as much more water as the brush
+takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler color, lead the
+tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the color again,
+and thus lead down the tint, always dipping in water once
+between each replenishing of the brush, and stirring the color
+on the plate well, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the
+color has become so pale that you cannot see it; then wash
+your brush thoroughly in water, and carry the wave down
+a little farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry
+brush, and leave it to dry.</p>
+
+<p>34. If you get to the bottom of your paper before your
+color gets pale, you may either take longer paper, or begin,
+with the tint as it was when you left off, on another sheet;
+but be sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness at last. When all
+is quite dry, recommence at the top with another similar
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page022"></a>22</span>
+mixture of color, and go down in the same way. Then again,
+and then again, and so continually until the color at the top
+of the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and
+passes down into pure white paper at the end of your column,
+with a perfectly smooth gradation from one into the other.</p>
+
+<p>35. You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or
+wavy, instead of evenly gradated; this is because at some
+places you have taken up more water in your brush than at
+others, or not mixed it thoroughly on the plate, or led one
+tint too far before replenishing with the next. Practice only
+will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot always
+get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they
+ever leave them on their pictures without after-touching.</p>
+
+<p>36. As you get more power, and can strike the color more
+quickly down, you will be able to gradate in less compass;<a name="FnAnchor_7" href="#Footnote_7"><span class="sp">[7]</span></a>
+beginning with a small quantity of color, and adding a drop
+of water, instead of a brushful; with finer brushes, also, you
+may gradate to a less scale. But slight skill will enable you
+to test the relations of color to shade as far as is necessary for
+your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>37. Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black,
+of cobalt, and vermilion; and prepare gradated columns
+(exactly as you have done with the Prussian blue) of the lake
+and blue-black.<a name="FnAnchor_8" href="#Footnote_8"><span class="sp">[8]</span></a> Cut a narrow slip, all the way down, of
+each gradated color, and set the three slips side by side;
+fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across all
+the three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number
+the degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, etc. If you
+have gradated them rightly, the darkest part either of the red
+or blue will be nearly equal in power to the darkest part of the
+blue-black, and any degree of the black slip will also, accurately
+enough for our purpose, balance in weight the degree
+similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then, when
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page023"></a>23</span>
+you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue color, if
+you can match their color by any compartment of the crimson
+or blue in your scales, the gray in the compartment of the
+gray scale marked with the same number is the gray which
+must represent that crimson or blue in your light and shade
+drawing.</p>
+
+<p>38. Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion.
+You will find that you cannot darken these beyond
+a certain point;<a name="FnAnchor_9" href="#Footnote_9"><span class="sp">[9]</span></a> for yellow and scarlet, so long as they
+remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach to black; we
+cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark
+scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet,
+half-way down; passing <i>then</i> gradually to white. Afterwards
+use lake to darken the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge;
+and Prussian blue to darken the cobalt. You will thus
+have three more scales, passing from white nearly to black,
+through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and through
+scarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may
+make another with green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another
+with violet; the sepia alone will make a forcible brown one;
+and so on, until you have as many scales as you like, passing
+from black to white through different colors. Then, supposing
+your scales properly gradated and equally divided, the
+compartment or degree No. 1 of the gray will represent in
+chiaroscuro the No. 1 of all the other colors; No. 2 of gray
+the No. 2 of the other colors, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>39. It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you
+should understand the principle; for it would never be possible
+for you to gradate your scales so truly as to make them
+practically accurate and serviceable; and even if you could,
+unless you had about ten thousand scales, and were able to
+change them faster than ever juggler changed cards, you
+could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side
+of a frost-bitten apple. But when once you fully understand
+the principle, and see how all colors contain as it were a certain
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page024"></a>24</span>
+quantity of darkness, or power of dark relief from white&mdash;some
+more, some less; and how this pitch or power of each
+may be represented by equivalent values of gray, you will
+soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approximation by a
+glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at all.</p>
+
+<p>40. You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing
+patterns, and any shapes of shade that you think pretty, as
+veinings in marble or tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells,
+etc., as tenderly as you can, in the darknesses that correspond
+to their colors; and when you find you can do this successfully,
+it is time to begin rounding.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE VIII.</p>
+
+<p>41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up
+the first round or oval stone you can find, not very white,
+nor very dark; and the smoother it is the better, only it must
+not <i>shine</i>. Draw your table near the window, and put the
+stone, which I will suppose is about the size of <i>a</i> in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>
+(it had better not be much larger), on a piece of not very
+white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the
+light may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil
+point interferes with your sight of your work. You must not
+let the <i>sun</i> fall on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore
+choose a window which the sun does not come in at. If you
+can shut the shutters of the other windows in the room it will
+be all the better; but this is not of much consequence.</p>
+
+<p>42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything;
+I mean, anything that is drawable. Many things (sea
+foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only the idea
+of them more or less suggested; but if you can draw the stone
+<i>rightly</i>, everything within reach of art is also within yours.</p>
+
+<p>For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of
+representing <i>Roundness</i>. If you can once do that, all the
+rest is easy and straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing
+else that you may be able to do will be of any use. For
+Nature is all made up of roundnesses; not the roundness of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page025"></a>25</span>
+perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces. Boughs are
+rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are
+rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there
+is no more flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy.
+The world itself is round, and so is all that is in it, more or
+less, except human work, which is often very flat indeed.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_5"><img src="images/img025.jpg" width="700" height="286" alt="Fig. 5." title="Fig. 5." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 5.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round
+stone, and you have won the battle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page026"></a>26</span></p>
+
+<p>43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You
+will see that the side of it next the window is lighter than
+most of the paper; that the side of it farthest from the window
+is darker than the paper; and that the light passes into
+the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to the right on
+the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of things
+being more or less as in <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, the spots on the stone
+excepted, of which more presently.</p>
+
+<p>44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset,
+that everything you can see in Nature is seen only so far as
+it is lighter or darker than the things about it, or of a different
+color from them. It is either seen as a patch of one color
+on a ground of another; or as a pale thing relieved from a
+dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if you
+can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the same size,
+shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground,
+you will produce the appearance of the object and its ground.
+The best draughtsman&mdash;Titian and Paul Veronese themselves&mdash;could
+do no more than this; and you will soon be able
+to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if you once
+understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done.
+Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper,
+on a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on
+spaces of red, white, and brown, in the same shape, and
+gradated from dark to light in the same degrees, and your
+drawing is done. If you will not look at what you see, if you
+try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there, if
+you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your
+paper with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact,
+but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the
+thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature will
+show you nothing if you set yourself up for her master. But
+forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will find
+obedience easier and happier than you think.</p>
+
+<p>45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the
+forms and the evenness of the gradations. You may depend
+upon it, when you are dissatisfied with your work, it is always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page027"></a>27</span>
+too coarse or too uneven. It may not be wrong&mdash;in all probability
+is not wrong, in any (so-called) great point. But its
+edges are not true enough in outline; and its shades are in
+blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it more
+tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.</p>
+
+<p>46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak
+because you have a finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you
+can draw with that, you can draw with nothing; when you
+can draw with that, you can draw with a log of wood
+charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
+gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate
+ease depends on early precision in the commencement; much
+more in singing or drawing.</p>
+
+<p>47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>,
+but to copy the stone before you in the way that my sketch
+is done. To which end, first measure the extreme length of
+the stone with compasses, and mark that length on your
+paper; then, between the points marked, leave something
+like the form of the stone in light, scrawling the paper all
+over, round it; <i>b</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, is a beginning of this kind.
+Rather leave too much room for the high light, than too little;
+and then more cautiously fill in the shade, shutting the light
+gradually up, and putting in the dark slowly on the dark
+side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of shape,
+because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible
+for you to draw the shape of the stone quite truly, and you
+must gradually gain correctness by means of these various
+exercises: what you have mainly to do at present is, to get the
+stone to look solid and round, not much minding what its
+exact contour is&mdash;only draw it as nearly right as you can
+without vexation; and you will get it more right by thus feeling
+your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the
+outline at first. For you can <i>see</i> no outline; what you see is
+only a certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces
+about it; and those pieces of shade you are to imitate as
+nearly as you can, by scrawling the paper over till you get
+them to the right shape, with the same gradations which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page028"></a>28</span>
+they have in Nature. And this is really more likely to be
+done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
+confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced
+outline. For instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin
+at <i>a</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, whose form, though irregular, required more
+care in following than that of a common stone, I was going
+to draw it also under another effect; reflected light bringing
+its dark side out from the background: but when I had laid
+on the first few touches I thought it would be better to stop,
+and let you see how I had begun it, at <i>b</i>. In which beginning
+it will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I
+can more or less modify, and add to or diminish the contour
+as I work on, the lines which suggest the outline being
+blended with the others if I do not want them; and the having
+to fill up the vacancies and conquer the irregularities of such
+a sketch will probably secure a higher completion at last, than
+if half an hour had been spent in getting a true outline before
+beginning.</p>
+
+<p>48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing
+too dark. In order to ascertain what the shades of it really
+are, cut a round hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece
+of white paper the color of that you use to draw on. Hold
+this bit of paper with the hole in it, between you and your
+stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards, so as to
+see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
+through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole
+looks like one of the patches of color you have been accustomed
+to match, only changing in depth as it lets different
+pieces of the stone be seen through it. You will be able thus
+actually to <i>match</i> the color of the stone at any part of it, by
+tinting the paper beside the circular opening. And you will
+find that this opening never looks quite <i>black</i>, but that all the
+roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.<a name="FnAnchor_10" href="#Footnote_10"><span class="sp">[10]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the
+stone, or of the paper it lies on, look luminous through the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page029"></a>29</span>
+opening; so that the little circle then tells as a light spot
+instead of a dark spot. When this is so, you cannot imitate
+it, for you have no means of getting light brighter than white
+paper: but by holding the paper more sloped towards the
+light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which before
+looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and
+if you can place the paper in such a position that every part
+of the stone looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always
+as a spot of shade, and if your drawing is put in the same
+light, you can imitate or match every gradation. You will
+be amazed to find, under these circumstances, how slight the
+differences of tint are, by which, through infinite delicacy
+of gradation, Nature can express form.</p>
+
+<p>If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a
+light through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate.
+Leave it white; you can do no more.</p>
+
+<p>50. When you have done the best you can to get the general
+form, proceed to finish, by imitating the texture and all
+the cracks and stains of the stone as closely as you can; and
+note, in doing this, that cracks or fissures of any kind,
+whether between stones in walls, or in the grain of timber or
+rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they present,
+are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
+shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of
+light and shade, however small its scale. It is in reality a
+little ravine, with a dark or shady side, and light or sunny
+side, and, usually, shadow in the bottom. This is one of the
+instances in which it may be as well to understand the reason
+of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing, for the
+aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot
+in general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some,
+we are sure to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate
+of the importance of those on which the attention
+is fixed causes us to exaggerate them, so that merely scientific
+draughtsmen caricature a third part of Nature, and miss
+two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose eye is so keen as to
+see at once how the thing looks, and who need not therefore
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page030"></a>30</span>
+trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
+people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who
+are destitute of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will
+be a help, especially when a master is not near them. I
+never allow my own pupils to ask the reason of anything,
+because, as I watch their work, I can always show them how
+the thing is, and what appearance they are missing in it; but
+when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
+here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.</p>
+
+<p>51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object&mdash;for
+instance, the stone you are drawing&mdash;has a light side
+turned towards the light, a dark side turned away from the
+light, and a shadow, which is cast on something else (as by
+the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may sometimes
+be placed so as to see only the light side and shadow, sometimes
+only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both
+or either without the shadow; but in most positions solid
+objects will show all the three, as the stone does here.</p>
+
+<p>52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as
+you sit now with your side to the window, so that the flat of
+your hand is turned to the window. You will see one side
+of your hand distinctly lighted, the other distinctly in shade.
+Here are light side and dark side, with no seen shadow; the
+shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on the
+other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.</p>
+
+<p>53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise,
+as you hold your hand, wave it up and down past the side
+of your hand which is turned from the light, the paper being
+of course farther from the window. You will see, as it passes,
+a strong gleam of light strike on your hand, and light it considerably
+on its dark side. This light is <i>reflected</i> light. It is
+thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in
+coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as
+a ball would be if somebody threw it through the window
+at the wall and you caught it at the rebound.</p>
+
+<p>Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece
+of scarlet cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page031"></a>31</span>
+on your hand, as you wave the book, is now reddened. Take
+a blue book, and you will find the gleam is blue. Thus every
+object will cast some of its own color back in the light that
+it reflects.</p>
+
+<p>54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect
+light to your hand: every object in the room on that side of
+it reflects some, but more feebly, and the colors mixing all
+together form a neutral<a name="FnAnchor_11" href="#Footnote_11"><span class="sp">[11]</span></a> light, which lets the color of your
+hand itself be more distinctly seen than that of any object
+which reflects light to it; but if there were no reflected light,
+that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.</p>
+
+<p>55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct
+light, and partly by light reflected from the objects around
+them, or from the atmosphere and clouds. The color of their
+light sides depends much on that of the direct light, and
+that of the dark sides on the colors of the objects near them.
+It is therefore impossible to say beforehand what color an
+object will have at any point of its surface, that color depending
+partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations
+of rays reflected from other things. The only certain
+fact about dark sides is, that their color will be changeful, and
+that a picture which gives them merely darker shades of the
+color of the light sides must assuredly be bad.</p>
+
+<p>56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are
+drawing on. You will see one side of each finger lighted, one
+side dark, and the shadow of your hand on the paper. Here,
+therefore, are the three divisions of shade seen at once. And
+although the paper is white, and your hand of a rosy color
+somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
+all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than
+the flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is,
+that much light is reflected from the paper to the dark side
+of your finger, but very little is reflected from other things
+to the paper itself in that chink under your finger.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page032"></a>32</span></p>
+
+<p>57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate,
+the part of the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the
+dark side of the object. I say in general, because a thousand
+accidents may interfere to prevent its being so. Take a little
+bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the ink-bottle, and play it
+about a little on the side of your hand farthest from the
+window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of
+light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions
+of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the
+shadow altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the
+white paper. Now a stupid painter would represent, for
+instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one of his figures,
+and because he had been taught by rule that "shadow was
+darker than the dark side," he would never think of the
+reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the
+hand, just as if no glass were there. But a great painter
+would be sure to think of the true effect, and paint it; and
+then comes the stupid critic, and wonders why the hand is so
+light on its dark side.</p>
+
+<p>58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a
+<i>rule</i> in matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember
+that, in a general way, a shadow is darker than the dark
+side of the thing that casts it, supposing the colors otherwise
+the same; that is to say, when a white object casts a shadow
+on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark surface: the
+rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow of
+a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so
+dark, usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to
+ascertain the ultimate truth in such matters is to <i>look</i> for it;
+but, in the meantime, you will be helped by noticing that
+the cracks in the stone are little ravines, on one side of which
+the light strikes sharply, while the other is in shade.
+This dark side usually casts a little darker shadow at the
+bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the stone surface
+is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And, therefore,
+if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint,
+more or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page033"></a>33</span>
+spot or streak in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch
+beside this white one, you may turn it, as you choose, into
+either a ridge or an incision, into either a boss or a cavity.
+If you put the dark touch on the side of it nearest the sun,
+or rather, nearest the place that the light comes from, you
+will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
+side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete
+success of the effect depends less on depth of shade than on
+the rightness of the drawing; that is to say, on the evident
+correspondence of the form of the shadow with the form that
+casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or anything irregularly
+shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience in following
+the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
+labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed
+to lay on the stains and spots with great care, quite as much
+as you gave to the forms. Very often, spots or bars of local
+color do more to express form than even the light and shade,
+and they are always interesting as the means by which Nature
+carries light into her shadows, and shade into her lights; an
+art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
+of composition. <i>a</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, is a rough sketch of a fossil
+sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black
+flint, coming through a chalky surface. These projections
+form dark spots in the light; and their sides, rising out of
+the shadow, form smaller whiter spots in the dark. You
+may take such scattered lights as these out with the penknife,
+provided you are just as careful to place them rightly as if
+you got them by a more laborious process.</p>
+
+<p>60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in
+which gradation expresses roundness and projection, you
+may try your strength on anything natural or artificial that
+happens to take your fancy, provided it be not too complicated
+in form. I have asked you to draw a stone first, because any
+irregularities and failures in your shading will be less offensive
+to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page034"></a>34</span>
+surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and
+you may as well go on drawing rounded stones of different
+shapes for a little while, till you find you can really shade
+delicately. You may then take up folds of thick white drapery,
+a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on the table is as
+good as anything, and try to express them in the same way;
+only now you will find that your shades must be wrought
+with perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow
+of the folds. Always remember that a little bit perfected
+is worth more than many scrawls; whenever you feel yourself
+inclined to scrawl, give up work resolutely, and do not go
+back to it till next day. Of course your towel or napkin must
+be put on something that may be locked up, so that its folds
+shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
+the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of
+drapery (there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the
+sculpture of the cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres,
+which will at once educate your hand and your taste), and
+copy some piece of that; you will then ascertain what it is
+that is wanting in your studies from Nature, whether more
+gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of the
+folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
+painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in
+its sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty,
+the greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more
+just in measurement of form than delicate in perception of
+tint, a pattern on the folded surface will help you. Try
+whether it does or not: and if the patterned drapery confuses
+you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
+helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and
+simple checkered designs are better at first than flowered
+ones), and even though it should confuse you, begin pretty
+soon to use a pattern occasionally, copying all the distortions
+and perspective modifications of it among the folds with
+scrupulous care.</p>
+
+<p>61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in
+doing this. The greatest masters are always fond of drawing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page035"></a>35</span>
+patterns; and the greater they are, the more pains they take
+to do it truly.<a name="FnAnchor_12" href="#Footnote_12"><span class="sp">[12]</span></a> Nor can there be better practice at any time,
+as introductory to the nobler complication of natural detail.
+For when you can draw the spots which follow the folds of
+a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
+spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he
+leaps; but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly
+you will never be able to draw the creature. So the cloudings
+on a piece of wood, carefully drawn, will be the best introduction
+to the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves
+of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery,
+well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
+living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet bank.</p>
+
+<p>62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings
+of books, or other finely textured substances, do not trouble
+yourself, as yet, much about the wooliness or gauziness of
+the thing; but get it right in shade and fold, and true in
+pattern. We shall see, in the course of after-practice, how
+the penned lines may be made indicative of texture; but at
+present attend only to the light and shade and pattern. You
+will be puzzled at first by <i>lustrous</i> surfaces, but a little attention
+will show you that the expression of these depends merely
+on the right drawing of their light and shade, and reflections.
+Put a small black japanned tray on the table in front of some
+books; and you will see it reflects the objects beyond it as
+in a little black rippled pond; its own color mingling always
+with that of the reflected objects. Draw these reflections of
+the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as you
+will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the
+luster to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished
+objects in general practice; only you should do one or two in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page036"></a>36</span>
+order to understand the aspect of any lustrous portion of
+other things, such as you cannot avoid; the gold, for instance,
+on the edges of books, or the shining of silk and damask, in
+which lies a great part of the expression of their folds.
+Observe also that there are very few things which are totally
+without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles
+you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image
+of another object.</p>
+
+<p>63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure
+me that with the point of the pen or pencil you can lay on
+any form and shade you like, I give you leave to use the
+brush with one color,&mdash;sepia, or blue black, or mixed cobalt
+and blue black, or neutral tint; and this will much facilitate
+your study, and refresh you. But, preliminary, you must
+do one or two more exercises in tinting.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE IX.</p>
+
+<p>64. Prepare your color as directed for Exercise VII.
+Take a brush full of it, and strike it on the paper in any
+irregular shape; as the brush gets dry, sweep the surface of
+the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper very
+lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number
+of more or less minute interstices in the color. The lighter
+and faster every dash the better. Then leave the whole to
+dry; and, as soon as it is dry, with little color in your brush,
+so that you can bring it to a fine point, fill up all the little
+interstices one by one, so as to make the whole as even as you
+can, and fill in the larger gaps with more color, always trying
+to let the edges of the first and of the newly applied color
+exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new
+color dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the
+first. Retouch it therefore, trying to get the whole to look
+quite one piece. A very small bit of color thus filled up with
+your very best care, and brought to look as if it had been
+quite even from the first, will give you better practice and
+more skill than a great deal filled in carelessly; so do it with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page037"></a>37</span>
+your best patience, not leaving the most minute spot of
+white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then go
+to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up
+to a marked limit; then advance a little farther, and so on;
+thus always seeing distinctly what is done and what undone.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE X.</p>
+
+<p>65. Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole
+square of paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four
+fifths of the square, or thereabouts, leaving the edge rather
+irregular than straight, and let it dry. Then another coat
+over three fifths; another over two fifths; and the last over
+one fifth; so that the square may present the appearance of
+gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than
+the one beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in
+the former exercise, when filling up the interstices), try,
+with small touches, like those used in the pen etching, only
+a little broader, to add shade delicately beyond each edge, so
+as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones imperceptibly.
+By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a multitude
+of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,
+you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints,
+outside of each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite
+them tenderly with the next tint. The whole square, when
+done, should look evenly shaded from dark to pale, with no
+bars, only a crossing texture of touches, something like
+chopped straw, over the whole.<a name="FnAnchor_13" href="#Footnote_13"><span class="sp">[13]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>66. Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any
+light and shade you like; outline it very loosely with the
+pencil. Put on a wash of color, prepared <i>very</i> pale, quite
+flat over all of it, except the highest light, leaving the edge
+of your color quite sharp. Then another wash, extending
+only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page038"></a>38</span>
+also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the
+still darker parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each
+edge to dry sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the
+edges, reinforce the darks, and work the whole delicately
+together as you would with the pen, till you have got it to
+the likeness of the true light and shade. You will find that
+the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now
+get effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen
+merely.</p>
+
+<p>67. The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you
+may not trouble or vex the color, but let it lie as it falls
+suddenly on the paper: color looks much more lovely when
+it has been laid on with a dash of the brush, and left to dry
+in its own way, than when it has been dragged about and
+disturbed; so that it is always better to let the edges and
+forms be a little wrong, even if one cannot correct them
+afterwards, than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very
+great masters in water color can lay on the true forms at
+once with a dash, and bad masters in water color lay on
+grossly false forms with a dash, and leave them false; for
+people in general, not knowing false from true, are as much
+pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular blot
+as with the presence of power in the determined one; but <i>we</i>,
+in our beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad
+dash, and then correct with the point, till we are quite right.
+We must take care to be right, at whatever cost of pains;
+and then gradually we shall find we can be right with freedom.</p>
+
+<p>68. I have hitherto limited you to color mixed with two
+or three teaspoonfuls of water; but, in finishing your light
+and shade from the stone, you may, as you efface the edge
+of the palest coat towards the light, use the color for the
+small touches with more and more water, till it is so pale
+as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a perfect
+gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when
+they are very dark, you may use less and less water. If
+you take the color tolerably dark on your brush, only always
+liquid (not pasty), and dash away the superfluous color on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page039"></a>39</span>
+blotting paper, you will find that, touching the paper very
+lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated touches,
+produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth
+to shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of
+hand to do this properly. You will find much of this kind
+of work in the grounds and shadows of William Hunt's
+drawings.<a name="FnAnchor_14" href="#Footnote_14"><span class="sp">[14]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>69. As you get used to the brush and color, you will
+gradually find out their ways for yourself, and get the
+management of them. And you will often save yourself
+much discouragement by remembering what I have so often
+asserted,&mdash;that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to
+be refinement that is wanting, not force; and connection, not
+alteration. If you dislike the state your drawing is in, do
+not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor alter its plan, nor
+rub it desperately out, at the place you think wrong; but
+look if there are no shadows you can gradate more perfectly;
+no little gaps and rents you can fill; no forms you can more
+delicately define: and do not <i>rush</i> at any of the errors or
+incompletions thus discerned, but efface or supply slowly,
+and you will soon find your drawing take another look. A
+very useful expedient in producing some effects, is to wet
+the paper, and then lay the color on it, more or less wet,
+according to the effect you want. You will soon see how
+prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can
+reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it darker.
+Also, while the color is still damp on the paper, by drying
+your brush thoroughly, and touching the color with the brush
+so dried, you may take out soft lights with great tenderness
+and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of this kind,
+noticing how the color behaves; but remembering always
+that your final results must be obtained, and can only be
+obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the pen
+drawing.</p>
+
+<p>70. You will find also, as you deal with more and more
+complicated subjects, that Nature's resources in light and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page040"></a>40</span>
+shade are so much richer than yours, that you cannot possibly
+get all, or anything like all, the gradations of shadow in
+any given group. When this is the case, determine first to
+keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for instance,
+there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a
+black inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper
+as a light mass, the green book as a middle tint mass, the
+black inkstand as a dark mass; and do not shade the folds
+in the paper, or corners of the book, so as to equal in depth
+the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference between
+the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the
+power of the former to draw so delicately as to express form
+in a dark-colored object with little light, and in a light-colored
+object with little darkness; and it is better even to
+leave the forms here and there unsatisfactorily rendered
+than to lose the general relations of the great masses. And
+this, observe, not because masses are grand or desirable
+things in your composition (for with composition at present
+you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact
+that things do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and
+that we see paper, book, and inkstand as three separate
+things, before we see the wrinkles, or chinks, or corners of
+any of the three. Understand, therefore, at once, that no
+detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in
+reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and
+minor markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to
+be in Nature; you are sure otherwise to get them too dark.
+You will in doing this find that you cannot get the projection
+of things sufficiently shown; but never mind that; there is no
+need that they should appear to project, but great need that
+their relations of shade to each other should be preserved.
+All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration
+of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the
+drawing is more or less bad: a thoroughly fine drawing or
+painting will always show a slight tendency towards flatness.</p>
+
+<p>71. Observe, on the other hand, that, however white an
+object may be, there is always some small point of it whiter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page041"></a>41</span>
+than the rest. You must therefore have a slight tone of gray
+over everything in your picture except on the extreme high
+lights; even the piece of white paper, in your subject, must
+be toned slightly down, unless (and there are thousand
+chances against its being so) it should all be turned so as fully
+to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white
+objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese
+or Titian, you will soon understand this.<a name="FnAnchor_15" href="#Footnote_15"><span class="sp">[15]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>72. As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing
+with the brush the undulations of surfaces and the relations of
+masses, you may proceed to draw more complicated and beautiful
+things.<a name="FnAnchor_16" href="#Footnote_16"><span class="sp">[16]</span></a> And first, the boughs of trees, now not in mere
+dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the first bit of branch
+or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut off the ends
+of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only about a
+foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit
+of branch in some place where its position will not be altered,
+and draw it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size;
+striving, above all things, to get an accurate expression of its
+structure at the fork of the branch. When once you have
+mastered the tree at its <i>armpits</i>, you will have little more
+trouble with it.</p>
+
+<p>73. Always draw whatever the background happens to
+be, exactly as you see it. Wherever you have fastened the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page042"></a>42</span>
+bough, you must draw whatever is behind it, ugly or not, else
+you will never know whether the light and shade are right;
+they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of the
+background. And this general law is to be observed in all
+your studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly,
+else you never know if what you have done is right,
+or whether you <i>could</i> have done it rightly had you tried.
+There is nothing <i>visible</i> out of which you may not get useful
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>74. Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a
+small twig with four or five leaves on it, put it into water,
+put a sheet of light-colored or white paper behind it, so that
+all the leaves may be relieved in dark from the white field;
+then sketch in their dark shape carefully with pencil as you
+did the complicated boughs, in order to be sure that all their
+masses and interstices are right in shape before you begin
+shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in
+the manner of <a href="#fig_6">Fig. 6</a>, which is a young shoot of lilac.</p>
+
+<p>75. You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings,
+be at first puzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because
+the look of retirement or projection depends not so
+much on the perspective of the leaves themselves as on the
+double sight of the two eyes. Now there are certain artifices
+by which good painters can partly conquer this difficulty; as
+slight exaggerations of force or color in the nearer parts,
+and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not
+attempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching
+the leaves, shut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background,
+to bring the point of one of the leaves against; and
+so sketch the whole bough as you see it in a fixed position,
+looking with one eye only. Your drawing never can be
+made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with
+<i>both</i> eyes,<a name="FnAnchor_17" href="#Footnote_17"><span class="sp">[17]</span></a> but it can be made perfectly like the object
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page043"></a>43</span>
+seen with one, and you must be content when you have got
+a resemblance on these terms.</p>
+
+<p>76. In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be
+done, take a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards
+you, and as flat as you can, so as to see nothing of it but its
+thinness, as if you wanted to know how thin it was; outline
+it so. Then slope it down gradually towards you, and
+watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held perpendicularly
+down before you. Draw it in three or four different
+positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they
+appear in each position, and you will soon find out how it
+must be.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_6"><img src="images/img043.jpg" width="263" height="600" alt="Fig. 6." title="Fig. 6." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 6.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>77. Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then
+larger clusters; and practice, in this way, more and more
+complicated pieces of bough and leafage, till you find you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page044"></a>44</span>
+can master the most difficult arrangements, not consisting
+of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you
+do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery
+of pictures, that you take a much more lively interest than
+before in the work of the great masters; you will see that
+very often their best backgrounds are composed of little
+more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,
+brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or
+two form the chief interest of their foregrounds. If you
+live in London you may test your progress <i>accurately</i> by the
+degree of admiration you feel for the leaves of vine round the
+head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne.
+All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of
+foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of
+vegetation, that it is only one or two of the nearer clusters
+that you can by any possibility draw in this complete manner.
+The mass is too vast, and too intricate, to be thus
+dealt with.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_7"><img src="images/img044.jpg" width="400" height="231" alt="Fig. 7." title="Fig. 7." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 7.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>78. You must now therefore have recourse to some confused
+mode of execution, capable of expressing the confusion
+of Nature. And, first, you must understand what the
+character of that confusion is. If you look carefully at
+the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards' distance,
+you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at
+first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will
+see, mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct
+lines, which are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page045"></a>45</span>
+some, leaves seen with the edge turned towards you, and
+coming into sight in a broken way; for, supposing the real
+leaf shape to be as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_7">Fig. 7</a>, this, when removed some
+yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at
+<i>b</i>; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk
+and point disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes
+little more than a line; and the result is the condition
+at <i>c</i>, only with this farther subtlety in the look of it,
+inexpressible in the wood-cut, that the stalk and point of the
+leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet some
+influence in <i>checking the light</i> at the places where they
+exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf
+which remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only
+be rendered by two layers of color, one subduing the sky
+tone a little, the next drawing the broken portions of the
+leaf, as at <i>c</i>, and carefully indicating the greater darkness
+of the spot in the middle, where the under side of the
+leaf is.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_8"><img src="images/img045.jpg" width="500" height="397" alt="Fig. 8." title="Fig. 8." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 8.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we
+cannot reach such accuracy; but we shall be able to render
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page046"></a>46</span>
+the general look of the foliage satisfactorily by the following
+mode of practice.</p>
+
+<p>79. Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen
+inches long. Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that
+will support it steadily; put it about eight feet away from
+you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a sheet of not very
+white paper behind it, as usual.  Then draw very carefully,
+first placing them with pencil, and then filling them
+up with ink, every leaf-mass and stalk of it in simple black
+profile, as you see them against the paper: <a href="#fig_8">Fig. 8</a> is a
+bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do not be afraid of running
+the leaves into a black mass when they come together; this
+exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of such
+masses are when seen against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>80. Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of
+every common tree,&mdash;oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in
+fact, if you are good, and industrious, you will make one
+such study carefully at least three times a week, until you
+have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can get
+branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough,
+for this reason,&mdash;all masses of foliage have an upper and
+under surface, and the side view of them, or profile, shows
+a wholly different organization of branches from that seen
+in the view from above.  They are generally seen more or
+less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature
+puts her best composition into the profile arrangement.
+But the view from above or below occurs not unfrequently,
+also, and it is quite necessary you should draw it if you wish
+to understand the anatomy of the tree. The difference between
+the two views is often far greater than you could
+easily conceive. For instance, in <a href="#fig_9">Fig. 9</a>, <i>a</i> is the upper view
+and <i>b</i> the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. <a href="#fig_8">Fig. 8</a> is
+an intermediate view of a larger bough; seen from beneath,
+but at some lateral distance also.</p>
+
+<p>81. When you have done a few branches in this manner,
+take one of the drawings you have made, and put it
+first a yard away from you, then a yard and a half, then two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page047"></a>47</span>
+yards; observe how the thinner stalks and leaves gradually
+disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness where
+they were; and make another study of the effect at each
+distance, taking care to draw nothing more than you really
+see, for in this consists all the difference between what
+would be merely a miniature drawing of the leaves seen
+near, and a full-size drawing of the same leaves at a distance.
+By full size, I mean the size which they would really
+appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass
+held at the same distance from the eye at which you mean
+to hold your drawing. You can always ascertain this full
+size of any object by holding your paper upright before you,
+at the distance from your eye at which you wish your drawing
+to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you have to
+draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the outline
+of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper.
+You will always find it, thus measured, smaller than you
+supposed.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_9"><img src="images/img047.jpg" width="400" height="187" alt="Fig. 9." title="Fig. 9." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 9.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>82. When you have made a few careful experiments of
+this kind on your own drawings, (which are better for practice,
+at first, than the real trees, because the black profile in
+the drawing is quite stable, and does not shake, and is not
+confused by sparkles of luster on the leaves,) you may try
+the extremities of the real trees, only not doing much at a
+time, for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex
+your sight. And this brightness causes, I believe, some
+loss of the outline itself; at least the chemical action of the
+light in a photograph extends much within the edges of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page048"></a>48</span>
+leaves, and, as it were, eats them away, so that no tree extremity,
+stand it ever so still, nor any other form coming
+against bright sky, is truly drawn by a photograph; and if
+you once succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you will
+find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
+photograph can be.</p>
+
+<p>83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering
+merely the dark form of the sprays as they come against
+the sky. Within those sprays, and in the heart of the tree,
+there is a complexity of a much more embarrassing kind;
+for nearly all leaves have some luster, and all are more or less
+translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in any
+given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows
+and foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances
+which alter or hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by
+other leaves,&mdash;often very forcibly. Secondly, light reflected
+from its lustrous surface, sometimes the blue of the
+sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself flashing
+like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen
+as darknesses through the translucent parts of the leaf; a
+most important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected
+by landscape artists in general.</p>
+
+<p>84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and
+then by chance, the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but
+a marvelous and quaint confusion, very definite, indeed, in
+its evidence of direction of growth, and unity of action, but
+wholly indefinable and inextricable, part by part, by any
+amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out in facsimile,
+though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and
+you must therefore try to discover some mode of execution
+which will more or less imitate, by its own variety and
+mystery, the variety and mystery of Nature, without
+absolute delineation of detail.</p>
+
+<p>85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation
+of tree form only, because in that the thing to be proved
+is clearest. But no natural object exists which does not involve
+in some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page049"></a>49</span>
+mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of handling and
+trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are intricate,
+so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur
+and hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And
+although methods and dexterities of handling are wholly
+useless if you have not gained first the thorough knowledge
+of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot draw a branch
+perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of mist
+perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single
+grass blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having
+once got this power over decisive form, you may safely&mdash;and
+must, in order to perfection of work&mdash;carry out your knowledge
+by every aid of method and dexterity of hand.</p>
+
+<p>86. But, in order to find out what method can do, you
+must now look at Art as well as at Nature, and see what
+means painters and engravers have actually employed for the
+expression of these subtleties. Whereupon arises the question,
+what opportunity you have to obtain engravings?
+You ought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself
+of a certain number of good examples of Turner's engraved
+works: if this be not in your power, you must just make the
+best use you can of the shop windows, or of any plates of
+which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly, the difficulty of
+getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to better
+use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so,
+possess yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of
+Rogers's Italy or Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen
+of the plates named in the annexed lists. The prefixed letters
+indicate the particular points deserving your study in
+each engraving.<a name="FnAnchor_18" href="#Footnote_18"><span class="sp">[18]</span></a> Be sure, therefore, that your selection
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page050"></a>50</span>
+includes, at all events, one plate marked with each letter.
+Do not get more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the
+twelve at first; for the more engravings you have, the less
+attention you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page051"></a>51</span>
+the enjoyment derivable from art cannot be increased in
+quantity, beyond a certain point, by quantity of possession;
+it is only spread, as it were, over a larger surface, and very
+often dulled by finding ideas repeated in different works.
+Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his attention
+should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his
+enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at
+many, with divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and
+his best way of discovering it is to think long over few
+things, and watch them earnestly. It is one of the worst
+errors of this age to try to know and to see too much: the
+men who seem to know everything, never in reality know
+anything rightly. Beware of <i>handbook</i> knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>87. These engravings are, in general, more for you to look
+at than to copy; and they will be of more use to you when we
+come to talk of composition, than they are at present; still,
+it will do you a great deal of good, sometimes to try how
+far you can get their delicate texture, or gradations of tone:
+as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline too much
+to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the
+texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its
+tiled roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as
+exquisite as work can possibly be; and it will be a great and
+profitable achievement if you can at all approach it. In like
+manner, if you can at all imitate the dark distant country at
+p. 7, or the sky at p. 80, of the same volume, or the foliage at
+pp. 12 and 144, it will be good gain; and if you can once draw
+the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9 of the Italy, or
+the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the moonlight
+at p. 223, you will find that even Nature herself cannot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page052"></a>52</span>
+afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or
+towers, or moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>88. You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the
+same effect. And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy
+required, and begin to think that engraving is not drawing,
+and that copying it cannot help you to draw, remember that it
+differs from common drawing only by the difficulties it has
+to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless habit
+of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough
+when one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary,
+it is a form of drawing more difficult than common drawing,
+by exactly so much as it is more difficult to cut steel than to
+move the pencil over paper. It is true that there are certain
+mechanical aids and methods which reduce it at certain
+stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a habit
+of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are
+trying to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are
+always etched&mdash;that is, drawn with a fine steel point and
+free hand: only the line made is white instead of black,
+which renders it much more difficult to judge of what you are
+about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good
+for you, because it will awaken you to the real labor and skill
+of the engraver, and make you understand a little how people
+must work, in this world, who have really to <i>do</i> anything in it.</p>
+
+<p>89. Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving
+as a model&mdash;far from it; but it is necessary you should be
+able to do as well<a name="FnAnchor_19" href="#Footnote_19"><span class="sp">[19]</span></a> before you think of doing better, and
+you will find many little helps and hints in the various work
+of it. Only remember that <i>all</i> engravers' foregrounds are
+bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel lines
+of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy;
+nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances, and
+portions of the foliage in the plates marked <i>f</i>, which you
+may copy. The best for this purpose, if you can get it, is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page053"></a>53</span>
+"Chain bridge over the Tees," of the England series; the
+thicket on the right is very beautiful and instructive, and
+very like Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and
+"Powis" is also remarkably good.</p>
+
+<p>90. Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from
+what harm there is in their influence, you are to provide
+yourself, if possible, with a Rembrandt etching, or a photograph
+of one (of figures, not landscape). It does not matter
+of what subject, or whether a sketchy or finished one,
+but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will teach
+you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially
+that Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and
+that they are laid with almost inconceivable precision when
+the object becomes at all interesting. The "Prodigal Son,"
+"Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and Isaac," and such
+others, containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro,
+will be the most instructive. You can buy one;
+copy it well; then exchange it, at little loss, for another; and
+so, gradually, obtain a good knowledge of his system. Whenever
+you have an opportunity of examining his work at
+museums, etc., do so with the greatest care, not looking at
+<i>many</i> things, but a long time at each. You must also provide
+yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert Dürer's.
+This you will not be able to copy; but you must keep it
+beside you, and refer to it as a standard of precision in line.
+If you can get one with a <i>wing</i> in it, it will be best. The
+crest with the cock, that with the skull and satyr, and the
+"Melancholy," are the best you could have, but any will do.
+Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two
+masters, Rembrandt and Dürer. Rembrandt is often too
+loose and vague; and Dürer has little or no effect of mist or
+uncertainty. If you can see anywhere a drawing by Leonardo,
+you will find it balanced between the two characters;
+but there are no engravings which present this perfection,
+and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate
+study of Rembrandt and Dürer. Lean rather to Dürer; it
+is better, for amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page054"></a>54</span>
+that of vagueness: and though, as I have just said, you cannot
+copy a Dürer, yet try every now and then a quarter of an
+inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can come;
+you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the
+"Melancholia" too often.</p>
+
+<p>91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Dürer, you
+may still learn much by carefully studying any of George
+Cruikshank's etchings, or Leech's wood-cuts in Punch, on
+the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and Richter's<a name="FnAnchor_20" href="#Footnote_20"><span class="sp">[20]</span></a> on the
+severe side. But in so doing you will need to notice the
+following points:</p>
+
+<p>92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or
+the time of an artist does not permit him to make a perfect
+drawing,&mdash;that is to say, one in which no lines shall be prominently
+visible,&mdash;and he is reduced to show the black lines,
+either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is better to make
+these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of texture
+and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or
+grass or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by
+Leech with zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and
+you will see that Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly
+express the direction and rounding of surfaces by the direction
+of the lines which shade them. All these various means
+of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can learn
+them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of
+shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way,
+but in the only possible way under the conditions: and provided
+in any after use of such means, you never try to show
+your own dexterity; but only to get as much record of the
+object as you can in a given time; and that you continually
+make efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions
+of the objects rightly.</p>
+
+<p>93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating
+that of surface, observe these few points:</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_10"><img src="images/img055.jpg" width="550" height="296" alt="Fig. 10." title="Fig. 10." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 10.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page055"></a>55</span>
+as they <i>can</i> indicate anything by their direction, they should
+explain rather than oppose the general character of the
+object. Thus, in the piece of wood-cut from Titian, <a href="#fig_10">Fig. 10</a>,
+the lines are serviceable by expressing, not only the shade of
+the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the flow of its
+grain. And Albert Dürer, whose work was chiefly engraving,
+sets himself always thus to make his lines as <i>valuable</i>
+as possible; telling much by them, both of shade and direction
+of surface: and if you were always to be limited to engraving
+on copper (and did not want to express effects of mist or
+darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert Dürer's way of
+work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as
+the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and
+the great painters always conceive their subject as complete,
+even when they are sketching it most rapidly, you will find
+that, when they are not limited in means, they do not much
+trust to direction of line, but will often scratch in the shade
+of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines, that is to
+say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to themselves.
+When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is one
+inclining from the left upwards to the right, or vice versâ,
+from the right downwards to the left; and when done very
+quickly, the line is hooked a little at the end by the effort
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page056"></a>56</span>
+at return to the next. Hence, you will always find the pencil,
+chalk, or pen sketch of a <i>very</i> great master full of these kind
+of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you will find him
+using simple straight lines from left to right, when an inferior
+master would have used curved ones. <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a> is a
+fair facsimile of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits
+these characters very distinctly. Even the careful
+drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded most commonly
+with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a point
+increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page057"></a>57</span>
+master if you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks
+or lips, shaded with straight lines.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_11"><img src="images/img056.jpg" width="325" height="600" alt="Fig. 11." title="Fig. 11." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 11.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be
+for dishonest dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches
+like <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a>, and pass them for the work of great masters;
+and how the power of determining the genuineness of a drawing
+depends entirely on your knowing the facts of the objects
+drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is <i>all</i>
+conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great
+man's work, at its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is
+not by the rapidity, but the <i>economy</i> of the execution that
+you know him to be great. Now to judge of this economy,
+you must know exactly what he meant to do, otherwise you
+cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,
+you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was
+drawing. All judgment of art thus finally founds itself on
+knowledge of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic,
+or impetuous execution is never affectedly impetuous. If
+a great man is not in a hurry, he never pretends to be; if he
+has no eagerness in his heart, he puts none into his hand;
+if he thinks his effect would be better got with <i>two</i> lines,
+he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with one. Be
+assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),
+that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating
+the execution of a great master. Acquire his knowledge
+and share his feelings, and the easy execution will fall
+from your hand as it did from his: but if you merely scrawl
+because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will not
+only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman,
+and every judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you
+for a cheat, and despise you accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:</p>
+
+<p>All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple
+reason, that an artist of any power can always do more, and
+tell more, by quitting his outlines occasionally, and scratching
+in a few lines for shade, than he can by restricting himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page058"></a>58</span>
+to outline only. Hence the fact of his so restricting
+himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a
+bad draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power
+economically. This hard law, however, bears only on drawings
+meant to remain in the state in which you see them; not
+on those which were meant to be proceeded with, or for some
+mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure
+outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to
+be filled up afterwards with color, or to be pricked through
+and used as patterns or tracings; but if, with no such ultimate
+object, making the drawing wholly for its own sake,
+and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves it, an artist
+restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and his
+work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good
+artist habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case
+make his drawing more expressive (with any given quantity
+of work) by rapid shade than by contours; so that all good
+work whatever is more or less touched with shade, and more
+or less interrupted as outline.</p>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_12"><img src="images/img058.jpg" width="90" height="114" alt="Fig. 12." title="Fig. 12." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 12.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the
+English imitations of them, and all outline engravings from
+pictures, are bad work, and only serve to corrupt the public
+taste. And of such outlines, the worst are those which are
+darkened in some part of their course by way of expressing
+the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others;
+because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately
+represents the form of the given object with <i>one</i> of its edges.
+Thus, the outline <i>a</i> and the outline <a name="error1"></a><span class="correction" title="Originally was 'd'."><i>b</i></span>, <a href="#fig_12">Fig. 12</a>, are
+both <i>true</i> outlines of a ball; because, however thick
+the line may be, whether we take the interior or
+exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws
+a true circle. But <i>c</i> is a false outline of a ball,
+because either the inner or outer edge of the
+black line must be an untrue circle, else the line could not
+be thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force,"
+as it is called, is gained by falsification of the contours; so
+that no artist whose eye is true and fine could endure to look
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page059"></a>59</span>
+at it. It does indeed often happen that a painter, sketching
+rapidly, and trying again and again for some line which
+he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the first line by
+setting others beside and across it; and then a careless observer
+supposes it has been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes
+also, at a place where shade is afterwards to inclose the
+form, the painter will strike a broad dash of this shade beside
+his outline at once, looking as if he meant to thicken the
+outline; whereas this broad line is only the first installment of
+the future shadow, and the outline is really drawn with its
+inner edge.<a name="FnAnchor_21" href="#Footnote_21"><span class="sp">[21]</span></a> And thus, far from good draughtsmen darkening
+the lines which turn away from the light, the <i>tendency</i>
+with them is rather to darken them towards the light, for it
+is there in general that shade will ultimately inclose them.
+The best example of this treatment that I know is Raphael's
+sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing
+Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the left eye; where
+the dark strong lines which terminate the nose and forehead
+towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones behind
+the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will
+see in <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a> the same principle variously exemplified; the
+principal dark lines, in the head and drapery of the arms,
+being on the side turned to the light.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_13"><img src="images/img060.jpg" width="650" height="387" alt="Fig. 13." title="Fig. 13." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 13.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however,
+do not affect your drawing for the present. You must
+try to make your outlines as <i>equal</i> as possible; and employ
+pure outline only for the two following purposes: either (1.)
+to steady your hand, as in Exercise II., for if you cannot
+draw the line itself, you will never be able to terminate your
+shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is absent;
+or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms,
+when you are pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant
+trees in groups are defined, for the most part, by the light
+edge of the rounded mass of the nearer one being shown
+against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more distant
+one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page060"></a>60</span>
+required to round each tree as to round the stone in <a href="#fig_5">Fig.
+5</a>. Of course you cannot often get time to do this; but if
+you mark the terminal line of each tree as is done by Dürer in
+<a href="#fig_13">Fig. 13</a>, you will get a most useful memorandum of their
+arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only observe
+in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick
+one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying
+that bit of Dürer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate,
+and accurately descriptive as far as it goes. It means a
+bush of such a size and such a shape, definitely observed and
+set down; it contains a true "signalement" of every nut-tree,
+and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round that village.
+If you have not time to draw thus carefully, do not
+draw at all&mdash;you are merely wasting your work and spoiling
+your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice
+you may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate,
+but not yet; except sometimes of light and shade, in a way
+of which I will tell you presently. And this use of outline,
+note farther, is wholly confined to objects which have edges
+or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone, when it rises
+against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page061"></a>61</span>
+drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at
+all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule
+that no good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline
+remains absolute. You see, in that wood-cut of Dürer's, his
+reason for even limiting himself so much to outline as he has,
+in those distant woods and plains, is that he may leave them
+in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky
+and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real and
+sunny only by the addition of these shades.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_14"><img src="images/img061.jpg" width="400" height="328" alt="Fig. 14." title="Fig. 14." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 14.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline,
+we will go back to our question about tree-drawing left
+unanswered at page 48.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_15"><img src="images/img062.jpg" width="310" height="500" alt="Fig. 15." title="Fig. 15." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 15.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among
+the leaves. Now, it is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder,
+to any extent; but the difficulty is to keep organization
+in the midst of mystery. And you will never succeed in
+doing this unless you lean always to the definite side, and
+allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through
+all your early practice. So, after your single groups of
+leaves, your first step must be to conditions like Figs. <a href="#fig_14">14</a> and
+<a href="#fig_15">15</a>, which are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful
+wood-cut of Dürer's, the "Flight into Egypt." Copy
+these carefully,&mdash;never mind how little at a time, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page062"></a>62</span>
+thoroughly; then trace the Dürer, and apply it to your
+drawing, and do not be content till the one fits the other, else
+your eye is not true enough to carry you safely through
+meshes of real leaves. And in the course of doing this, you
+will find that not a line nor dot of Dürer's can be displaced
+without harm; that all add to the effect, and either express
+something, or illumine something, or relieve something.
+If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree
+drawing, of which so many rich examples are given constantly
+in our cheap illustrated periodicals (any of the Christmas
+numbers of last year's <i>Illustrated News</i> or others are
+full of them), you will see that, though good and forcible
+general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by thousands
+without special intention, and might just as well go one way
+as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce
+all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will
+find that a little careless scratching about with your pen will
+bring you very near the same result without an effort; but
+that no scratching of pen, nor any fortunate chance, nor anything
+but downright skill and thought, will imitate so much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page063"></a>63</span>
+as one leaf of Dürer's. Yet there is considerable intricacy
+and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine leaves
+of his, as well as of the grass.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_16"><img src="images/img063.jpg" width="650" height="571" alt="Fig. 16." title="Fig. 16." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 16.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner,
+you may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same
+way; and when you are tired of the intense care required for
+this, you may fall into a little more easy massing of the leaves,
+as in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. 10</a> (<a href="#page055">p. 55</a>). This is facsimilëd from an engraving
+after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner,
+the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough
+model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the
+thing even so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the
+masses, as in <a href="#fig_16">Fig. 16</a>,<a name="FnAnchor_22" href="#Footnote_22"><span class="sp">[22]</span></a> taking care always to have thorough
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page064"></a>64</span>
+command over your hand; that is, not to let the mass take a
+free shape because your hand ran glibly over the paper, but
+because in Nature it has actually a free and noble shape,
+and you have faithfully followed the same.</p>
+
+<p>101. And now that we have come to questions of noble
+shape, as well as true shape, and that we are going to draw
+from Nature at our pleasure, other considerations enter into
+the business, which are by no means confined to first practice,
+but extend to all practice; these (as this letter is long enough,
+I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents)
+I will arrange in a second letter; praying you
+only to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one&mdash;tiresomeness
+inseparable from directions touching the beginning of any
+art,&mdash;and to believe me, even though I am trying to set you
+to dull and hard work,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 3.5em; ">Very faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; "><span class="sc">J. Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" href="#FnAnchor_1">[1]</a> (<i>N.B.</i>&mdash;This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or curious
+readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are willing to take
+the statement in the text on trust.)</p>
+
+<p>The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We
+see nothing but flat colors; and it is only by a series of experiments that
+we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates the dark side of a solid
+substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the object in which it appears
+is far away. The whole technical power of painting depends on our
+recovery of what may be called the <i>innocence of the eye</i>; that is to say, of
+a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such,
+without consciousness of what they signify,&mdash;as a blind man would see
+them if suddenly gifted with sight.</p>
+
+<p>For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain directions,
+it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat dusty-looking
+yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly endowed with
+sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the sun, it would
+appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part a dusty yellow (very
+nearly of the color of primroses); and, if there were primroses near, we
+should think that the sunlighted grass was another mass of plants of the
+same sulphur-yellow color. We should try to gather some of them, and
+then find that the color went away from the grass when we stood between
+it and the sun, but not from the primroses; and by a series of experiments
+we should find out that the sun was really the cause of the color in the
+one,&mdash;not in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
+unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions touching
+the signification of certain colors, we always suppose that we <i>see</i> what we
+only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the
+signs we have learned to interpret. Very few people have any idea that
+sunlighted grass is yellow.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly
+as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the colors of nature
+exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the sunlighted
+grass the precise relation between the two colors that form its shade and
+light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but bluish green barred
+with gold.</p>
+
+<p>Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact
+about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience and
+touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, variously
+gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by experience you
+know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, variously darkened
+and veined; and so on: and the whole art of Painting consists merely
+in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches of color, and putting
+patches of the same size, depth, and shape on canvas. The only obstacle
+to the success of painting is, that many of the real colors are brighter and
+paler than it is possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to
+represent them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" href="#FnAnchor_2">[2]</a> Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing,
+than india-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less: but it
+crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you waste the
+good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while
+be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very lightly; or, if heavily,
+pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what pencil
+marks will not come away so, without minding them. In a finished drawing
+the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable, helping the general tone,
+and enabling you to take out little bright lights.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3" href="#FnAnchor_3">[3]</a> What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is
+the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose hand is
+so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can let it fly as
+it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master at
+real <i>work</i> is <i>never</i> free: its swiftest dash is under perfect government.
+Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hair's breadth of any
+appointed mark, in their fastest touches; and follow, within a hair's
+breadth, the previously intended curve. You must never, therefore, aim
+at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it should be free, but
+that it should be right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and
+then your work will be free in the best sense; but there is no merit in
+doing wrong easily.</p>
+
+<p>These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,
+which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible. The
+reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it is at the
+ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other lines, and concealed
+by them; the object in perfect shading being to conceal the lines as much
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of hand
+than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in Nature, and
+the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he draws them at all.
+Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find mistakes continue to occur
+in your outlines; be content at present if you find your hand gaining command
+over the curves.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4" href="#FnAnchor_4">[4]</a> If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed, they
+will be useful models.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5" href="#FnAnchor_5">[5]</a> Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this permission.
+My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that the pupil's eye
+should be trained to accurate perception of the relations of curve and
+right lines, by having the latter absolutely true, than that he should
+practice drawing straight lines. But also, I believe, though I am not
+quite sure of this, that he never <i>ought</i> to be able to draw a straight line.
+I do not believe a perfectly trained hand ever can draw a line without
+some curvature in it, or some variety of direction. Prout could draw a
+straight line, but I do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great
+draughtsman can, as far as I have observed, draw every line <i>but</i> a straight
+one.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6" href="#FnAnchor_6">[6]</a> Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused quick
+touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of twigs round
+the main branches; but do not take much trouble about them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_7" href="#FnAnchor_7">[7]</a> It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow gradation than
+an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as with the pen, to make
+the gradation go <i>far</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_8" href="#FnAnchor_8">[8]</a> Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_9" href="#FnAnchor_9">[9]</a> The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is always
+indicated by the color of the solid cake in the box.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_10" href="#FnAnchor_10">[10]</a> The figure <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, is very dark, but this is to give an example of
+all kinds of depths of tint, without repeated figures.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_11" href="#FnAnchor_11">[11]</a> Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite different
+tones in its neutrality, according to the colors of the various reflected rays
+that compose it.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_12" href="#FnAnchor_12">[12]</a> If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might perhaps be
+able to show you some metaphysical ones for the enjoyment, by truly
+artistical minds, of the changes wrought by light and shade and perspective
+in patterned surfaces; but this is at present not to the point;
+and all that you need to know is that the drawing of such things is good
+exercise, and moreover a kind of exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret,
+Giorgione, and Turner, all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13" href="#FnAnchor_13">[13]</a> The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be able,
+when you begin to color, to let one hue be seen in minute portions, gleaming
+between the touches of another.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_14" href="#FnAnchor_14">[14]</a> William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15" href="#FnAnchor_15">[15]</a> At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal examples
+of Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most neglected was
+that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful
+works, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat
+sail, you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper
+corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the surface of
+the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice,
+and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of
+the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focused
+to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on the
+white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child-faun, in
+Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same thing.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16" href="#FnAnchor_16">[16]</a> I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as they
+are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not by difference
+of method.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17" href="#FnAnchor_17">[17]</a> If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will know
+why; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the statement,
+as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and much loss of time.
+See, however, <a href="#note1">Note 1</a>, in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_18" href="#FnAnchor_18">[18]</a> The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See note at
+the end of Appendix I. The letters mean as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>a</i> </td><td class="lsp">stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns, cottages, etc.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>c</i> </td><td class="lsp">clouds, including mist and aërial effects.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>f</i> </td><td class="lsp">foliage.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>g</i> </td><td class="lsp">ground, including low hills, when not rocky.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>l</i> </td><td class="lsp">effects of light.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>m</i> </td><td class="lsp">mountains, or bold rocky ground.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>p</i> </td><td class="lsp">power of general arrangement and effect.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>q</i> </td><td class="lsp">quiet water.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>r</i> </td><td class="lsp">running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their line of flow
+    is beautifully marked.</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the England Series.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a c f r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Arundel. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a f p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Lancaster. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ashby de la Zouche. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c l m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Lancaster Sands.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l q r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Barnard Castle.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a g f.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Launceston.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Bolton Abbey. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c f l r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Leicester Abbey. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f g r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Buckfastleigh.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ludlow. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Caernarvon. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Margate. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>c l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Castle Upnor. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Orford. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Colchester. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Plymouth. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Cowes. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Powis Castle. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>c f p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Dartmouth Cove.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>l m q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Prudhoe Castle. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>c l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Flint Castle.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f l m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Chain Bridge over Tees.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f g l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Knaresborough.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>m q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ulleswater. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">High Force of Tees.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Valle Crucis. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Trematon. </td>
+<td class="rsp1">&nbsp;</td><td class="lsp">&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the Keepsake.</i></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>m p q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Arona. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">St. Germain en Laye. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>l m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Drachenfels.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>l p q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Florence. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Marly.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>l m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ballyburgh Ness.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the Bible Series.</i></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Mount Lebanon. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c l p q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Solomon's Pools.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rock of Moses at Sinai. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Santa Saba. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Jericho. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Pool of Bethesda. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a c g.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Joppa. </td>
+<td class="rsp1">&nbsp;</td><td class="lsp">&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From Scott's Works.</i></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>p r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Melrose.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Glencoe. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Dryburgh.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Loch Coriskin.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>a l.</i> Caerlaverock.</td></tr>
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the Rivers of France.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Château of Amboise, with large bridge on right. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Pont de l'Arche. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>l p r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rouen, looking down the river, poplars on right.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f l p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">View on the Seine, with avenue. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rouen, with cathedral and rainbow, avenue on left. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a c p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Bridge of Meulan. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rouen Cathedral. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c g p r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Caudebec.* </td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19" href="#FnAnchor_19">[19]</a> As <i>well</i>;&mdash;not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on the steel
+than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be able to get
+tones as even, and touches as firm.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20" href="#FnAnchor_20">[20]</a> See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be
+studied."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_21" href="#FnAnchor_21">[21]</a> See <a href="#note2">Note 2</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22" href="#FnAnchor_22">[22]</a> This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like
+it. You will find it explained presently.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page065"></a>65</span></p>
+
+<h3>LETTER II.</h3>
+
+<h5>SKETCHING FROM NATURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>102. <span class="sc">My dear Reader</span>,&mdash;The work we have already gone
+through together has, I hope, enabled you to draw with fair
+success either rounded and simple masses, like stones, or
+complicated arrangements of form, like those of leaves; provided
+only these masses or complexities will stay quiet for
+you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to
+baffle your patience. But if we are now to go out to the
+fields, and to draw anything like a complete landscape,
+neither of these conditions will any more be observed for us.
+The clouds will not wait while we copy their heaps or clefts;
+the shadows will escape from us as we try to shape them,
+each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light where
+its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving
+in eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence;
+and instead of the small clusters of leaves which we
+could reckon point by point, embarrassing enough even
+though numerable, we have now leaves as little to be counted
+as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its foam.</p>
+
+<p>103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation
+becomes more or less impossible. It is always to be
+aimed at so far as it <i>is</i> possible; and when you have time
+and opportunity, some portions of a landscape may, as you
+gain greater skill, be rendered with an approximation almost
+to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you may
+reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and
+of speed to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive;
+and you must give more and more effort daily to the observance
+of characteristic points, and the attainment of concise
+methods.</p>
+
+<p>104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for
+two reasons. First, that it is always accessible as a study;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page066"></a>66</span>
+and secondly, that its modes of growth present simple examples
+of the importance of leading or governing lines.
+It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot seize all,
+that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and
+grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every
+natural form. I call it vital truth, because these chief lines
+are always expressive of the past history and present action
+of the thing. They show in a mountain, first, how it was
+built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is now being worn
+away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it.
+In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure
+from its childhood: how troublesome trees have come in its
+way, and pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it;
+where and when kind trees have sheltered it, and grown up
+lovingly together with it, bending as it bent; what winds torment
+it most; what boughs of it behave best, and bear most
+fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines
+show the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of
+change which the water or vapor is at any moment enduring
+in its form, as it meets shore, or counter-wave, or melting sunshine.
+Now remember, nothing distinguishes great men
+from inferior men more than their always, whether in life or
+in art, <i>knowing the way things are going</i>. Your dunce
+thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your
+wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws
+them so,&mdash;the animal in its motion, the tree in its growth,
+the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away.
+Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in
+it which have had power over its past fate and will have
+power over its futurity. Those are its <i>awful</i> lines; see that
+you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage
+in <a href="#fig_16">Fig. 16</a> (<a href="#page063">p. 63</a>) grew round the root of a stone pine,
+on the brow of a crag at Sestri near Genoa, and all the
+sprays of it are thrust away in their first budding by the
+great rude root, and spring out in every direction round it,
+as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it.
+Then, when they have got clear of the root, they begin to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page067"></a>67</span>
+bend up again; some of them, being little stone pines themselves,
+have a great notion of growing upright, if they can;
+and this struggle of theirs to recover their straight road
+towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways in
+their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence their
+future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed,
+forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts
+nourish them, with bared red lightning of angry arms
+towards the sea; or if they are to be goodly and solemn
+pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and the purple
+burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy
+green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give
+that spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven:
+depend upon it, their chief beauty is in these.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_17"><img src="images/img067.jpg" width="400" height="188" alt="Fig. 17." title="Fig. 17." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 17.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small,
+you will notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and
+at various angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and
+less as they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified
+in the simplest possible terms at <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_17">Fig. 17</a>, is common to
+all trees that I know of, and it gives them a certain plumy
+character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their branches
+which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not
+merely send off a wild branch here and there to take its own
+way, but all the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse;
+each has a curve and a path to take, which fills a definite
+place, and each terminates all its minor branches at its
+outer extremity, so as to form a greater outer curve, whose
+character and proportion are peculiar for each species. That
+is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_17">Fig.
+17</a>, but as <i>b</i>, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page068"></a>68</span>
+minor divisions right out to the bounding curve; not but
+that smaller branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart
+of the tree, but the idea and main purpose in every branch
+are to carry all its child branches well out to the air and light,
+and let each of them, however small, take its part in filling
+the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the type of
+each separate bough is again not <i>a</i>, but <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_18">Fig. 18</a>; approximating,
+that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of
+broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to
+a rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless
+habit of drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the
+pen or brush, one hanging to the other, as in <a href="#fig_19">Fig. 19</a>. If
+you look at the tree-boughs in any painting of Wilson's you
+will see this structure, and nearly every other that is to be
+avoided, in their intensest types. You will also notice that
+Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if
+it had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing
+pines seem to fancy, in the same way, that the boughs come
+out only on two sides of the trunk, instead of all round it:
+always, therefore, take more pains in trying to draw the
+boughs of trees that grow <i>towards</i> you than those that go
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page069"></a>69</span>
+off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the foreshortened
+ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing
+them to observe that in most trees the ramification of each
+branch, though not of the tree itself, is more or less flattened,
+and approximates, in its position, to the look of a hand held
+out to receive something, or shelter something. If you
+take a looking-glass, and hold your hand before it slightly
+hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers open, as if
+you were going to support the base of some great bowl, larger
+than you could easily hold; and sketch your hand as you see
+it in the glass with the points of the fingers towards you;
+it will materially help you in understanding the way trees
+generally hold out their hands: and if then you will turn
+yours with its palm downwards, as if you were going to try
+to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will
+get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and
+such other spreading trees.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_18"><img src="images/img068a.jpg" width="400" height="161" alt="Fig. 18." title="Fig. 18." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 18.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_19"><img src="images/img068b.jpg" width="400" height="186" alt="Fig. 19." title="Fig. 19." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 19.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>106. <a href="#fig_20">Fig. 20</a> will give you a good idea of the simplest way
+in which these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed;
+if you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to find how the
+touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of
+the tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the
+bank, and the undulation of the ground: note the careful
+drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers of the little
+mound on the left.<a name="FnAnchor_23" href="#Footnote_23"><span class="sp">[23]</span></a> It is facsimilëd from an etching of
+Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the
+use of pure and firm lines; it will also show you how the
+particular action in foliage, or anything else to which you
+wish to direct attention, may be intensified by the adjuncts.
+The tall and upright trees are made to look more tall and
+upright still, because their line is continued below by the
+figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes
+on the bank are made to look more rounded because their
+line is continued in one broad sweep by the black dog and
+the boy climbing the wall. These figures are placed entirely
+with this object, as we shall see more fully hereafter when we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page070"></a>70</span>
+come to talk about composition; but, if you please, we will not
+talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
+about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing
+to do with composition, but only with fact, and the brief and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page071"></a>71</span>
+expressive representation of fact. But there will be no harm
+in your looking forward, if you like to do so, to the account,
+in Letter III. of the "Law of Radiation," and reading what
+is said there about tree growth: indeed it would in some respects
+have been better to have said it here than there, only
+it would have broken up the account of the principles of
+composition somewhat awkwardly.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_20"><img src="images/img070.jpg" width="528" height="700" alt="Fig. 20." title="Fig. 20." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 20.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not
+always quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little
+attention will soon enable you to see that there are such lines
+in everything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and bad
+draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty irregularity
+of tiles or slates all over; but a good draughtsman will see all
+the bends of the under timbers, where they are weakest and
+the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run
+of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and
+where it lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful,
+however few slates he draws, to mark the way they bend
+together towards those hollows (which have the future fate
+of the roof in them), and crowd gradually together at the
+top of the gable, partly diminishing in perspective, partly,
+perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most English
+old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always
+the direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which
+rounds the earth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in
+any bank or height worth drawing, a trace of bedded or
+other internal structure besides. <a href="#fig_20">Figure 20</a> will give you
+some idea of the way in which such facts may be expressed
+by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground
+all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people
+always turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little,
+and then how the water runs down in that other hollow
+towards the valley, behind the roots of the trees?</p>
+
+<p>108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature
+to aim exclusively at understanding and representing these
+vital facts of form; using the pen&mdash;not now the steel, but
+the quill&mdash;firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page072"></a>72</span>
+saying to yourself before you lay on a single touch,&mdash;"<i>that</i>
+leaf is the main one, <i>that</i> bough is the guiding one, and this
+touch, <i>so</i> long, <i>so</i> broad, means that part of it,"&mdash;point or
+side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you
+look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it,
+and never let your hand run away with you, or get into any
+habit or method of touch. If you want a continuous line,
+your hand should pass calmly from one end of it to the other
+without a tremor; if you want a shaking and broken line,
+your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a musician's
+finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that
+there is no general way of doing <i>any</i> thing; no recipe can be
+given you for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass.
+The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing;
+sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid; fresh or
+dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to draw it as it is,
+and don't think how somebody "told you to <i>do</i> grass." So
+a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked
+all over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as
+the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as
+powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's
+hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus
+saber, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystallized like
+hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf: look at it, and don't
+try to remember how anybody told you to "do a stone."</p>
+
+<p>109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you
+thoroughly, and that you can render any form with a firmness
+and truth approaching that of Turner's or Dürer's work,<a name="FnAnchor_24" href="#Footnote_24"><span class="sp">[24]</span></a>
+you must add a simple but equally careful light and shade to
+your pen drawing, so as to make each study as complete as
+possible; for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get,
+if you have the means, a good impression of one plate of
+Turner's Liber Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page073"></a>73</span>
+named in the note below.<a name="FnAnchor_25" href="#Footnote_25"><span class="sp">[25]</span></a> If you cannot obtain, or even
+borrow for a little while, any of these engravings, you must
+use a photograph instead (how, I will tell you presently);
+but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You will
+see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page074"></a>74</span>
+shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched
+part of it accurately; to which end put the print against the
+window, and trace slowly with the greatest care every black
+line; retrace this on smooth drawing-paper; and, finally, go
+over the whole with your pen, looking at the original plate
+always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the right side,
+not making a line which is too curved or too straight already
+in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over
+it. And in doing this, never work after you are tired, nor
+to "get the thing done," for if it is badly done, it will be of
+no use to you. The true zeal and patience of a quarter of an
+hour are better than the sulky and inattentive labor of a
+whole day. If you have not made the touches right at the
+first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with
+little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they
+need: you cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then
+keep this etched outline by you in order to study at your
+ease the way in which Turner uses his line as preparatory for
+the subsequent shadow;<a name="FnAnchor_26" href="#Footnote_26"><span class="sp">[26]</span></a> it is only in getting the two separate
+that you will be able to reason on this. Next, copy once
+more, though for the fourth time, any part of this etching
+which you like, and put on the light and shade with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page075"></a>75</span>
+brush, and any brown color that matches that of the plate;<a name="FnAnchor_27" href="#Footnote_27"><span class="sp">[27]</span></a>
+working it with the point of the brush as delicately as if you
+were drawing with pencil, and dotting and cross-hatching
+as lightly as you can touch the paper, till you get the gradations
+of Turner's engraving.</p>
+
+<p>110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of
+an inch worked to close resemblance of the copy is worth
+more than the whole subject carelessly done. Not that in
+drawing afterwards from Nature you are to be obliged to
+finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having
+fully accomplished the drawing <i>something</i> rightly, you will
+thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you
+could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you,
+and bring out quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with
+a submissiveness which it would have wholly refused if you
+had not put it to severest work. Nothing is more strange in
+art than the way that chance and materials seem to favor you,
+when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make
+yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite
+of it, and from that day forward all things will somehow fall
+as you would have them. Show the camel's hair, and the
+color in it, that no bending nor blotting is of any use to
+escape your will; that the touch and the shade <i>shall</i> finally
+be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that hour of
+corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to
+all your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its
+appointed border. If you cannot obtain a print from the
+Liber Studiorum, get a photograph<a name="FnAnchor_28" href="#Footnote_28"><span class="sp">[28]</span></a> of some general landscape
+subject, with high hills and a village or picturesque
+town, in the middle distance, and some calm water of varied
+character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
+any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working,
+as I have just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal
+with the point of the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page076"></a>76</span>
+here, however; first, there are portions in every
+photograph too delicately done for you at present to be at
+all able to copy; and, secondly, there are portions always
+more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene,
+and involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as
+yet, to decipher. Both these characters will be advantageous
+to you for future study, after you have gained experience,
+but they are a little against you in early attempts at tinting;
+still you must fight through the difficulty, and get the power
+of producing delicate gradations with brown or gray, like
+those of the photograph.</p>
+
+<p>111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted
+shadow, like photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated
+darkness; and as long as your effect depends in anywise
+on visible lines, your art is not perfect, though it may
+be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete results in tints
+merely, requires both long time and consummate skill; and
+you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed
+over or under them, get more expression of facts than you
+could reach in any other way, by the same expenditure of
+time. The use of the Liber Studiorum print to you is
+chiefly as an example of the simplest shorthand of this kind,
+a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with the most
+subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the expression
+of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
+ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express
+the most tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light,
+mist, or cloud. Most of the best drawings by the old masters
+are executed on this principle, the touches of the pen being
+useful also to give a look of transparency to shadows, which
+could not otherwise be attained but by great finish of tinting;
+and if you have access to any ordinarily good public gallery,
+or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios either
+of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at
+a loss to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting.
+Multitudes of photographs also are now taken from the best
+drawings by the old masters, and I hope that our Mechanics'
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page077"></a>77</span>
+Institutes and other societies organized with a view to public
+instruction, will not fail to possess themselves of examples of
+these, and to make them accessible to students of drawing in
+the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
+the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
+photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing
+in the Louvre, to show the unity of the soft tinting of
+the stump with chalk, would be all that is necessary, and
+would, I believe, be in many cases more serviceable than a
+larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate
+prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
+because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately,
+or chalk separately, or color separately, may be seen by the
+poorest student in any cheap illustrated book, or in shop
+windows. But this unity of tinting with line he cannot
+generally see but by some special inquiry, and in some out
+of the way places he could not find a single example of it.
+Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that
+you cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make
+the matter out alone, thus:</p>
+
+<p>112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself
+half an hour to express its subjects with the pen only, using
+some permanent liquid color instead of ink, outlining its
+buildings or trees firmly, and laying in the deeper shadows,
+as you have been accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings;
+then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or gray,
+and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the photograph;
+and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife
+or blotting paper. You will soon find what can be done in
+this way; and by a series of experiments you may ascertain
+for yourself how far the pen may be made serviceable to
+reinforce shadows, mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible
+masses, and so on. The more time you have, the
+more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it
+with the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must
+keep the two. Practice in this way from one photograph,
+allowing yourself sometimes only a quarter of an hour for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page078"></a>78</span>
+the whole thing, sometimes an hour, sometimes two or three
+hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in full depth
+of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the parts
+as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe,
+you will do well to repeat frequently, whether you can get
+prints and drawings as well as photographs, or not.</p>
+
+<p>113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber
+Studiorum, or its photographic substitute, faithfully, you
+have the complete means in your power of working from
+Nature on all subjects that interest you, which you should do
+in four different ways.</p>
+
+<p>First. When you have full time, and your subject is one
+that will stay quiet for you, make perfect light and shade
+studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with gray or brown
+color of any kind, reinforced and defined with the pen.</p>
+
+<p>114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject
+is so rich in detail that you feel you cannot complete it
+intelligibly in light and shade, make a hasty study of the
+effect, and give the rest of the time to a Düreresque expression
+of the details. If the subject seems to you interesting, and
+there are points about it which you cannot understand, try
+to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
+memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of
+this nearer sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus
+perfect your experience of the aspect of things, and know
+that such and such a look of a tower or cottage at five hundred
+yards off means <i>that</i> sort of tower or cottage near; while, also,
+this nearer sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpretation
+of your own work. If you have time, however
+far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
+carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also
+your Düreresque and your near memoranda; for if your
+light and shade drawing be good, much of the interesting
+detail must be lost in it, or disguised.</p>
+
+<p>115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily
+and quickly with a soft pencil, dashed over when done with
+one tolerably deep tone of gray, which will fix the pencil.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page079"></a>79</span>
+While this fixing color is wet, take out the higher lights with
+the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out the
+highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully
+applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper
+is to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well;
+for you can get more gradation by the taking off your wet
+tint, and laying it on cunningly a little darker here and there,
+than you can with body-color white, unless you are consummately
+skillful. There is no objection to your making
+your Düreresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
+touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend
+much on your white touches, nor make the sketch for their
+sake.</p>
+
+<p>116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful
+study nor for Düreresque detail, sketch the outline with
+pencil, then dash in the shadows with the brush boldly, trying
+to do as much as you possibly can at once, and to get a habit
+of expedition and decision; laying more color again and
+again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
+which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out
+your chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material,
+taking the color off here with the dry brush, scratching out
+lights in it there with the wooden handle of the brush, rubbing
+it in with your fingers, drying it off with your sponge,
+etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and mark the
+outline characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber
+Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying
+away pieces of effect which depend not so much on
+refinement as on complexity, strange shapes of involved
+shadows, sudden effects of sky, etc.; and it is most useful
+as a safeguard against any too servile or slow habits which
+the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
+endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and
+dash for display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable;
+there are a velocity and a dash which not only are compatible
+with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which cannot
+be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to study
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page080"></a>80</span>
+occasionally for speed and decision, while your continual
+course of practice is such as to insure your retaining an
+accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
+circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you
+will find yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration
+than negligence.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_21"><img src="images/img080.jpg" width="500" height="302" alt="Fig. 21." title="Fig. 21." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 21.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever
+kind of landscape scenery you are passing through, to get
+into the habit of making memoranda of the shapes of shadows.
+You will find that many objects of no essential interest in
+themselves, and neither deserving a finished study, nor a
+Düreresque one, may yet become of singular value in consequence
+of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it
+happens often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much
+a more important element than the substance. Thus, in the
+Alpine bridge, <a href="#fig_21">Fig. 21</a>, seen within a few yards of it, as
+in the figure, the arrangement of timbers to which the
+shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's distance,
+in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
+painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large
+spot, and the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without
+indication of their cause, as in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. 22</a> <i>a</i>; and if we saw
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page081"></a>81</span>
+it at still greater distances, it would appear, as in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. 22</a> <i>b</i>
+and <i>c</i>, diminishing at last to a strange, unintelligible, spider-like
+spot of gray on the light hill-side. A perfectly great
+painter, throughout his distances, continually reduces his
+objects to these shadow abstracts; and the singular, and to
+many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused touches
+in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
+accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_22"><img src="images/img081.jpg" width="261" height="500" alt="Fig. 22." title="Fig. 22." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 22.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are
+in haste, with an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness
+of the point to insure your drawing delicately enough
+when the forms of the shadows are very subtle; they are sure
+to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The
+pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are
+master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used,
+is both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one
+and the gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory
+to see the sharp touches, on which the best of the detail
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page082"></a>82</span>
+depends, getting gradually deadened by time, or to find the
+places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a fire-grate,
+that I should recommend rather the steady use of the
+pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it; keeping
+only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
+well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities:
+but never being without this.</p>
+
+<p>119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which
+you are at first to draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be
+serviceable to you, if I also note one or two points respecting
+your choice of subjects for study, and the best special methods
+of treating some of them; for one of by no means the least
+difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a peculiar
+instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
+to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given
+scene. There are many things in every landscape which
+can be drawn, if at all, only by the most accomplished artists;
+and I have noticed that it is nearly always these which a
+beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it will be something
+which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture,
+and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
+pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius
+of beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:</p>
+
+<p>120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account
+of their associations; or at least do not draw them because
+you love them; but merely when you cannot get anything else
+to draw. If you try to draw places that you love, you are
+sure to be always entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron
+railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges;
+besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor
+to make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be
+fatal to your progress. You need never hope to get on, if you
+are the least anxious that the drawing you are actually at
+work upon should look nice when it is done. All you have to
+care about is to make it <i>right</i>, and to learn as much in doing
+it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in your
+friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page083"></a>83</span>
+you may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the
+fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it <i>is</i> for
+practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly
+poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend
+by drawing her room.</p>
+
+<p>121. Also, never make presents of your drawings.  Of
+course I am addressing you as a beginner&mdash;a time may
+come when your work will be precious to everybody; but be
+resolute not to give it away till you know that it is worth
+something (as soon as it is worth anything you will know
+that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing,
+send them a couple of cakes of color and a piece of Bristol
+board: those materials are, for the present, of more value
+in that form than if you had spread the one over the other.</p>
+
+<p>The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance
+will much protect you from the great danger of trying
+to make your drawings pretty.</p>
+
+<p>122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished;
+especially if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and
+curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A
+shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it
+comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look
+right, and choose only things that do not shine.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly
+difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough,
+worn, and clumsy-looking things as much as possible; for
+instance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study
+than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than
+an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general,
+everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to
+draw.</p>
+
+<p>(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one
+thing is seen through another. You will constantly find a
+thin tree standing before your chosen cottage, or between you
+and the turn of the river; its near branches all entangled
+with the distance. It is intensely difficult to represent this;
+and though, when the tree <i>is</i> there, you must not imaginarily
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page084"></a>84</span>
+cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look for
+subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that
+is, rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for
+one with a thin tree in front of it, rather for a mass of wood,
+soft, blue, and rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion
+of intricate stems.</p>
+
+<p>(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges.
+Perhaps nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so
+utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the ordinary
+English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted over
+it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle line.</p>
+
+<p>Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill,
+and that the subject overmasters you. It is much better that
+it should, than that you should think you had entirely
+mastered <i>it</i>. But at first, and even for some time, you must
+be prepared for very discomfortable failure; which, nevertheless,
+will not be without some wholesome result.</p>
+
+<p>123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely
+to avoid, I may, perhaps, help you a little by saying what to
+seek. In general, all banks are beautiful things, and will
+reward work better than large landscapes. If you live in
+a lowland country, you must look for places where the ground
+is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots
+of trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things
+within your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy
+mill-dams, etc. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk
+country will present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides;
+better in form and color than high chalk cliffs. In woods,
+one or two trunks, with the flowery ground below, are at
+once the richest and easiest kind of study: a not very thick
+trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running
+up it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are
+always beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are
+not modern rows of pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and
+Doric porticoes. Any old English village, or cluster of farmhouses,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page085"></a>85</span>
+drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and
+palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a French one.
+French landscape is generally as much superior to English
+as Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French
+is incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine,
+which I have recommended you to buy the engraving of,
+admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity
+and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component lines.</p>
+
+<p>In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens;
+a rustic garden is in every way beautiful. If you have time,
+draw all the rows of cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken
+fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy roses; you cannot
+have better practice, nor be kept by anything in purer
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood,
+and study them ripple by ripple.</p>
+
+<p>Village churches in England are not often good subjects;
+there is a peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness
+of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are
+usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I
+do not think there is a single cathedral in England from
+which it is possible to obtain <i>one</i> subject for an impressive
+drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or
+jarring vergerism about them.</p>
+
+<p>125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only
+danger is redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first
+place, to draw a piece of rounded rock, with its variegated
+lichens, quite rightly, getting its complete roundings, and
+all the patterns of the lichen in true local color. Till you can
+do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching among
+hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
+hills will be comparatively easy.</p>
+
+<p>126. When you have practiced for a little time from such
+of these subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly
+find difficulties arising which will make you wish
+more than ever for a master's help: these difficulties will
+vary according to the character of your own mind (one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page086"></a>86</span>
+question occurring to one person, and one to another), so that
+it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would make
+this too large a book if I answered all that I <i>can</i> anticipate;
+you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature
+will, in her own time, interpret to you much for herself;
+that farther experience on your own part will make some
+difficulties disappear; and that others will be removed by
+the occasional observation of such artists' work as may come
+in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
+a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after
+you are somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks
+may, I think, be conveniently arranged under three heads,
+having reference to the drawing of vegetation, water, and
+skies.</p>
+
+<p>127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps,
+we have said enough about trees already; yet if you have
+done as you were bid, and tried to draw them frequently
+enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by this time
+to hear a little more of them. You will also recollect that
+we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing
+intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I
+left it so because I wanted you to learn the real structure of
+leaves, by drawing them for yourself, before I troubled you
+with the most subtle considerations as to method in drawing
+them. And by this time, I imagine, you must have found
+out two principal things, universal facts, about leaves;
+namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their
+lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according
+to the law of radiation, already referred to;<a name="FnAnchor_29" href="#Footnote_29"><span class="sp">[29]</span></a> and the second,
+that this divergence is never formal, but carried out with
+endless variety of individual line. I must now press both
+these facts on your attention a little farther.</p>
+
+<p>128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have
+not yet spoken of the works of J. D. Harding, especially if
+you happen to have met with the passages referring to them
+in Modern Painters, in which they are highly praised. They
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page087"></a>87</span>
+are deservedly praised, for they are the only works by a
+modern<a name="FnAnchor_30" href="#Footnote_30"><span class="sp">[30]</span></a> draughtsman which express in any wise the energy
+of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking.
+There are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of
+general character, obtained with little cost of time, at all
+rival Harding's. Calame, Robert, and the other lithographic
+landscape sketchers are altogether inferior in power, though
+sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you must not
+take even Harding for a model, though you may use his
+works for occasional reference; and if you can afford to
+buy his Lessons on Trees,<a name="FnAnchor_31" href="#Footnote_31"><span class="sp">[31]</span></a> it will be serviceable to you in
+various ways, and will at present help me to explain the point
+under consideration. And it is well that I should illustrate
+this point by reference to Harding's works, because their
+great influence on young students renders it desirable that
+their real character should be thoroughly understood.</p>
+
+<p>129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on
+Trees, a pretty wood-cut, in which the tree stems are drawn
+with great truth, and in a very interesting arrangement of
+lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy of Mr. Harding, tending
+too much to make his pupil, at starting, think everything
+depends on black dots; still, the main lines are good, and
+very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we
+come to the point at issue. The first examples in that plate
+are given to the pupil that he may practice from them till
+his hand gets into the habit of arranging lines freely in a
+similar manner; and they are stated by Mr. Harding to be
+universal in application; "all outlines expressive of foliage,"
+he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
+groups of lines, more or less resembling our <a href="#fig_23">Fig. 23</a> below;
+and the characters especially insisted upon are, that they
+"tend at their inner ends to a common center;" that "their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page088"></a>88</span>
+ends terminate in [are inclosed by] ovoid curves;" and
+that "the outer ends are most emphatic."</p>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_23"><img src="images/img088.jpg" width="150" height="79" alt="Fig. 23." title="Fig. 23." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 23.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>130. Now, as thus expressive of
+the great laws of radiation and inclosure,
+the main principle of this
+method of execution confirms, in a
+very interesting way, our conclusions
+respecting foliage composition. The
+reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to
+be most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the
+line at one end of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than
+the line at the other: but ultimately, in Harding's method,
+this darker part of the touch stands more or less for the shade
+at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and, as Harding
+uses these touches, they express as much of tree character
+as any mere habit of touch <i>can</i> express. But, unfortunately,
+there is another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law
+of radiation, which this and all other conventional modes
+of execution wholly lose sight of. This second law is, that
+the radiating tendency shall be carried out only as a ruling
+spirit in reconcilement with perpetual individual caprice
+on the part of the separate leaves. So that the moment a
+touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of
+the leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its
+unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group.</p>
+
+<p>131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical
+the cluster may be, nor how large or vague. You
+can hardly have a more formal one than <i>b</i> in <a href="#fig_9">Fig. 9</a>, <a href="#page047">p. 47</a>,
+nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish chestnut,
+shedding its leaves, <a href="#fig_24">Fig. 24</a>; but in either of them, even the
+general reader, unpracticed in any of the previously recommended
+exercises, must see that there are wandering lines
+mixed with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the
+wild ones: and if he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of
+these examples, he will find that neither play of hand to
+left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor
+any learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will enable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page089"></a>89</span>
+him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it; but that he
+must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
+the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and
+putting it close to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage
+against the sky, you may draw the entire outline of the
+leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever so little
+a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf
+here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
+by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
+through this confusion for the edges or dark stems
+which you really <i>can</i> see and put only those down, the result
+will be neither like <a href="#fig_9">Fig. 9</a> nor <a href="#fig_24">Fig. 24</a>, but such an interrupted
+and puzzling piece of work as <a href="#fig_25">Fig. 25</a>.<a name="FnAnchor_32" href="#Footnote_32"><span class="sp">[32]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page090"></a>90</span></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_24"><img src="images/img089a.jpg" width="400" height="331" alt="Fig. 24." title="Fig. 24." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 24.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_25"><img src="images/img089b.jpg" width="400" height="180" alt="Fig. 25." title="Fig. 25." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 25.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and
+expression of these <i>three</i> laws that all good drawing of landscape
+consists. There is, first, the organic unity; the law,
+whether of radiation, or parallelism, or concurrent action,
+which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of rocks, and clouds,
+and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the members
+subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery
+under which the separate character of each is more or less
+concealed.</p>
+
+<p>I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic
+law. This is the first distinction between good artists and
+bad artists. Your common sketcher or bad painter puts
+his leaves on the trees as if they were moss tied to sticks; he
+cannot see the lines of action or growth; he scatters the shapeless
+clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps of associated
+curves which the real clouds are following as they
+fly; and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments,
+wholly unconscious of the lines of force with which the real
+rocks have risen, or of the lines of couch in which they
+repose. On the contrary, it is the main delight of the great
+draughtsman to trace these laws of government; and his
+tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of their
+authority rather than in its denial.</p>
+
+<p>133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual
+character and liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks.
+And herein the great masters separate themselves finally
+from the inferior ones; for if the men of inferior genius
+ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individuality.
+Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep of
+foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single
+leaflet or mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough,
+in his landscape, has great feeling for masses of form and
+harmony of color; but in the detail gives nothing but meaningless
+touches; not even so much as the species of tree,
+much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible.
+Now, although both these expressions of government and
+individuality are essential to masterly work, the individuality
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page091"></a>91</span>
+is the <i>more</i> essential, and the more difficult of attainment;
+and, therefore, that attainment separates the great masters
+<i>finally</i> from the inferior ones. It is the more essential,
+because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in visible
+things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is
+a lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men
+subject to no government, actuated by no ruling principle,
+and associated by no common affection: but it would be a
+more lamentable thing still, were it possible, to see a number
+of men so oppressed into assimilation as to have no more any
+individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
+dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a
+society in which no man could help another, since none would
+be feebler than himself; no man admire another, since
+none would be stronger than himself; no man be grateful to
+another, since by none he could be relieved; no man reverence
+another, since by none he could be instructed; a society in
+which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer
+instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
+walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in
+everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in
+a speechless darkness. Therefore it is that perpetual difference,
+play, and change in groups of form are more
+essential to them even than their being subdued by some
+great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their
+perfection and their power, but the difference is needful to
+them for their life.</p>
+
+<p>134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you
+enjoy the pursuit of analogies and types, and have any
+ingenuity of judgment in discerning them, you may always
+accurately ascertain what are the noble characters in a piece
+of painting by merely considering what are the noble characters
+of man in his association with his fellows. What grace
+of manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of
+line and refinement of form are in the association of visible
+objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharpness,
+ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or conversations of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page092"></a>92</span>
+men; precisely that relative degree of advantage or harm
+there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. What
+power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or relieve
+human souls; that power precisely in the same relative degree,
+play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the
+expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness we
+can conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity of
+thought, regularity of life, simplicity of custom, and balance
+of authority; precisely that kind of goodness and greatness
+may be given to a picture by the purity of its color, the
+severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.</p>
+
+<p>135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these
+analogies too far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are
+so precise and complete, that the farther you pursue them,
+the clearer, the more certain, the more useful you will find
+them. They will not fail you in one particular, or in any
+direction of inquiry.  There is no moral vice, no moral
+virtue, which has not its <i>precise</i> prototype in the art of
+painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral
+habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection
+and discord, fretfulness, and quietness, feebleness and firmness,
+luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all other
+such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling
+of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness,
+by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable
+vices and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of
+human character and passion, from the righteous or unrighteous
+majesty of the king to the innocent or faultful simplicity
+of the shepherd boy.</p>
+
+<p>136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however,
+to the investigation of the higher branches of composition,
+matters which it would be quite useless to treat of in this
+book; and I only allude to them here, in order that you may
+understand how the utmost noblenesses of art are concerned
+in this minute work, to which I have set you in your beginning
+of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the
+most noble execution, that it is possible to express these
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page093"></a>93</span>
+varieties of individual character, on which all excellence of
+portraiture depends, whether of masses of mankind, or of
+groups of leaves.</p>
+
+<p>137. Now you will be able to understand, among other
+matters, wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the
+shortcoming, of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent
+in so far as it fondly observes, with more truth than any
+other work of the kind, the great laws of growth and action
+in trees: it fails,&mdash;and observe, not in a minor, but in the
+principal point,&mdash;because it cannot rightly render any one
+individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails,
+not from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity;
+the true drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to
+a hand which has contracted a <i>habit</i> of execution. The noble
+draughtsman draws a leaf, and stops, and says calmly,&mdash;That
+leaf is of such and such a character; I will give him
+a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers what
+his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his
+friend. This process may be as quick as lightning when
+the master is great&mdash;one of the sons of the giants; or it may
+be slow and timid: but the process is always gone through;
+no touch or form is ever added to another by a good painter
+without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
+the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf
+No. 2; you cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit
+in its teeth; or rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing
+out leaves to order and pattern, all alike. You must stop
+that hand of yours, however painfully; make it understand
+that it is not to have its own way any more, that it shall
+never more slip from one touch to another without orders;
+otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers.
+You may therefore study Harding's drawing, and take
+pleasure in it;<a name="FnAnchor_33" href="#Footnote_33"><span class="sp">[33]</span></a> and you may properly admire the dexterity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page094"></a>94</span>
+which applies the habit of the hand so well, and produces
+results on the whole so satisfactory: but you must never copy
+it; otherwise your progress will be at once arrested. The
+utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's
+manner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given
+his life's toil to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have
+other things to work at besides drawing. You would also
+incapacitate yourself from ever understanding what truly
+great work was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and
+complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand
+the one and love the other more and more, whether you
+can draw well yourself or not.</p>
+
+<p>138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third
+law above stated, that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing
+is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments, and under
+various conditions of obscurity.<a name="FnAnchor_34" href="#Footnote_34"><span class="sp">[34]</span></a> This last fact renders the
+visible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human
+nature. We have, observe, first, Subordination; secondly,
+Individuality; lastly, and this not the least essential character,
+Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every serrated
+point and shining vein which escapes or deceives our
+sight among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to
+discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents and veins of the
+human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's
+actions or spirits, which we at first think we understand,
+a closer and more loving watchfulness would show to be full
+of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_26"><img src="images/img095.jpg" width="436" height="500" alt="Fig. 26." title="Fig. 26." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 26.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>139. The expression of this final character in landscape
+has never been completely reached by any except Turner;
+nor can you hope to reach it at all until you have given much
+time to the practice of art. Only try always when you are
+sketching any object with a view to completion in light and
+shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
+definitely; preparing for the after development of the forms
+by chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page095"></a>95</span>
+a future arrangement of superimposed light and shade which
+renders the etchings of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as
+examples, and so peculiar. The character exists more or less
+in them exactly in proportion to the pains that Turner has
+taken. Thus the Æsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with
+the greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the
+near tree is etched as in <a href="#fig_26">Fig. 26</a>. The work looks at first
+like a scholar's instead of a master's; but when the light
+and shade are added, every touch falls into its place, and a
+perfect expression of grace and complexity results. Nay,
+even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be
+able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially
+where the expression is given of the way the stem loses itself
+in the leaves, are more true than the monotonous though
+graceful leaf-drawing which, before Turner's time, had been
+employed, even by the best masters, in their distant masses.
+<a href="#fig_27">Fig. 27</a> is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of the
+old wood-cuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are
+too much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page096"></a>96</span>
+too completely seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery
+in aspect, owing to the want of angles in their outline. By
+great men like Titian, this somewhat conventional structure
+was only given in haste to distant masses; and their exquisite
+delineation of the foreground, kept their conventionalism from
+degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and other
+derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere,
+and sinks gradually into scrawled work, like <a href="#fig_28">Fig. 28</a>, about
+the worst which it is possible to get into the habit of using,
+though an ignorant person might perhaps suppose it more
+"free," and therefore better than <a href="#fig_26">Fig. 26</a>. Note also, that
+in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a bough is
+wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally somewhere,
+as in <a href="#fig_26">Fig. 26</a>, just above the foliage. Very often
+the muscular action which is to be expressed by the line runs
+into the middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the
+branch at that place may be dimly seen, or not at all; and
+it is then only by the future shade that its actual shape, or
+the cause of its disappearance, will be indicated.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_27"><img src="images/img096.jpg" width="300" height="216" alt="Fig. 27." title="Fig. 27." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 27.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>140. One point more remains to be noted about trees,
+and I have done. In the minds of our ordinary water-color
+artists a distant tree seems only to be conceived as a flat
+green blot, grouping pleasantly with other masses, and giving
+cool color to the landscape, but differing no wise, in texture,
+from the blots of other shapes which these painters use to
+express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have
+drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed,
+and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page097"></a>97</span>
+the idea of their <i>softness</i> of surface. A distant tree is not a
+flat and even piece of color, but a more or less globular mass
+of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty
+vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away
+trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because
+it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface,
+but is always associated with such delicate expressions of
+form and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing.
+The penknife passed lightly <i>over</i> this careful drawing
+will do a good deal; but you must accustom yourself, from
+the beginning, to aim much at this softness in the lines of
+the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and more or
+less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,
+according to the character of tree, various modes of execution
+adapted to express its texture; but always keep this character
+of softness in your mind, and in your scope of aim; for in
+most landscapes it is the intention of Nature that the tenderness
+and transparent infinitude of her foliage should be felt,
+even at the far distance, in the most distinct opposition to
+the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or buildings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page098"></a>98</span></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_28"><img src="images/img097.jpg" width="300" height="384" alt="Fig. 28." title="Fig. 28." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 28.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little
+the modes of representing water, of which important feature
+of landscape I have hardly said anything yet.</p>
+
+<p>Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional
+lines, whose horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of
+its surface. In paintings, white dashes or bars of light are
+used for the same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But these and all other such expedients are vain and
+absurd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture in
+itself, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If
+you give the time necessary to draw these reflections, disturbing
+them here and there as you see the breeze or current
+disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you
+have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will
+give you a true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly
+as much delicate drawing as the picture above the pool;
+except only that if there be the least motion on the water,
+the horizontal lines of the images will be diffused and broken,
+while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and the oblique
+ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.</p>
+
+<p>142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only
+thing you need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of
+disturbance on the surface, as when a bird swims across it,
+or a fish rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or
+other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the <i>curves</i> of
+these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing
+of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single
+false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as
+in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result,
+always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections
+are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to
+give you a pleasant effect.<a name="FnAnchor_35" href="#Footnote_35"><span class="sp">[35]</span></a> When you are taking pains,
+work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by
+motion in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as
+may be; but when you are in a hurry, indicate the place and
+play of the images with vertical lines. The actual construction
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page099"></a>99</span>
+of a calm elongated reflection is with horizontal lines:
+but it is often impossible to draw the descending shades
+delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best
+always when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you
+are not, to use the vertical touch. When the ripples are
+large, the reflections become shaken, and must be drawn with
+bold undulatory descending lines.</p>
+
+<p>143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the
+greatest possible importance to draw the curves of the shore
+rightly. Their perspective is, if not more subtle, at least
+more stringent than that of any other lines in Nature. It
+will not be detected by the general observer, if you miss the
+curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or the perspective
+of a building;<a name="FnAnchor_36" href="#Footnote_36"><span class="sp">[36]</span></a> but every intelligent spectator will feel the
+difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or shingle,
+and a false one. <i>Absolutely</i> right, in difficult river perspectives
+seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever
+has been yet; and observe, there is NO rule for them. To
+develop the curve mathematically would require a knowledge
+of the exact quantity of water in the river, the shape of its
+bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even with
+these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician
+could solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye
+can do it; nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled
+by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected
+image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to
+know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the
+objects above the water <i>actually</i> reversed (not in appearance,
+but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in
+form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,
+whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand,
+of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100"></a>100</span>
+in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid
+objects so reversed.</p>
+
+<p>If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water,
+take a mirror, lay it horizontally on the table, put some books
+and papers upon it, and draw them and their reflections;
+moving them about, and watching how their reflections alter,
+and chiefly how their reflected colors and shades differ from
+their own colors and shades, by being brought into other
+oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
+character in water-painting than mere difference in form.</p>
+
+<p>145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water,
+you will see shadows on the bottom, or on the surface, continually
+modifying the reflections; and in a clear mountain
+stream, the most wonderful complications of effect resulting
+from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it, mingling
+with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
+water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on
+the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it
+well, making out everything that you see, and distinguishing
+each component part of the effect. There will be, first, the
+stones seen through the water, distorted always by refraction,
+so that, if the general structure of the stone shows
+straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they
+will be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the
+part of the stone above the water crosses and interferes with
+the part that is seen through it, so that you can hardly tell
+which is which; and wherever the reflection is darkest, you
+will see through the water best,<a name="FnAnchor_37" href="#Footnote_37"><span class="sp">[37]</span></a> and <i>vice versâ</i>. Then the
+real shadow of the stone crosses both these images, and where
+that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective, and
+where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of
+the water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it:
+but whether you are to see, at the same spot, most of the
+bottom of the water, or of the reflection of the objects above,
+depends on the position of the eye. The more you look down
+into the water, the better you see objects through it; the more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101"></a>101</span>
+you look along it, the eye being low, the more you see the
+reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given
+space of surface in a stream will entirely change while you
+stand still in the same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your
+head; and thus the colors with which water is painted are
+an indication of the position of the spectator, and connected
+inseparably with the perspective of the shores. The most
+beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is
+when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are
+rich reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an
+angle which exactly divides the visible colors between those
+of the stones and that of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full
+blue. The resulting purple, obtained by the blending of the
+blue and the orange-red, broken by the play of innumerable
+gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.</p>
+
+<p>146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if
+there be a strong color in the clear water itself, as of green
+or blue in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena are doubly
+involved; for the darker reflections now become of the color
+of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for instance,
+at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther,
+the color of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on
+the surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where
+the waves let light through them, at their edges; and the
+third, shown as a change of color on the objects seen through
+the water. Thus, the same wave that makes a white object
+look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or
+violet-colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure
+emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges.
+With all this, however, you are not much concerned at present,
+but I tell it you partly as a preparation for what we
+have afterwards to say about color, and partly that you may
+approach lakes and streams with reverence,<a name="FnAnchor_38" href="#Footnote_38"><span class="sp">[38]</span></a> and study them
+as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
+few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.<a name="FnAnchor_39" href="#Footnote_39"><span class="sp">[39]</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102"></a>102</span>
+Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you
+know precisely what you mean by them, as you will see by
+many of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at the
+National Gallery; but you must have painted water many
+and many a day&mdash;yes, and all day long&mdash;before you can hope
+to do anything like those.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before
+passing to the clouds, I say nothing special about <i>ground</i>.<a name="FnAnchor_40" href="#Footnote_40"><span class="sp">[40]</span></a>
+But there is too much to be said about that to admit of my
+saying it here.  You will find the principal laws of its
+structure examined at length in the fourth volume of Modern
+Painters; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
+Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with great pains,
+it will give you as much help as you need in the linear
+expression of ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement
+and succession of masses in irregular ground: much may be
+done in this way by careful watching of the perspective diminutions
+of its herbage, as well as by contour; and much
+also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree
+trunks on any undulating ground with entire carefulness,
+you will be surprised to find how much they explain of the
+form and distance of the earth on which they fall.</p>
+
+<p>148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great
+peculiarity about sky subject, as distinguished from earth
+subject;&mdash;that the clouds, not being much liable to man's
+interference, are always beautifully arranged. You cannot
+be sure of this in any other features of landscape. The rock
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103"></a>103</span>
+on which the effect of a mountain scene especially depends is
+always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord
+quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with
+a special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with
+her most delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer
+plows or builds upon. But the clouds, though we can hide
+them with smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be
+quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore gloriously
+arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable
+powers of memory you need not hope to approach the effect
+of any sky that interests you. For both its grace and its
+glow depend upon the united influence of every cloud within
+its compass: they all move and burn together in a marvelous
+harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its appointed place,
+or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not able to
+recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is impossible
+you should) precisely the form and position of all the
+clouds at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all;
+for the clouds will not fit if you draw one part of them three
+or four minutes before another.</p>
+
+<p>149. You must try therefore to help what memory you
+have, by sketching at the utmost possible speed the whole
+range of the clouds; marking, by any shorthand or symbolic
+work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as
+transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving afterwards
+such completion to the parts as your recollection will
+enable you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting
+from its general aspect; at other times, do not try to
+draw all the sky, but a single cloud: sometimes a round
+cumulus will stay five or six minutes quite steady enough to
+let you mark out his principal masses; and one or two white
+or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without
+serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier
+in drawing them, practice occasionally drawing lumps of
+cotton, which will teach you better than any other stable
+thing the kind of softness there is in clouds. For you will
+find when you have made a few genuine studies of sky, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104"></a>104</span>
+then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
+artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in
+rounding the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged
+as a heap of stones tied up in a sack, or they represent them
+not as rounded at all, but as vague wreaths of mist or flat
+lights in the sky; and think they have done enough in leaving
+a little white paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an
+irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
+solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither
+spongy nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms
+of sculptured mist; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word;
+they are not more <i>drifted</i> into form than they are <i>carved</i> into
+form, the warm air around them cutting them into shape by
+absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain limits; hence
+their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
+swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand,
+as from that of flat films or shapeless mists on the other.
+And the worst of all is, that while these forms are difficult
+enough to draw on any terms, especially considering that
+they never stay quiet, they must be drawn also at greater
+disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the force
+of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that
+if we put shade enough to express their form as positively
+as it is expressed in reality, we must make them painfully
+too dark on the dark sides. Nevertheless, they are so beautiful,
+if you in the least succeed with them, that you will hardly,
+I think, lose courage.</p>
+
+<p>150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch
+them here and there; one of the chief uses of doing this will
+be, not so much the memorandum so obtained, as the lesson
+you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-outlines.
+You will always find yourself at a loss to see where the
+outline really is; and when drawn it will always look hard
+and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square,
+however often you alter it, merely passing from the one
+fault to the other and back again, the real cloud striking an
+inexpressible mean between roundness and squareness in all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105"></a>105</span>
+its coils or battlements. I speak at present, of course, only
+of the cumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the
+upper sky cannot be outlined;&mdash;they can only be sketched,
+like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly developed
+bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy
+enough, and may be drawn with decision. When you have
+thus accustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of
+clouds, try to work out their light and shade, just as carefully
+as you do that of other things, looking exclusively for examples
+of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems,
+and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some
+examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet
+drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional.
+The clouds in the "Ben Arthur," "Source of
+Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among the best of Turner's
+storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes to
+Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.</p>
+
+<p>151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky,
+so, for the present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be
+in any haste to master the contents of my next letter. If
+you have any real talent for drawing, you will take delight
+in the discoveries of natural loveliness, which the studies I
+have already proposed will lead you into, among the fields
+and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and single-heartedly
+you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
+whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have
+discussed the subjects of the following letter at greater length,
+and in a separate work addressed to more advanced students;
+but as there are one or two things to be said on composition
+which may set the young artist's mind somewhat more at
+rest, or furnish him with defense from the urgency of ill-advisers,
+I will glance over the main heads of the matter
+here; trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my
+dear reader, from your serious work, or lead you to think me,
+in occupying part of this book with talk not altogether
+relevant to it, less entirely or</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 5em; ">Faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; "><span class="sc">J. Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23" href="#FnAnchor_23">[23]</a> It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_24" href="#FnAnchor_24">[24]</a> I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Dürer in their strength,
+that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But you may
+approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25" href="#FnAnchor_25">[25]</a> The following are the most desirable plates:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Grande Chartreuse.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Calais Pier.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Æsacus and Hesperie.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Pembury Mill.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Cephalus and Procris.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Little Devil's Bridge.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Source of Arveron.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">River Wye (<i>not</i> Wye and Severn).</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Ben Arthur.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Holy Island.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Watermill.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Clyde.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Hindhead Hill.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Lauffenburg.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Hedging and Ditching.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Blair Athol.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Dumblane Abbey.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Alps from Grenoble.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Morpeth.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, trees, and castle on the right.)</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p>If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable,
+except only the twelve following, which are quite useless:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp">1. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">2. </td> <td class="lsp">Interior of church.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">3. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing a pipe.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">4. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene with figure playing on tambourine.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">5. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen through them.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">6. </td> <td class="lsp">Fifth Plague of Egypt.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">7. </td> <td class="lsp">Tenth Plague of Egypt.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">8. </td> <td class="lsp">Rivaulx Abbey.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">9. </td> <td class="lsp">Wye and Severn.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">10. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene with castle in center, cows under trees on the left.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">11. </td> <td class="lsp">Martello Towers.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">12. </td> <td class="lsp">Calm.</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p>It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original etchings;
+if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone, for it is
+not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a very
+careful one; only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and Dumblane
+were not etched by Turner; and the etchings of those three are not good
+for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how Turner,
+apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and
+Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either conquered or brought into
+use the bad etching by his marvelous engraving. The Dumblane was,
+however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully engraved by him.
+The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a stork standing in a
+mountain stream, not in the published series; and next to it, are the
+unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to
+have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouching and finishing
+them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via Mala is
+certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest of the whole
+series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that of the aqueduct. <a href="#fig_20">Figure
+20</a>, above, is part of another fine unpublished etching, "Windsor, from
+Salt Hill." Of the published etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur,
+Æsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern;
+the three latter are the more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis,
+Jason, and Morpeth, are also very desirable.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_26" href="#FnAnchor_26">[26]</a> You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding's
+tree-drawing, a little farther on.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_27" href="#FnAnchor_27">[27]</a> The impressions vary so much in color that no brown can be specified.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28" href="#FnAnchor_28">[28]</a> You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a Liber
+print as well.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29" href="#FnAnchor_29">[29]</a> See the closing letter in this volume.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_30" href="#FnAnchor_30">[30]</a> [In 1857.]</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_31" href="#FnAnchor_31">[31]</a> If you are not acquainted with Harding's works, (an unlikely supposition,
+considering their popularity,) and cannot meet with the one in
+question, the diagrams given here will enable you to understand all that
+is needful for our purposes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_32" href="#FnAnchor_32">[32]</a> I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being
+impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a
+wood-cut.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_33" href="#FnAnchor_33">[33]</a> His lithographic sketches, those for instance in the Park and the
+Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit than the
+more ambitious engravings in his Principles and Practice of Art. There
+are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this latter work.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_34" href="#FnAnchor_34">[34]</a> On this law you do well, if you can get access to it, to look at the
+fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_35" href="#FnAnchor_35">[35]</a> See <a href="#note3">Note 3</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_36" href="#FnAnchor_36">[36]</a> The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of buildings
+is of little consequence; but he will find it so ultimately. See the
+remarks on this point in the Preface.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_37" href="#FnAnchor_37">[37]</a> See <a href="#note4">Note 4</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_38" href="#FnAnchor_38">[38]</a> See <a href="#note5">Note 5</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_39" href="#FnAnchor_39">[39]</a> It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water,
+so as to make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white basin with the
+solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or lie in it; walnut
+shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc. Then study the effects of the
+reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or submerged portions of the
+floating objects, as they appear through the blue liquid; noting especially
+how, as you lower your head and look along the surface, you see the reflections
+clearly; and how, as you raise your head, you lose the reflections,
+and see the submerged stems clearly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_40" href="#FnAnchor_40">[40]</a> Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works of
+Prout in the Appendix.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page106"></a>106</span></p>
+
+<h3>LETTER III.</h3>
+
+<h5>ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION.</h5>
+
+
+<p>152. <span class="sc">My dear Reader</span>,&mdash;If you have been obedient, and
+have hitherto done all that I have told you, I trust it has
+not been without much subdued remonstrance, and some
+serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when you were
+led by the course of your study to observe closely such things
+as are beautiful in color, you had not longed to paint them,
+and felt considerable difficulty in complying with your
+restriction to the use of black, or blue, or gray. You <i>ought</i>
+to love color, 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 color because you think painting
+a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may
+color well. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce
+anything more than pleasant helps to memory, or useful
+and suggestive sketches in color, unless you mean to be
+wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other vocations
+leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and
+masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well,
+requires your life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty
+of doing right is increased&mdash;not twofold nor threefold, but
+a thousandfold, and more&mdash;by the addition of color to your
+work. For the chances are more than a thousand to one
+against your being right both in form and color with a given
+touch: it is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend
+to that only; but when you have to attend, at the same
+moment, to a much more subtle thing than the form, the
+difficulty is strangely increased,&mdash;and multiplied almost to
+infinity by this great fact, that, while form is absolute, so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107"></a>107</span>
+that you can say at the moment you draw any line that it
+is either right or wrong, color is wholly <i>relative</i>. Every hue
+throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add
+in other places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes
+cold when you have put a hotter color in another place, and
+what was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant
+as you set other colors beside it; so that every touch must
+be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but with a
+view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is
+afterwards to be done being previously considered. You
+may easily understand that, this being so, nothing but the
+devotion of life, and great genius besides, can make a colorist.</p>
+
+<p>153. But though you cannot produce finished colored drawings
+of any value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and
+be of great use to other people, by occasionally sketching
+with a view to color only; and preserving distinct statements
+of certain color facts&mdash;as that the harvest moon at rising was
+of such and such a red, and surrounded by clouds of such
+and such a rosy gray; that the mountains at evening were in
+truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's side were
+indeed of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you
+have an eye for color; but you may presume that you have
+this, if you enjoy color.</p>
+
+<p>154. And, though of course you should always give as
+much form to your subject as your attention to its color will
+admit of, remember that the whole value of what you are
+about depends, in a colored sketch, on the color merely.
+If the color is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you
+are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how
+true the words are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly;
+and if you color at all, you must color rightly. Give up all
+the form, rather than the slightest part of the color: just as,
+if you felt yourself in danger of a false note, you would give
+up the word, and sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that
+so you could save the note. Never mind though your houses
+are all tumbling down,&mdash;though your clouds are mere blots,
+and your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108"></a>108</span>
+crooked sixpences,&mdash;so only that trees, clouds, houses, and
+sun or moon, are of the right colors. Of course, the discipline
+you have gone through will enable you to hint something of
+form, even in the fastest sweep of the brush; but do not let
+the thought of form hamper you in the least, when you begin
+to make colored memoranda. If you want the form of the
+subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its color,
+take its color, and be sure you <i>have</i> it, and not a spurious,
+treacherous, half-measured piece of mutual concession, with
+the colors all wrong, and the forms still anything but right.
+It is best to get into the habit of considering the colored work
+merely as supplementary to your other studies; making your
+careful drawings of the subject first, and then a colored
+memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful
+in hue, and entirely minding its own business. This
+principle, however, bears chiefly on large and distant subjects:
+in foregrounds and near studies, the color cannot be had
+without a good deal of definition of form. For if you do not
+map the mosses on the stones accurately, you will not have
+the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pattern, and
+then none of the colors will look right; but it always simplifies
+the work much if you are clear as to your point of aim,
+and satisfied, when necessary, to fail of all but that.</p>
+
+<p>155. Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting
+coloring, which is the beginning and end of a painter's
+craft, I should need to make this a work in three volumes
+instead of three letters, and to illustrate it in the costliest
+way. I only hope, at present, to set you pleasantly and
+profitably to work, leaving you, within the tethering of certain
+leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from the
+works of art of which every year brings a greater number
+within your reach;&mdash;and from the instruction which, every
+year, our rising artists will be more ready to give kindly,
+and better able to give wisely.</p>
+
+<p>156. And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colors, not
+moist colors: grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette
+every morning, keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109"></a>109</span>
+colors to be used in broad washes, and wash both plate and
+palette every evening, so as to be able always to get good and
+pure color when you need it; and force yourself into cleanly
+and orderly habits about your colors. The two best colorists
+of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,<a name="FnAnchor_41" href="#Footnote_41"><span class="sp">[41]</span></a> afford us, I am sorry
+to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice.
+Turner was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures
+as men can well be; but the result of this was, with Turner,
+that the colors have altered in all his pictures, and in many
+of his drawings; and the result of it with Rossetti is, that
+though his colors are safe, he has sometimes to throw aside
+work that was half done, and begin over again. William
+Hunt, of the Old Water-color, is very neat in his practice;
+so, I believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the
+leading Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there
+can be no doubt about the goodness of the advice, if it were
+only for this reason, that the more particular you are about
+your colors the more you will get into a deliberate and methodical
+habit in using them, and all true speed in coloring comes
+of this deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>157. Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your
+colors in order to pale them, instead of a quantity of water.
+You will thus be able to shape your masses more quietly,
+and play the colors about with more ease; they will not damp
+your paper so much, and you will be able to go on continually,
+and lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or delicately
+shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time.</p>
+
+<p>158. This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to
+render them opaque, constitutes body-color drawing as
+opposed to transparent-color drawing, and you will, perhaps,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110"></a>110</span>
+have it often said to you that this body-color is "illegitimate."
+It is just as legitimate as oil-painting, being, so far as handling
+is concerned, the same process, only without its uncleanliness,
+its unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience; for oil will
+not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects
+of atmosphere without tenfold labor. And if you hear it said
+that the body-color looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very
+likely, think so yourself, be yet assured of this, that though
+certain effects of glow and transparencies of gloom are not
+to be reached without transparent color, those glows and
+glooms are <i>not</i> the noblest aim of art. After many years'
+study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in Italy,
+and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am
+now entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to
+be done in art must be done in dead color. The habit of
+depending on varnish or on lucid tints for transparency,
+makes the painter comparatively lose sight of the nobler
+translucence which is obtained by breaking various colors
+amidst each other: and even when, as by Correggio, exquisite
+play of hue is joined with exquisite transparency, the delight
+in the depth almost always leads the painter into mean and
+false chiaroscuro; it leads him to like dark backgrounds
+instead of luminous ones,<a name="FnAnchor_42" href="#Footnote_42"><span class="sp">[42]</span></a> and to enjoy, in general, quality
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111"></a>111</span>
+of color more than grandeur of composition, and confined
+light rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest
+thoughts of the greatest men have always, so far as I remember,
+been reached in dead color, and the noblest oil pictures of
+Tintoret and Veronese are those which are likest frescoes.</p>
+
+<p>159. Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a
+little chalky and coarse-looking body-color is, in a sketch,
+infinitely liker Nature than transparent color: the bloom and
+mist of distance are accurately and instantly represented by
+the film of opaque blue (<i>quite</i> accurately, I think, by nothing
+else); and for ground, rocks, and buildings, the earthy
+and solid surface is, of course, always truer than the most
+finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints
+can ever be.</p>
+
+<p>160. Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution
+you. All kinds of color are equally illegitimate, if you think
+they will allow you to alter at your pleasure, or blunder at
+your ease. There is <i>no</i> vehicle or method of color which
+admits of alteration or repentance; you must be right at once,
+or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle bullet in
+your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong,
+as to recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good color
+in oil, water, or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence
+spoken to me by Mulready: "Know what you have to do."
+The process may be a long one, perhaps: you may have to
+ground with one color; to touch it with fragments of a second;
+to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth into the
+interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and
+to re-enforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have
+one, or ten, or twenty processes to go through, you must go
+<i>straight</i> through them knowingly and foreseeingly all the
+way; and if you get the thing once wrong, there is no hope
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112"></a>112</span>
+for you but in washing or scraping boldly down to the white
+ground, and beginning again.</p>
+
+<p>161. The drawing in body-color will tend to teach you all
+this, more than any other method, and above all it will prevent
+you from falling into the pestilent habit of sponging to get
+texture; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-color
+school of art. There are sometimes places in which a
+skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain
+conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could otherwise;
+and sometimes a skillfully rased piece of paper will,
+in the midst of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose
+of chalky body-color in representing the surfaces of rocks or
+building. But artifices of this kind are always treacherous
+in a tyro's hands, tempting him to trust in them: and you
+had better always work on white or gray paper as smooth as
+silk;<a name="FnAnchor_43" href="#Footnote_43"><span class="sp">[43]</span></a> and never disturb the surface of your color or paper,
+except finally to scratch out the very highest lights if you are
+using transparent colors.</p>
+
+<p>162. I have said above that body-color drawing will teach
+you the use of color better than working with merely transparent
+tints; but this is not because the process is an easier
+one, but because it is a more complete one, and also because
+it involves some working with transparent tints in the best
+way. You are not to think that because you use body-color
+you may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get
+out of it. But you are to avail yourself of the characters of
+your material, which enable you most nearly to imitate the
+processes of Nature. Thus, suppose you have a red rocky
+cliff to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You paint
+your cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such
+a tint (and here is a great part of the skill needed) that when
+it is laid over the red, in the thickness required for the effect
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"></a>113</span>
+of the mist, the warm rock-color showing through the blue
+cloud-color, may bring it to exactly the hue you want (your
+upper tint, therefore, must be mixed colder than you want
+it); then you lay it on, varying it as you strike it, getting
+the forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done,
+with exquisite quality of color, from the warm tint's showing
+through and between the particles of the other. When it is
+dry, you may add a little color to retouch the edges where
+they want shape, or heighten the lights where they want
+roundness, or put another tone over the whole: but you can
+take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by
+any untoward accident mix the under and upper colors
+together, all is lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from
+the ground again if you like, or throw it into the fire if you
+like. But do not waste time in trying to mend it.<a name="FnAnchor_44" href="#Footnote_44"><span class="sp">[44]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>163. This discussion of the relative merits of transparent
+and opaque color has, however, led us a little beyond the point
+where we should have begun; we must go back to our palette,
+if you please. Get a cake of each of the hard colors named
+in the note below<a name="FnAnchor_45" href="#Footnote_45"><span class="sp">[45]</span></a> and try experiments on their simple combinations,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114"></a>114</span>
+by mixing each color with every other. If you like
+to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared piece
+of pasteboard, and put the pure colors in columns at the top
+and side; the mixed tints being given at the intersections,
+thus (the letters standing for colors):</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="70%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;b</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;c</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;d</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;e</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;f</td>
+<td class="lsp">etc.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">a a b</td>  <td class="lsp">a c</td>  <td class="lsp">a d</td>  <td class="lsp">a e</td>  <td class="lsp">a f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">b &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">b c</td>  <td class="lsp">b d</td>  <td class="lsp">b e</td>  <td class="lsp">b f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">c &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">c d</td>  <td class="lsp">c e</td>  <td class="lsp">c f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">d &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">d e</td>  <td class="lsp">d f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">e &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">e f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">etc.</td> <td colspan="5">&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p>This will give you some general notion of the characters
+of mixed tints of two colors only, and it is better in practice
+to confine yourself as much as possible to these, and to get
+more complicated colors, either by putting the third <i>over</i> the
+first blended tint, or by putting the third into its interstices.
+Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the effects that
+colors have on each other when thus put over, or beside, each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>164. When you have got a little used to the principal
+combinations, place yourself at a window which the sun
+does not shine in at, commanding some simple piece of landscape:
+outline this landscape roughly; then take a piece of
+white cardboard, cut out a hole in it about the size of a large
+pea; and supposing <span class="sc">R</span> is the room, <i>a d</i> the window, and you
+are sitting at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_29">Fig. 29</a>, hold this cardboard a little outside of
+the window, upright, and in the direction <i>b d</i>, parallel to
+the side of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch more
+light, as at <i>a d</i>, never turned as at <i>c d</i>, or the paper will be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115"></a>115</span>
+dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the
+circular hole. Match the colors of each important bit as
+nearly as you can, mixing your tints with white, beside the
+aperture. When matched, put a touch of the same tint at
+the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark tree color,"
+"hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash
+the tint away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will
+be ready to match another piece of the landscape.<a name="FnAnchor_46" href="#Footnote_46"><span class="sp">[46]</span></a> When
+you have got the colors of the principal masses thus indicated,
+lay on a piece of each in your sketch in its right place, and
+then proceed to complete the sketch in harmony with them,
+by your eye.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_29"><img src="images/img115.jpg" width="250" height="257" alt="Fig. 29." title="Fig. 29." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 29.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>165. In the course of your early experiments, you will be
+much struck by two things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy
+of light in sky and in sunlighted things; and the second,
+that among the tints which you can imitate, those which you
+thought the darkest will continually turn out to be in reality
+the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us, under
+ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116"></a>116</span>
+sight; thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be
+thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us; because
+we know by experience that the peculiar color they exhibit,
+at that distance, is the <i>sign</i> of darkness of foliage. But when
+we try them through the cardboard, the near oak will be
+found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar,
+perhaps, pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and gray
+in Nature is, by the way, another somewhat surprising
+subject of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>166. Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints,
+you may proceed to fill up your sketch; in doing which
+observe these following particulars:</p>
+
+<p>(1.) Many portions of your subject appeared through the
+aperture in the paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted
+grass, etc. Leave these portions, for the present,
+white; and proceed with the parts of which you can match
+the tints.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you
+must have observed how many changes of hue took place over
+small spaces. In filling up your work, try to educate your
+eye to perceive these differences of hue without the help of
+the cardboard, and lay them deliberately, like a mosaic-worker,
+as separate colors, preparing each carefully on your
+palette, and laying it as if it were a patch of colored cloth, cut
+out, to be fitted neatly by its edge to the next patch; so that
+the <i>fault</i> of your work may be, not a slurred or misty look,
+but a patched bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out
+with scissors. For instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch
+tree, there will be probably white high lights, then a pale
+rosy gray round them on the light side, then a (probably
+greenish) deeper gray on the dark side, varied by reflected
+colors, and, over all, rich black strips of bark and brown
+spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray, leaving white for the
+high lights <i>and for the spots of moss</i>, and not touching the
+dark side. Then lay the gray for the dark side, fitting it
+well up to the rosy gray of the light, leaving also in this
+darker gray the white paper in the places for the black and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117"></a>117</span>
+brown moss; then prepare the moss colors separately for each
+spot, and lay each in the white place left for it. Not one
+grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights,
+must be visible when the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass,
+so cunningly must you fit the edges to each
+other. Finally, take your background colors, and put them
+on each side of the tree trunk, fitting them carefully to its
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>167. Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you,
+if you had not learned to draw first, and could not now draw
+a good outline for the stem, much less terminate a color
+mass in the outline you wanted?</p>
+
+<p>Your work will look very odd for some time, when you
+first begin to paint in this way, and before you can modify it,
+as I shall tell you presently how; but never mind; it is of
+the greatest possible importance that you should practice this
+separate laying on of the hues, for all good coloring finally
+depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and sometimes
+desirable, to lay one color and form boldly over another: thus,
+in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large
+pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through
+the interstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians constantly
+lay their blue ground first, and then, having let it
+dry, strike the golden brown over it in the form of the leaf,
+leaving the under blue to shine through the gold, and subdue
+it to the olive-green they want. But in the most precious and
+perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round
+it; and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your
+result, it is equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in
+your laying the color. Either your ground must be laid
+firmly first, and then your upper color struck upon it in perfect
+form, forever, thenceforward, unalterable; or else the two
+colors must be individually put in their places, and led up
+to each other till they meet at their appointed border, equally,
+thenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves
+absolute decision. If you once begin to slur, or change,
+or sketch, or try this way and that with your color, it is all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118"></a>118</span>
+over with it and with you. You will continually see bad
+copyists trying to imitate the Venetians, by daubing their
+colors about, and retouching, and finishing, and softening:
+when every touch and every added hue only lead them farther
+into chaos. There is a dog between two children in a Veronese
+in the Louvre, which gives the copyists much employment.
+He has a dark ground behind him, which Veronese
+has painted first, and then when it was dry, or nearly so,
+struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with some
+half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and
+forever. Had one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would
+have been wrong forever; no retouching could have mended
+it. The poor copyists daub in first some background, and
+then some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then
+the hair; work for hours at it, expecting it always to come
+right to-morrow&mdash;"when it is finished." They <i>may</i> work
+for centuries at it, and they will never do it. If they can
+do it with Veronese's allowance of work, half a dozen sweeps
+of the hand over the dark background, well; if not, they may
+ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right, and get
+true answer from him&mdash;on Launce's conditions: "If he say
+'ay,' it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and
+say nothing, it will."</p>
+
+<p>168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure
+that however large it may be, or however small, it shall be
+gradated. No color exists in Nature under ordinary circumstances
+without gradation. If you do not see this, it is the
+fault of your inexperience: you will see it in due time, if
+you practice enough. But in general you may see it at once.
+In the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray <i>must</i> be gradated
+by the roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded
+side; similarly the shaded side is gradated by reflected light.
+Accordingly, whether by adding water, or white paint, or
+by unequal force of touch (this you will do at pleasure,
+according to the texture you wish to produce), you must, in
+every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than
+another, and get an even gradation between the two depths.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119"></a>119</span>
+This is very like laying down a formal law or recipe for you;
+but you will find it is merely the assertion of a natural fact.
+It is not indeed physically impossible to meet with an
+ungradated piece of color, but it is so supremely improbable,
+that you had better get into the habit of asking yourself
+invariably, when you are going to copy a tint&mdash;not "Is that
+gradated?" but "Which way is that gradated?" and at least
+in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, you will be able
+to answer decisively after a careful glance, though the gradation
+may have been so subtle that you did not see it at first.
+And it does not matter how small the touch of color may
+be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one
+part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for
+it is not merely because the natural fact is so, that your color
+should be gradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the
+color itself depends more on this than on any other of its
+qualities, for gradation is to colors just what curvature is to
+lines, both being felt to be beautiful by the pure instinct of
+every human mind, and both, considered as types, expressing
+the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul
+itself. What the difference is in mere beauty between a
+gradated and ungradated color, may be seen easily by laying
+an even tint of rose-color on paper, and putting a rose leaf
+beside it. The victorious beauty of the rose as compared
+with other flowers, depends wholly on the delicacy and
+quantity of its color gradations, all other flowers being either
+less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or
+less tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.</p>
+
+<p>169. (4.) But observe, it is not enough in general that
+color should be gradated by being made merely paler or darker
+at one place than another. Generally color changes as it
+diminishes, and is not merely darker at one spot, but also
+purer at one spot than anywhere else. It does not in the least
+follow that the darkest spots should be the purest; still less
+so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often the two
+gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one
+direction from paleness to darkness, another in another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120"></a>120</span>
+direction from purity to dullness, but there will almost
+always be both of them, however reconciled; and you must
+never be satisfied with a piece of color until you have got
+both: that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on must
+be <i>quite</i> blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot;
+and must be gradated from that into less pure blue,&mdash;grayish
+blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue,&mdash;over all the rest
+of the space it occupies. And this you must do in one of
+three ways: either, while the color is wet, mix with it the
+color which is to subdue it, adding gradually a little more
+and a little more; or else, when the color is quite dry, strike
+a gradated touch of another color over it, leaving only a
+point of the first tint visible; or else, lay the subduing tints
+on in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board.
+Of each of these methods I have something to tell
+you separately; but that is distinct from the subject of
+gradation, which I must not quit without once more pressing
+upon you the preëminent necessity of introducing it everywhere.
+I have profound dislike of anything like habit of
+hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted
+to encourage you to get into a habit of never touching paper
+with color, without securing a gradation. You will not, in
+Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six or seven feet long
+by four or five high, find one spot of color as large as a
+grain of wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice,
+that brilliancy of hue, and vigor of light, and even the aspect
+of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this
+character alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting
+far more from <i>equality</i> of color than from nature of color.
+Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ocher out of a
+gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will
+paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate
+my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red
+of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and
+amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture,
+if you keep the masses of those colors unbroken in purity,
+and unvarying in depth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page121"></a>121</span></p>
+
+<p>170. (5.) Next, note the three processes by which gradation
+and other characters are to be obtained:</p>
+
+<p>A. Mixing while the color is wet.</p>
+
+<p>You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the
+hues in separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues
+together as you lay them on: but the separate masses are to
+be laid, when colors distinctly oppose each other at a given
+limit; the hues to be mixed, when they palpitate one through
+the other, or fade one into the other. It is better to err a
+little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint the dark
+and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in
+reality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from
+the light, gradually one into the other; and, after being laid
+separately on, will need some farther touching to harmonize
+them: but they do so in a very narrow space, marked distinctly
+all the way up the trunk, and it is easier and safer, therefore,
+to keep them separate at first. Whereas it often happens
+that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one
+being continued well through the other, and playing in the
+midst of it: blue and green often do so in water; blue and
+gray, or purple and scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such
+instances the most beautiful and truthful results may be
+obtained by laying one color into the other while wet; judging
+wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with the
+brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color;
+only observe, never mix in this way two <i>mixtures</i>; let the
+color you lay into the other be always a simple, not a
+compound tint.</p>
+
+<p>171. B. Laying one color over another.</p>
+
+<p>If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and after it is
+quite dry, strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it,
+you will obtain a much more brilliant red than by mixing the
+carmine and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark color
+first, and strike a little blue or white body-color lightly
+over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by mixing
+the color and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
+artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122"></a>122</span>
+have you trust much to them: they are apt to make you think
+too much of quality of color. I should like you to depend
+on little more than the dead colors, simply laid on, only
+observe always this, that the <i>less</i> color you do the work with,
+the better it will always be:<a name="FnAnchor_47" href="#Footnote_47"><span class="sp">[47]</span></a> so that if you had laid a red
+color, and you want a purple one above, do not mix the purple
+on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red,
+but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly
+over the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus
+produce the required purple; and if you want a green hue
+over a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue,
+but a <i>little</i> yellow, and so on, always bringing the under
+color into service as far as you possibly can. If, however,
+the color beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have to lay
+on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must
+either remove the required parts of the under color daintily
+first with your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white
+over it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the
+white with the upper color. This is better, in general, than
+laying the upper color itself so thick as to conquer the ground,
+which, in fact, if it be a transparent color, you cannot do.
+Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees
+over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places
+left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first
+in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ocher, than to
+mix the sienna and white; though, of course, the process is
+longer and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms
+of touches required are very delicate, the after glazing is
+impossible. You must then mix the warm color thick at once,
+and so use it: and this is often necessary for delicate grasses,
+and such other fine threads of light in foreground work.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page123"></a>123</span></p>
+
+<p>172. C. Breaking one color in small points through or over
+another.</p>
+
+<p>This is the most important of all processes in good modern<a name="FnAnchor_48" href="#Footnote_48"><span class="sp">[48]</span></a>
+oil and water-color painting, but you need not hope to attain
+very great skill in it. To do it well is very laborious, and
+requires such skill and delicacy of hand as can only be
+acquired by unceasing practice. But you will find advantage
+in noting the following points:</p>
+
+<p>173. (<i>a.</i>) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or
+rippled water, or broken clouds, much may be done by
+touches or crumbling dashes of rather dry color, with other
+colors afterwards put cunningly into the interstices.  The
+more you practice this, when the subject evidently calls for
+it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of color.
+The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of
+separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms
+of color in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note,
+in filling up minute interstices of this kind, that if you
+want the color you fill them with to show brightly, it is better
+to put a rather positive point of it, with a little white left
+beside or round it in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of
+the color over the whole interstice. Yellow or orange will
+hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show brightly
+in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.</p>
+
+<p>174. (<i>b.</i>) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed
+portions of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the
+uppermost color in rather vigorous small touches, like finely
+chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint,
+for two reasons: the first, that the play of the two colors
+together is pleasant to the eye; the second, that much expression
+of form may be got by wise administration of the upper
+dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines
+of, or broken crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you
+choose; in clouds they may indicate the direction of the rain,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page124"></a>124</span>
+the roll and outline of the cloud masses; and in water, the
+minor waves. All noble effects of dark atmosphere are got
+in good water-color drawing by these two expedients, interlacing
+the colors, or retouching the lower one with fine darker
+drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark
+atmospheric effect is barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though
+it is often useful for passages of delicate atmospheric light.</p>
+
+<p>175. (<i>c.</i>) When you have time, practice the production
+of mixed tints by interlaced touches of the pure colors out
+of which they are formed, and use the process at the parts
+of your sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious
+effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old
+Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make
+frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting
+the flower completely, but laying the ground color of one
+petal, and painting the spots on it with studious precision:
+a series of single petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc.,
+numbered with proper reference to their position in the
+flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides
+those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of
+the spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and
+the like; and work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots
+themselves with minute grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise
+you will never get their richness or bloom. You will
+be surprised to find as you do this, first, the universality of
+the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon; secondly,
+that Nature is just as economical of <i>her</i> fine colors as I
+have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way
+she paints, that her colors cost her something enormous; she
+will only give you a single pure touch, just where the petal
+turns into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and
+under the petal all is subdued, even in the showiest flower.
+What you thought was bright blue is, when you look close,
+only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the
+world at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in
+the center of it. And so with all her colors. Sometimes I
+have really thought her miserliness intolerable: in a gentian,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125"></a>125</span>
+for instance, the way she economizes her ultramarine down
+in the bell is a little too bad.<a name="FnAnchor_49" href="#Footnote_49"><span class="sp">[49]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now,
+that, for the sake of students, my tax should not be laid on
+black or on white pigments; but if you mean to be a colorist,
+you must lay a tax on them yourself when you begin to use
+true color; that is to say, you must use them little, and make
+of them much. There is no better test of your color tones
+being good, than your having made the white in your picture
+precious, and the black conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean
+merely glittering or brilliant: it is easy to scratch white seagulls
+out of black clouds, and dot clumsy foliage with chalky
+dew; but when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely
+delicious,&mdash;tender as well as bright,&mdash;like inlaid mother
+of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to
+seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as
+a space of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing
+of the colors. This effect you can only reach by general
+depth of middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any
+white to exist except where you need it, and by keeping the
+white itself subdued by gray, except at a few points of chief
+luster.</p>
+
+<p>178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous.
+However small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the
+eye, otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All
+the ordinary shadows should be of some <i>color</i>,&mdash;never black,
+nor approaching black, they should be evidently and always
+of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange
+among them; never occurring except in a black object, or in
+small points indicative of intense shade in the very center
+of masses of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative gray,
+however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold;
+but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes
+spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator
+should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126"></a>126</span>
+enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold color
+and the white which it relieves. Of all the great colorists
+Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His
+black is more precious than most other people's crimson.</p>
+
+<p>179. It is not, however, only white and black which you
+must make valuable; you must give rare worth to every
+color you use; but the white and black ought to separate themselves
+quaintly from the rest, while the other colors should be
+continually passing one into the other, being all evidently
+companions in the same gay world; while the white, black,
+and neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof in the midst
+of them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your
+purple into blue, and your blue into green, but you must
+not melt any of them into black. You should, however,
+try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and
+this especially by never using a grain more than will just do
+the work, and giving each hue the highest value by opposition.
+All fine coloring, like fine drawing, is delicate; and so
+delicate that if, at last, you <i>see</i> the color you are putting on,
+you are putting on too much. You ought to feel a change
+wrought in the general tone, by touches of color which
+individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom
+of any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it,
+that atom hurts it.</p>
+
+<p>180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are
+<i>odd</i> colors. You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work
+ten minutes before you know what to call it. You thought
+it was brown, presently you feel that it is red; next that there
+is, somehow, yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is
+blue in it. If you try to copy it you will always find your
+color too warm or too cold&mdash;no color in the box will seem to
+have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it
+were laid at a single touch with a single color.</p>
+
+<p>181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general,
+if you cannot choose and harmonize them by instinct, you
+will never do it at all. If you need examples of utterly
+harsh and horrible color, you may find plenty given in treatises
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127"></a>127</span>
+upon coloring, to illustrate the laws of harmony; and
+if you want to color beautifully, color as best pleases yourself
+at <i>quiet times</i>, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as if
+it were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the
+color may be pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful.
+Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much
+at simple flowers&mdash;dog-roses, wood-hyacinths, violets, poppies,
+thistles, heather, and such like,&mdash;as Nature arranges them in
+the woods and fields. If ever any scientific person tells you
+that two colors are "discordant," make a note of the two
+colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have
+actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant;
+the two colors which Nature seems to intend never to be
+separated, and never to be felt, either of them, in its full
+beauty without the other!&mdash;a peacock's neck, or a blue sky
+through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights
+through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds
+at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good
+eye for colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature
+puts purple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and
+blue, yellow and neutral gray, and the like; and how she
+strikes these color-concords for general tones, and then works
+into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and you will
+gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and
+beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you
+enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a certain
+point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are
+certain to paint them wrong. If color does not give you
+intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it, you are only
+tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color,
+whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.</p>
+
+<p>182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend
+much on your state of health and right balance of mind;
+when you are fatigued or ill you will not see colors well,
+and when you are ill-tempered you will not choose them well:
+thus, though not infallibly a test of character in individuals,
+color power is a great sign of mental health in nations;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128"></a>128</span>
+when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring
+always gets dull.<a name="FnAnchor_50" href="#Footnote_50"><span class="sp">[50]</span></a> You must also take great care not to be
+misled by affected talk about colors from people who have
+not the gift of it: numbers are eager and voluble about it
+who probably never in all their lives received one genuine
+color-sensation. The modern religionists of the school of
+Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and chalk,
+and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
+strawberries and plums.</p>
+
+<p>183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea
+that color can help or display <i>form</i>; color<a name="FnAnchor_51" href="#Footnote_51"><span class="sp">[51]</span></a> always disguises
+form, and is meant to do so.</p>
+
+<p>184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on
+color that "warm colors" (reds and yellows) "approach,"
+or express nearness, and "cold colors" (blue and gray)
+"retire," or express distance.  So far is this from being
+the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so great
+as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colors, as
+such, are <span class="sc">ABSOLUTELY</span> inexpressive respecting distance. It
+is their quality (as depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses
+distance, not their tint. A blue bandbox set on the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129"></a>129</span>
+shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch farther off,
+but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always
+appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in
+reality. It is quite true that in certain objects, blue is a <i>sign</i>
+of distance; but that is not because blue is a retiring color,
+but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any
+warm color which has not strength of light enough to pierce
+the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue is no more,
+on this account, a "retiring color," than brown is a retiring
+color, because, when stones are seen through brown water,
+the deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow
+is a retiring color, because, when objects are seen through a
+London fog, the farther off they are the yellower they look.
+Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, can have, as such, the
+smallest power of expressing either nearness or distance: they
+express them only under the peculiar circumstances which
+render them at the moment, or in that place, <i>signs</i> of nearness
+or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of
+nearness, for if you put the orange a great way off, its color
+will not look so bright; but vivid orange in sky is a sign of
+distance, because you cannot get the color of orange in a cloud
+near you. So purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of
+nearness, because the closer you look at them the more purple
+you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance,
+because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or
+gray. It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender
+or pale color will more or less express distance, and a powerful
+or dark color nearness; but even this is not always so.
+Heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple
+near, and an intense and dark purple far away; the rose
+color of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet,
+deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green
+of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but
+intense as an emerald in the sunstreak six miles from shore.
+And in any case, when the foreground is in strong light, with
+much water about it, or white surface, casting intense reflections,
+all its colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130"></a>130</span>
+faint; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve
+the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue
+green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is
+quite hopeless and absurd to expect any help from laws of
+"aërial perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set
+them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and <i>never</i>
+alter a color because it won't look in its right place. Put
+the color strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it
+be faint, though close to you. Why should you suppose that
+Nature always means you to know exactly how far one thing
+is from another? She certainly intends you always to enjoy
+her coloring, but she does not wish you always to measure
+her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you
+painted the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000
+miles of distance in "aërial perspective."</p>
+
+<p>185. There is, however, I think, one law about distance,
+which has some claims to be considered a constant one:
+namely, that dullness and heaviness of color are more or less
+indicative of nearness. All distant color is <i>pure</i> color: it
+may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor
+soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any
+earthy or imperfect color, purify or harmonize it; hence a
+bad colorist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance.
+I do not of course mean that you are to use bad colors in
+your foreground by way of making it come forward; but
+only that a failure in color, there, will not put it out of its
+place; while a failure in color in the distance will at once
+do away with its remoteness; your dull-colored foreground
+will still be a foreground, though ill-painted; but your ill-painted
+distance will not be merely a dull distance,&mdash;it will
+be no distance at all.</p>
+
+<p>186. I have only one thing more to advise you, namely,
+never to color petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed,
+be able, if you attend properly to your coloring, to get anything
+like the quantity of form you could in a chiaroscuro
+sketch; nevertheless, if you do not dash or rush at your work,
+nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be satisfactory.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131"></a>131</span>
+An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness
+over the course of the whole study, may just make the
+difference between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly
+and obscure one. If you determine well beforehand what
+outline each piece of color is to have, and, when it is on the
+paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into
+the form required; and then, after it is dry, consider
+thoroughly what touches are needed to complete it, before
+laying one of them on; you will be surprised to find how
+masterly the work will soon look, as compared with a hurried
+or ill-considered sketch. In no process that I know of&mdash;least
+of all in sketching&mdash;can time be really gained by
+precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in
+all sorts of ways; for not only truth of form, but force of
+light, is always added by an intelligent and shapely laying
+of the shadow colors. You may often make a simple flat tint,
+rightly gradated and edged, express a complicated piece of
+subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss cottages,
+for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows,
+and general character of shingly eaves, are expressed in <a href="#fig_30">Fig.
+30</a> with one tint of gray, and a few dispersed spots and lines
+of it; all of which you ought to be able to lay on without
+more than thrice dipping your brush, and without a single
+touch after the tint is dry.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_30"><img src="images/img131.jpg" width="400" height="271" alt="Fig. 30." title="Fig. 30." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 30.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>187. Here, then, for I cannot without colored illustrations
+tell you more, I must leave you to follow out the subject
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132"></a>132</span>
+for yourself, with such help as you may receive from the
+water-color drawings accessible to you; or from any of the
+little treatises on their art which have been published lately
+by our water-color painters.<a name="FnAnchor_52" href="#Footnote_52"><span class="sp">[52]</span></a> But do not trust much to
+works of this kind. You may get valuable hints from them
+as to mixture of colors; and here and there you will find a
+useful artifice or process explained; but nearly all such books
+are written only to help idle amateurs to a meretricious skill,
+and they are full of precepts and principles which may,
+for the most part, be interpreted by their <i>precise</i> negatives,
+and then acted upon with advantage. Most of them praise
+boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is
+caution;&mdash;advise velocity, when the first condition of success
+is deliberation;&mdash;and plead for generalization, when all the
+foundations of power must be laid in knowledge of speciality.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>188. And now, in the last place, I have a few things to
+tell you respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate
+art,&mdash;<span class="sc">Composition</span>. For though it is quite unnecessary for
+you yet awhile to attempt it, and it <i>may</i> be inexpedient for
+you to attempt it at all, you ought to know what it means,
+and to look for and enjoy it in the art of others.</p>
+
+<p>Composition means, literally and simply, putting several
+things together, so as to make <i>one</i> thing out of them; the
+nature and goodness of which they all have a share in producing.
+Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes
+together in certain relations; a poet composes a poem, by
+putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter
+a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colors in pleasant
+order.</p>
+
+<p>In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the
+result of composition. A pavior cannot be said to compose
+the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the
+sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133"></a>133</span>
+It is the essence of composition that everything should be in
+a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in
+that part, advantageously for everything that is connected
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>189. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the
+type, in the arts of mankind, of the Providential government
+of the world.<a name="FnAnchor_53" href="#Footnote_53"><span class="sp">[53]</span></a> It is an exhibition, in the order given to notes,
+or colors, or forms, of the advantage of perfect fellowship,
+discipline, and contentment.  In a well-composed air, no
+note, however short or low, can be spared, but the least is
+as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is
+tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its
+duration: no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others
+prepare for, and are benefited by, its exaltation: no note,
+however low, is overpowered; the others prepare for, and
+sympathize with, its humility: and the result is, that each
+and every note has a value in the position assigned to it,
+which, by itself, it never possessed, and of which, by separation
+from the others, it would instantly be deprived.</p>
+
+<p>190. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought
+enhances the value of those which precede and follow it;
+and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so
+much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the
+same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly recognize it.</p>
+
+<p>Much more in a great picture; every line and color is so
+arranged as to advantage the rest. None are inessential,
+however slight; and none are independent, however forcible.
+It is not enough that they truly represent natural objects;
+but they must fit into certain places, and gather into certain
+harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red chimney
+of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but
+that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the
+pieces of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we
+ought to see that the work is masterly, merely by the positions
+and quantities of these patches of green, red, and blue, even
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134"></a>134</span>
+at a distance which renders it perfectly impossible to determine
+what the colors represent: or to see whether the red is a
+chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the blue is
+smoke, sky, or water.</p>
+
+<p>191. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in
+all we do, of the great laws of Divine government and human
+polity, that composition in the arts should strongly affect
+every order of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless.
+Hence the popular delight in rhythm and meter, and in simple
+musical melodies. But it is also appointed that <i>power</i> of
+composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute
+of great intellect. All men can more or less copy what they
+see, and, more or less, remember it: powers of reflection and
+investigation are also common to us all, so that the decision
+of inferiority in these rests only on questions of <i>degree</i>. A.
+has a better memory than B., and C. reflects more profoundly
+than D. But the gift of composition is not given <i>at all</i> to
+more than one man in a thousand; in its highest range, it
+does not occur above three or four times in a century.</p>
+
+<p>192. It follows, from these general truths, that it is
+impossible to give rules which will enable you to compose.
+You might much more easily receive rules to enable you to be
+witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would
+cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were possible
+to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not
+have been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by
+rule, Titian and Veronese would be ordinary men.  The
+essence of composition lies precisely in the fact of its being
+unteachable, in its being the operation of an individual mind
+of range and power exalted above others.</p>
+
+<p>But though no one can <i>invent</i> by rule, there are some
+simple laws of arrangement which it is well for you to know,
+because, though they will not enable you to produce a good
+picture, they will often assist you to set forth what goodness
+may be in your work in a more telling way than you could
+have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of
+good composers, you may better understand the grasp of their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135"></a>135</span>
+imagination, and the power it possesses over their materials.
+I shall briefly state the chief of these laws.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.</p>
+
+<p>193. The great object of composition being always to
+secure unity; that is, to make out of many things one whole;
+the first mode in which this can be effected is, by determining
+that <i>one</i> feature shall be more important than all the
+rest, and that the others shall group with it in subordinate
+positions.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_31"><img src="images/img135.jpg" width="400" height="163" alt="Fig. 31." title="Fig. 31." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 31.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus
+the group of two leaves, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_31">Fig. 31</a>, is unsatisfactory, because
+it has no leading leaf; but that at <i>b</i> <i>is</i> prettier, because it has
+a head or master leaf; and <i>c</i> more satisfactory still, because
+the subordination of the other members to this head leaf is
+made more manifest by their gradual loss of size as they
+fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we have in the
+Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.</p>
+
+<p>194. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light
+larger and brighter than the other lights, or one figure more
+prominent than the other figures, or one mass of color
+dominant over all the other masses; and in general you will
+find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that there shall
+be one light on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the sky,
+which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom,
+above all others. But the observance of the rule is often so
+cunningly concealed by the great composers, that its force
+is hardly at first traceable; and you will generally find they
+are vulgar pictures in which the law is strikingly manifest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page136"></a>136</span></p>
+
+<p>195. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody:
+for instance, in such phrases as this&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1" style="padding-bottom: 1.5em; ">
+    <a name="fig_mn1"><img src="images/img136a.jpg" width="600" height="123" alt="Musical notes 1." title="Musical notes 1." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p class="noind">one note (here the upper <span class="sc">G</span>) rules the whole passage, and
+has the full energy of it concentrated in itself. Such
+passages, corresponding to completely subordinated compositions
+in painting, are apt to be wearisome if often repeated.
+But, in such a phrase as this&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1" style="padding-bottom: 1.5em; ">
+    <a name="fig_mn2"><img src="images/img136b.jpg" width="600" height="222" alt="Musical notes 2." title="Musical notes 2." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p class="noind">it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The
+A in the last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very
+equal current of power running through the whole; and such
+passages rarely weary. And this principle holds through
+vast scales of arrangement; so that in the grandest compositions,
+such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or
+Raphaels Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal
+figure; and very commonly the figure which is really chief
+does not catch the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be
+more and more conspicuous as we gaze. Thus in Titian's
+grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the figure meant
+to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose portrait
+it was evidently the painter's object to make as interesting
+as possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a
+drifting banner, and many figures more, occupy the center
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137"></a>137</span>
+of the picture, and first catch the eye; little by little we are
+led away from them to a gleam of pearly light in the lower
+corner, and find that, from the head which it shines upon,
+we can turn our eyes no more.</p>
+
+<p>196. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design
+are more or less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an
+easier way of explaining them to analyze one composition
+thoroughly, than to give instances from various works. I
+shall therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which will
+allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate
+each law by it as we proceed.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_32"><img src="images/img137.jpg" width="550" height="365" alt="Fig. 32." title="Fig. 32." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 32.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a> is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole
+subject; the old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the
+town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left.
+The leading or master feature is, of course, the tower on
+the bridge. It is kept from being <i>too</i> principal by an
+important group on each side of it; the boats, on the right,
+and Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass,
+and more forcible in color, but they are broken into small
+divisions, while the tower is simple, and therefore it still
+leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its mass, but so reduced
+by aërial perspective of color that it cannot contend with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138"></a>138</span>
+tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key
+of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects
+which seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are
+made, occultly, to increase its preëminence.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.</p>
+
+<p>197. Another important means of expressing unity is
+to mark some kind of sympathy among the different objects,
+and perhaps the pleasantest, because most surprising, kind of
+sympathy, is when one group imitates or repeats another;
+not in the way of balance or symmetry, but subordinately,
+like a far-away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted
+much on this law in all his writings on composition; and I
+think it is even more authoritatively present in the minds
+of most great composers than the law of principality.<a name="FnAnchor_54" href="#Footnote_54"><span class="sp">[54]</span></a> It
+is quite curious to see the pains that Turner sometimes takes
+to echo an important passage of color; in the Pembroke
+Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with a
+red, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on
+the beach, are two fish in precisely the same relative positions;
+one red and one white. It is observable that he uses the
+artifice chiefly in pictures where he wishes to obtain an
+expression of repose: in my notice of the plate of Scarborough,
+in the series of the Harbors of England, I have already had
+occasion to dwell on this point; and I extract in the note<a name="FnAnchor_55" href="#Footnote_55"><span class="sp">[55]</span></a>
+one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the
+composition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139"></a>139</span>
+is employed to a singular extent. The tower, or
+leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo of it to the
+left; put your finger over this lower tower, and see how the
+picture is spoiled. Then the spires of Coblentz are all
+arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does
+not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must
+play the towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if
+they were chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement
+of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it
+not for the little one which pretends to make a triad of the
+last group on the right, but is so faint as hardly to be discernible:
+it just takes off the attention from the artifice,
+helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which,
+however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.<a name="FnAnchor_56" href="#Footnote_56"><span class="sp">[56]</span></a>
+Then there is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it.
+That echo is divided into two again, and each of those two
+smaller boats has two figures in it; while two figures are also
+sitting together on the great rudder that lies half in the
+water, and half aground. Then, finally, the great mass of
+Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no answering
+form, has almost its <i>facsimile</i> in the bank on which the girl
+is sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion
+of the picture as any object in the whole series. All
+this is done to deepen the effect of repose.</p>
+
+<p>198. Symmetry, or the balance of parts or masses in
+nearly equal opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment
+under the law of Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical
+object, is of like things reflecting each other: it is
+not the balance of contrary natures (like that of day and
+night), but of like natures or like forms; one side of a leaf
+being set like the reflection of the other in water.</p>
+
+<p>Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate.
+She takes the greatest care to secure some difference
+between the corresponding things or parts of things; and an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140"></a>140</span>
+approximation to accurate symmetry is only permitted in
+animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference
+between the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold
+your arms in precisely the same position at each side, your
+head upright, your body straight; divide your hair exactly in
+the middle and get it as nearly as you can into exactly the
+same shape over each ear; and you will see the effect of accurate
+symmetry: you will see, no less, how all grace and power
+in the human form result from the interference of motion
+and life with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its
+balance with its changefulness. Your position, as seen in
+the mirror, is the highest type of symmetry as understood
+by modern architects.</p>
+
+<p>199. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the
+balance of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest
+sources of their power: almost any works of the early painters,
+Angelico, Perugino, Giotto, etc., will furnish you with notable
+instances of it. The Madonna of Perugino in the National
+Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on
+the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have.</p>
+
+<p>In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less
+carried out, in proportion to the wish of the painter to express
+disciplined calmness. In bad compositions, as in bad architecture,
+it is formal, a tree on one side answering a tree on
+the other; but in good compositions, as in graceful statues,
+it is always easy and sometimes hardly traceable. In the
+Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing
+how the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the
+other are set in nearly equal balance; the tower, as a central
+mass, uniting both.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.</p>
+
+<p>200. Another important and pleasurable way of expressing
+unity, is by giving some orderly succession to a number
+of objects more or less similar. And this succession is most
+interesting when it is connected with some gradual change
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141"></a>141</span>
+in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus the succession
+of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting
+when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more
+obscure in distance: so the succession of mountain promontories
+one behind another, on the flanks of a valley; so
+the succession of clouds, fading farther and farther towards
+the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of different
+shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and
+appointed order. If there be no change at all in the shape
+or size of the objects, there is no continuity; there is only
+repetition&mdash;monotony. It is the change in shape which
+suggests the idea of their being individually free, and able
+to escape, if they like, from the law that rules them, and yet
+submitting to it.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_33"><img src="images/img141.jpg" width="550" height="395" alt="Fig. 33." title="Fig. 33." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 33.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a
+moment to take up another, still more expressive of this law.
+It is one of Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais
+Sands at sunset; so delicate in the expression of wave and
+cloud, that it is of no use for me to try to reach it with any
+kind of outline in a wood-cut; but the rough sketch, <a href="#fig_33">Fig. 33</a>,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142"></a>142</span>
+is enough to give an idea of its arrangement. The aim of
+the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
+repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous
+motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in
+innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting towards that point
+in the horizon where he has set; and the tidal waves gain in
+winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in
+which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just
+folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of
+ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and
+clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent
+hurry, drawing pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges
+intersect in parting. But all this would not have been enough
+expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black
+with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves, and now
+seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts
+escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.</p>
+
+<p>202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration
+of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for
+our general illustration. It was simply that gradual succession
+of the retiring arches of the bridge which induced
+Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same
+principle which led him always to seize on subjects including
+long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially,
+observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side
+rather than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective
+of general laws of composition, and connected with the
+nature of rivers, which I may as well stop a minute to tell
+you about, and let you rest from the study of composition.</p>
+
+<p>203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they
+like to lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have
+their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they
+can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get
+cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may
+be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and another steep
+shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves,
+and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143"></a>143</span>
+Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side
+of their life for play, and another for work; and can be
+brilliant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at
+ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they
+set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers are just
+in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good
+rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks,
+that ships can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping
+irregularly under their banks until they get full of strangling
+eddies, which no boat can row over without being twisted
+against the rocks; and pools like wells, which no one can
+get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; but,
+wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of
+sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-mason
+therefore throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course,
+to build a great door to let the cat through, and little doors
+to let the kittens through; a great arch for the great current,
+to give it room in flood time, and little arches for the little
+currents along the shallow shore. This, even without any
+prudential respect for the floods of the great current, he would
+do in simple economy of work and stone; for the smaller your
+arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two
+arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments
+are at the same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a
+great deal; so that, where the current is shallow, the village
+mason makes his arches many and low: as the water gets
+deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build his piers up from
+the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he comes to
+the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of
+that, he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with
+another little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course
+as arches are wider they must be higher, or they will not
+stand; so the roadway must rise as the arches widen. And
+thus we have the general type of bridge, with its highest and
+widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches
+running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank
+at the river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144"></a>144</span>
+flat shore on the side of the small ones: and the bend of the
+river assuredly concave towards this flat, cutting round, with
+a sweep into the steep bank; or, if there is no steep bank,
+still assuredly cutting into the shore at the steep end of the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Now this kind of bridge, sympathizing, as it does, with
+the spirit of the river, and marking the nature of the thing
+it has to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of a bridge;
+and all endeavors to do the thing in a grand engineer's
+manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are barbarous;
+not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves,
+but because the mind perceives at once that there has
+been cost uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.<a name="FnAnchor_57" href="#Footnote_57"><span class="sp">[57]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_34"><img src="images/img145.jpg" width="700" height="390" alt="Fig. 34." title="Fig. 34." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 34.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>204. Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the
+Turnerian bridge in <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a> is of the absolutely perfect
+type, and is still farther interesting by having its main arch
+crowned by a watch-tower. But as I want you to note
+especially what perhaps was not the case in the real bridge,
+but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145"></a>145]<br />146</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146"></a></span>
+arches diminish gradually, not one is <i>regularly</i> diminished&mdash;they
+are all of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this
+clearly in <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a>, but in the larger diagram, <a href="#fig_34">Fig. 34</a>, over
+leaf, you will with ease. This is indeed also part of the ideal
+of a bridge, because the lateral currents near the shore are
+of course irregular in size, and a simple builder would
+naturally vary his arches accordingly; and also, if the bottom
+was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is
+not as a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble
+composition, that this irregularity is introduced by Turner.
+It at once raises the object thus treated from the lower or
+vulgar unity of rigid law to the greater unity of clouds,
+and waves, and trees, and human souls, each different, each
+obedient, and each in harmonious service.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.</p>
+
+<p>205. There is, however, another point to be noticed in this
+bridge of Turner's. Not only does it slope away unequally
+at its sides, but it slopes in a gradual though very subtle
+curve. And if you substitute a straight line for this curve
+(drawing one with a rule from the base of the tower on each
+side to the ends of the bridge, in <a href="#fig_34">Fig. 34</a>, and effacing the
+curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered
+grievously.  You may ascertain, by experiment, that all
+beautiful objects whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately
+curved lines, except where the straight line is indispensable
+to their use or stability; and that when a complete
+system of straight lines, throughout the form, is necessary
+to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists,
+is in color and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape
+of any crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it
+beside a white lily, and you will feel the force of the curvature
+in its purity, irrespective of added color, or other interfering
+elements of beauty.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_35"><img src="images/img147.jpg" width="600" height="476" alt="Fig. 35." title="Fig. 35." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 35.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>206. Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines,
+it is necessary to a good composition that its continuities of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147"></a>147</span>
+object, mass, or color should be, if possible, in curves, rather
+than straight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one of the
+simplest and prettiest examples of a graceful continuity of
+this kind is in the line traced at any moment by the corks
+of a net as it is being drawn: nearly every person is more
+or less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now, it
+is almost always possible, not only to secure such a continuity
+in the arrangement or boundaries of objects which, like these
+bridge arches or the corks of the net, are actually connected
+with each other, but&mdash;and this is a still more noble and interesting
+kind of continuity&mdash;among features which appear at
+first entirely separate. Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein,
+on the left, in <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a>, appear at first independent of each
+other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, <a href="#fig_35">Fig.
+35</a>, the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle
+cadence and harmony among them. The reason of this is,
+that they are all bounded by one grand curve, traced by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148"></a>148</span>
+dotted line; out of the seven towers, four precisely touch
+this curve, the others only falling hack from it here and there
+to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_36"><img src="images/img148.jpg" width="500" height="129" alt="Fig. 36." title="Fig. 36." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 36.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>207. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities
+of this kind: it is, in drawing large forests or
+mountain forms, essential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein
+might or might not in reality fall into such a
+curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand did;
+for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice,
+nor covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less
+governed by these great curves, it being one of the aims of
+Nature in all her work to produce them. The reader must
+already know this, if he has been able to sketch at all among
+mountains; if not, let him merely draw for himself, carefully,
+the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where
+they are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them.
+The steeper shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of
+the downs at Brighton or Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon
+(as Addington Hills), is easily accessible to a Londoner;
+and he will soon find not only how constant, but how
+graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distinguished
+from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation,
+that is to say, its close approach to straightness in some part
+of its course;<a name="FnAnchor_58" href="#Footnote_58"><span class="sp">[58]</span></a> and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say,
+its never remaining equal in degree at different parts of its
+course.</p>
+
+<p>208. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page149"></a>149</span></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_37"><img src="images/img149a.jpg" width="300" height="115" alt="Fig. 37." title="Fig. 37." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 37.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line,
+from less to more curvature, or more to less, so that <i>no</i> part
+of the line is a segment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses
+in any way whatever. Thus, in <a href="#fig_36">Fig. 36</a>, <i>a</i> is a bad
+curve because it is part of a circle, and is therefore monotonous
+throughout; but <i>b</i> is a good curve, because it continually
+changes its direction as it proceeds.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_38"><img src="images/img149b.jpg" width="400" height="490" alt="Fig. 38." title="Fig. 38." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 38.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The <i>first</i> difference between good and bad drawing of tree
+boughs consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put
+leaves on the line <i>b</i>, as in <a href="#fig_37">Fig. 37</a>, you can immediately feel
+the springiness of character dependent on the changefulness
+of the curve. You may put leaves on the other line for
+yourself, but you will find you cannot make a right tree
+spray of it. For <i>all</i> tree boughs, large or small, as well as
+all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character;
+and it is a point of primal necessity that your eye should
+always seize and your hand trace it. Here are two more
+portions of good curves, with leaves put on them at the extremities
+instead of the flanks, <a href="#fig_38">Fig. 38</a>; and two showing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150"></a>150</span>
+arrangement of masses of foliage seen a little farther off,
+<a href="#fig_39">Fig. 39</a>, which you may in like manner amuse yourself by
+turning into segments of circles&mdash;you will
+see with what result. I hope however you
+have beside you, by this time, many good
+studies of tree boughs carefully made, in
+which you may study variations of curvature
+in their most complicated and lovely
+forms.<a name="FnAnchor_59" href="#Footnote_59"><span class="sp">[59]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_39"><img src="images/img150a.jpg" width="300" height="235" alt="Fig. 39." title="Fig. 39." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 39.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_40"><img src="images/img150b.jpg" width="117" height="400" alt="Fig. 40." title="Fig. 40." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 40.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>209. B. Not only does every good curve
+vary in general tendency, but it is modulated,
+as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate
+curves. Thus the outlines of a tree
+trunk are never as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_40">Fig. 40</a>, but as at
+<i>b</i>. So also in waves, clouds, and all other
+nobly formed masses. Thus another essential
+difference between good and bad drawing,
+or good and bad sculpture, depends on
+the quantity and refinement of minor
+curvatures carried, by good work, into the
+great lines. Strictly speaking, however,
+this is not variation in large curves, but
+composition of large curves out of small
+ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the
+beautiful element, but not a change in its nature.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page151"></a>151</span></p>
+
+<p class="title1">5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.</p>
+
+<p>210. We have hitherto been concerned only with the binding
+of our various objects into beautiful lines or processions.
+The next point we have to consider is, how we may unite
+these lines or processions themselves, so as to make groups of
+<i>them</i>.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_41"><img src="images/img152a.jpg" width="250" height="355" alt="Fig. 41." title="Fig. 41." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 41.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_42"><img src="images/img152b.jpg" width="120" height="295" alt="Fig. 42." title="Fig. 42." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 42.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in
+which, moving more or less side by side, they variously, but
+evidently with consent, retire from or approach each other,
+intersect or oppose each other; currents of melody in music,
+for different voices, thus approach and cross, fall and rise, in
+harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they approach the
+shore, flow into one another or cross, but with a great unity
+through all; and so various lines of composition often flow
+harmoniously through and across each other in a picture.
+But the most simple and perfect connection of lines is by
+radiation; that is, by their all springing from one point, or
+closing towards it; and this harmony is often, in Nature
+almost always, united with the other; as the boughs of trees,
+though they intersect and play amongst each other irregularly,
+indicate by their general tendency their origin from
+one root. An essential part of the beauty of all vegetable
+form is in this radiation; it is seen most simply in a single
+flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf; but
+more beautifully in the complicated arrangements of the
+large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is only a flat piece of
+radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all sides, and
+even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation
+more or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more
+beautiful, because varied by the freedom of the separate
+branches. I believe it has been ascertained that, in all trees,
+the angle at which, in their leaves, the lateral ribs are set on
+their central rib is approximately the same at which the
+branches leave the great stem; and thus each section of the
+tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own leaf,
+were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses
+of foliage. This force in proportion to their age, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152"></a>152</span>
+lateral leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the
+extremities, so that, as before noticed, the lower the bough
+grows on the stem, the more it droops (<a href="#fig_17">Fig. 17</a>, <a href="#page067">p. 67</a>);
+besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a tendency to
+divide into two or more principal masses, which give a
+prettier and more complicated symmetry than if one stem
+ran all the way up the center. <a href="#fig_41">Fig. 41</a> may thus be considered
+the simplest type of tree radiation, as opposed to
+leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all secondary ramification
+is unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but
+if we take one half of such a tree, and merely give two
+secondary branches to each main branch (as represented
+in the general branch structure shown at <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_18">Fig. 18</a>, <a href="#page068">p.
+68</a>), we shall have the form <a href="#fig_42">Fig. 42</a>. This I consider
+the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is curiously
+connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine,
+and Gothic ornamentation, into the discussion of which,
+however, we must not enter here. It will be
+observed, that both in Figs. <a href="#fig_41">41</a> and <a href="#fig_42">42</a> all
+the branches so spring from the main stem as
+very nearly to suggest their united radiation
+from the root <span class="sc">R</span>. This is by no means universally
+the case; but if the branches do not bend
+towards a point in the root, they at least converge
+to some point or other. In the examples in <a href="#fig_43">Fig.
+43</a>, the mathematical center of curvature, <i>a</i>, is
+thus, in one case, on the ground, at some distance from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153"></a>153</span>
+root, and in the other, near the top of the tree. Half, only,
+of each tree is given, for the sake of clearness: <a href="#fig_44">Fig. 44</a> gives
+both sides of another example, in which the origins of curvature
+are below the root. As the positions of such points may
+be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines
+is also farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing
+for the most part in a spiral order round the tree, and at
+proportionate distances, the systems of curvature which
+regulate the form of vegetation are quite infinite. Infinite
+is a word easily said, and easily written, and people do not
+always mean it when they say it; in this case I <i>do</i> mean it:
+the number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish
+anything like a representative number of types, I should
+have to give several hundreds of figures such as <a href="#fig_44">Fig. 44</a>.<a name="FnAnchor_60" href="#Footnote_60"><span class="sp">[60]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_43"><img src="images/img153a.jpg" width="300" height="210" alt="Fig. 43." title="Fig. 43." /></a></td>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_44"><img src="images/img153b.jpg" width="111" height="400" alt="Fig. 44." title="Fig. 44." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 43.</span></td>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 44.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_45"><img src="images/img154.jpg" width="400" height="144" alt="Fig. 45." title="Fig. 45." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 45.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the
+great relations of stem and branches. The forms of the
+branches themselves are regulated by still more subtle laws,
+for they occupy an intermediate position between the form of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154"></a>154</span>
+the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a flat ramification; the
+tree a completely rounded one; the bough is neither rounded
+nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between the
+two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling
+in shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the
+flake of a fir cone; by combination forming the solid mass of
+the tree, as the leaves compose the artichoke head. I have
+before pointed out to you the general resemblance of these
+branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be more
+accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can
+imagine a very broad-headed and flattened boat applied by
+its keel to the end of a main branch,<a name="FnAnchor_61" href="#Footnote_61"><span class="sp">[61]</span></a> as in <a href="#fig_45">Fig. 45</a>, the lines
+which its ribs will take, supposing them outside of its timbers
+instead of inside, and the general contour of it, as seen
+in different directions, from above and below, will give you
+the closest approximation to the perspectives and foreshortenings
+of a well-grown branch-flake. <a href="#fig_25">Fig. 25</a> above, <a href="#page089">p. 89</a>,
+is an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young
+oak; and, if you compare it with <a href="#fig_45">Fig. 45</a>, you will understand
+at once the action of the lines of leafage; the boat only
+failing as a type in that its ribs are too nearly parallel to
+each other at the sides, while the bough sends all its ramification
+well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may accomplish
+its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155"></a>155</span>
+securing the compliance with the great universal law that
+the branches nearest the root bend most back; and, of course,
+throwing <i>some</i> always back as well as forwards; the appearance
+of reversed action being much increased, and rendered
+more striking and beautiful, by perspective. <a href="#fig_25">Fig. 25</a> shows
+the perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below;
+<a href="#fig_46">Fig. 46</a> gives rudely the look it would have from above.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_46"><img src="images/img155.jpg" width="400" height="198" alt="Fig. 46." title="Fig. 46." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 46.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>212. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered,
+what subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved
+in the drawing of these branch-flakes, as you see them
+in different directions and actions; now raised, now depressed:
+touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up and
+bent back so as to show all the white under surfaces of the
+leaves shivering in light, as the bottom of a boat rises white
+with spray at the surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards
+the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings,
+or bowed down under oppressive grace of deep-charged
+snow. Snow time, by the way, is one of the best for practice
+in the placing of tree masses; but you will only be able to
+understand them thoroughly by beginning with a single bough
+and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in <a href="#fig_38">Fig. 38</a>, <a href="#page149">p. 149</a>.
+First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as
+at <i>a</i>; then with five, as at <i>b</i>, and so on; directing your whole
+attention to the expression, both by contour and light and
+shade, of the boat-like arrangements, which, in your earlier
+studies, will have been a good deal confused, partly owing
+to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of shade, or
+absolute blackness of mass required in those studies.</p>
+
+<p>213. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156"></a>156</span>
+you out of the wood. You see that in every generally representative
+figure I have surrounded the radiating branches
+with a dotted line: such lines do indeed terminate every vegetable
+form; and you see that they are themselves beautiful
+curves, which, according to their flow, and the width or narrowness
+of the spaces they inclose, characterize the species
+of tree or leaf, and express its free or formal action, its grace
+of youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the
+freedom of her wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing
+an encompassing limit; and marking a unity in the
+whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its branches from
+a common root, but by their joining in one work, and being
+bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let
+us turn back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which,
+I doubt not, you must already have observed in your earlier
+studies, but which it is well to state here, as connected with
+the unity of the branches in the great trees. You must have
+noticed, I should think, that whenever a leaf is compound,&mdash;that
+is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way
+repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,&mdash;those leaflets
+are not symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller
+on the side towards the point of the great leaf, so as to express
+their subordination to it, and show, even when they
+are pulled off, that they are not small independent leaves,
+but members of one large leaf.</p>
+
+<p>214. <a href="#fig_47">Fig. 47</a>, which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine,
+without its minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate
+the principle clearly. It is composed of a central large mass,
+A, and two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only is
+lettered, B. Each of these masses is again composed of three
+others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe, the minor
+one, <i>a</i> of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the minor
+<i>b</i> 1 of B is larger than its opposite <i>b</i> 2. Again, each of
+these minor masses is divided into three; but while the central
+mass, <span class="sc">A</span> of A, is symmetrically divided, the <span class="sc">B</span> of B is unsymmetrical,
+its largest side-lobe being lowest. Again, in <i>b</i> 2, the
+lobe <i>c</i> 1 (its lowest lobe in relation to <span class="sc">B</span>) is larger than <i>c</i> 2;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157"></a>157</span>
+and so also in <i>b</i> 1. So that universally one lobe of a lateral
+leaf is always larger than the other, and the smaller lobe is
+that which is nearer the central mass; the lower leaf, as it
+were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power,
+in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf, and
+always expressing, therefore, its own subordination and
+secondary character. This law is carried out even in single
+leaves. As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point
+of the spray, is always the smaller; and a slightly different
+curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the lower
+side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole
+leaf; so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every
+subordinate leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its
+confession of its own lowliness and subjection.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_47"><img src="images/img157.jpg" width="500" height="493" alt="Fig. 47." title="Fig. 47." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 47.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>215. And now, if we bring together in one view the principles
+we have ascertained in trees, we shall find they may
+be summed under four great laws; and that all perfect<a name="FnAnchor_62" href="#Footnote_62"><span class="sp">[62]</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158"></a>158</span>
+vegetable form is appointed to express these four laws in
+noble balance of authority.</p>
+
+<p>1. Support from one living root.</p>
+
+<p>2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given
+point, either in the root or in some stated connection with it.</p>
+
+<p>3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and
+happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action
+both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get its
+required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some
+sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knotting
+and gathering itself up to get strength for any load
+which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any
+stress of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing
+hither and thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young
+shoots, in their undecided states of mind about their future
+life.</p>
+
+<p>4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within
+certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity
+with the boughs in its neighborhood; and to work with
+them according to its power, magnitude, and state of health,
+to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and
+circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.</p>
+
+<p>216. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the
+moral analogies of these laws; you may, perhaps, however, be
+a little puzzled to see the meaning of the second one. It
+typically expresses that healthy human actions should spring
+radiantly (like rays) from some single heart motive; the
+most beautiful systems of action taking place when this
+motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is
+clearly seen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful
+secondary systems of action taking place from motives not
+so deep or central, but in some beautiful subordinate connection
+with the central or life motive.</p>
+
+<p>The other laws, if you think over them, you will find
+equally significative; and as you draw trees more and more in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159"></a>159</span>
+their various states of health and hardship, you will be
+every day more struck by the beauty of the types they present
+of the truths most essential for mankind to know;<a name="FnAnchor_63" href="#Footnote_63"><span class="sp">[63]</span></a> and you
+will see what this vegetation of the earth, which is necessary
+to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and then as food,
+and just as necessary to our joy in all places of the earth,&mdash;what
+these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as
+we contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language,
+written or spoken for us, not in frightful black letters nor in
+dull sentences, but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving
+words, and blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and
+sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality.</p>
+
+<p>217. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever
+my reader may be; but leave it we must, or we shall compose
+no more pictures to-day.</p>
+
+<p>This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action
+in arising from, or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps,
+of all principles of composition, the most influential in
+producing the beauty of groups of form. Other laws make
+them forcible or interesting, but this generally is chief in
+rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses
+in pictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers;
+but, like the law of principality, with careful concealment
+of its imperativeness, the point to which the lines of main
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160"></a>160</span>
+curvature are directed being very often far away out of the
+picture. Sometimes, however, a system of curves will be
+employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the value
+of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable
+enough.</p>
+
+<p>218. In the instance before us, the principal object being,
+as we have seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined
+that his system of curvature should have its origin in
+the top of this tower. The diagram <a href="#fig_34">Fig. 34</a>, <a href="#page145">p. 145</a>, compared
+with <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a>, <a href="#page137">p. 137</a>, will show how this is done. One
+curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of
+the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber.
+This is a limiting curve of great importance, and Turner
+has drawn a considerable part of it with the edge of the timber
+very carefully, and then led the eye up to the sitting girl by
+some white spots and indications of a ledge in the bank;
+then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be missed.</p>
+
+<p>219. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half
+an inch of its course by the rudder; it is then taken up by
+the basket and the heads of the figures, and leads accurately
+to the tower angle. The gunwales of both the boats begin
+the next two curves, which meet in the same point; and all
+are centralized by the long reflection which continues the
+vertical lines.</p>
+
+<p>220. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is
+another, begun by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in
+the angle behind the rudder; continued by the bottom of the
+bank on which the figure sits, interrupted forcibly beyond it,<a name="FnAnchor_64" href="#Footnote_64"><span class="sp">[64]</span></a>
+but taken up again by the water-line leading to the bridge foot,
+and passing on in delicate shadows under the arches, not
+easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other extremity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161"></a>161</span>
+of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating
+that the force and sweep of the river have indeed
+been in old times under the large arches; while the antiquity
+of the bridge is told us by a long tongue of land, either
+of carted rubbish, or washed down by some minor stream,
+which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a landing-place
+for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise,
+of which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap,
+immediately beneath the great tower. A common composer
+would have put these bales to one side or the other, but
+Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his
+tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured
+base adorns a pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of
+its height by throwing the reflection of it far down in the
+nearer water. All the great composers have this same feeling
+about sustaining their vertical masses: you will constantly
+find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,
+for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the
+great tower, in the sketch of St. Nicholas, at Prague, and the
+white group of figures under the tower in the sketch of
+Augsburg<a name="FnAnchor_65" href="#Footnote_65"><span class="sp">[65]</span></a>); and Veronese, Titian, and Tintoret continually
+put their principal figures at bases of pillars. Turner found
+out their secret very early, the most prominent instance of
+his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
+from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose <a href="#fig_20">Fig. 20</a>,
+already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because,
+being another instance of precisely the same arrangement, it
+will serve to convince you of its being intentional. There, the
+vertical, formed by the larger tree, is continued by the figure
+of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller trees by his stick.
+The lines of the interior mass of the bushes radiate, under the
+law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's head; but
+their outline curves are carried on and repeated, under the
+law of continuity, by the curves of the dog and boy&mdash;by
+the way, note the remarkable instance in these of the use of
+darkest lines towards the light&mdash;all more or less guiding the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162"></a>162</span>
+eye up to the right, in order to bring it finally to the Keep
+of Windsor, which is the central object of the picture, as the
+bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which the boy
+climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction
+and character, with these greater curves; thus corresponding
+as nearly as possible to the minor tongue of land in the
+Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to another law, which
+we must consider separately.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.</p>
+
+<p>221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested
+by Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labor;
+sound to be heard clearly, must rise out of silence; light is
+exhibited by darkness, darkness by light; and so on in all
+things. Now in art every color has an opponent color, which,
+if brought near it, will relieve it more completely than any
+other; so, also, every form and line may be made more striking
+to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved
+line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one,
+and so on; and in all good work nearly double the value,
+which any given color or form would have uncombined, is
+given to each by contrast.<a name="FnAnchor_66" href="#Footnote_66"><span class="sp">[66]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
+vulgarizes a picture. Great painters do not commonly,
+or very visibly, admit violent contrast. They introduce it
+by stealth, and with intermediate links of tender change;
+allowing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a
+surprise, but not as a shock.<a name="FnAnchor_67" href="#Footnote_67"><span class="sp">[67]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page163"></a>163</span></p>
+
+<p>222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, <a href="#fig_35">Fig. 35</a>, the
+main current of the lines being downwards, in a convex
+swell, they are suddenly stopped at the lowest tower by a
+counter series of beds, directed nearly straight across them.
+This adverse force sets off and relieves the great curvature,
+but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines below,
+which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
+get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great
+curve. No passage, however intentionally monotonous, is
+ever introduced by a good artist without <i>some</i> slight counter
+current of this kind; so much, indeed, do the great composers
+feel the necessity of it, that they will even do things purposely
+ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their
+well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's versification
+the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior because he
+could not do them better, but because he feels that if all were
+equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
+if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would
+be fatiguing; and he purposely introduces the laboring or
+discordant verse, that the full ring may be felt in his main
+sentence, and the finished sweetness in his chosen rhythm.<a name="FnAnchor_68" href="#Footnote_68"><span class="sp">[68]</span></a>
+And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy their
+work by giving too much of all that they think is good, while
+the great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes
+to an opposite kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of
+enjoyment: he gives a passage of rich, involved, exquisitely
+wrought color, then passes away into slight, and pale, and
+simple color; he paints for a minute or two with intense
+decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spectator thinks,
+slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have <i>taken</i>
+any more decision from him just then; you have had as much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164"></a>164</span>
+as is good for you: he paints over a great space of his picture
+forms of the most rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly,
+as you think by a freak, gives you a bit as jagged and
+sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most exquisite
+piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow
+point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing
+hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very
+little contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire group
+of forms interesting which would otherwise have been valueless.
+There is a good deal of picturesque material, for instance,
+in this top of an old tower, <a href="#fig_48">Fig. 48</a>, tiles and stones
+and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would
+have been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be
+that iron ring on the inner wall, which by its vigorous black
+<i>circular</i> line precisely opposes all the square and angular
+characters of the battlements and roof. Draw the tower
+without the ring, and see what a difference it will make.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_48"><img src="images/img164.jpg" width="600" height="367" alt="Fig. 48." title="Fig. 48." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 48.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>223. One of the most important applications of the law of
+contrast is in association with the law of continuity, causing
+an unexpected but gentle break in a continuous series. This
+artifice is perpetual in music, and perpetual also in good
+illumination; the way in which little surprises of change
+are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165"></a>165</span>
+design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of
+the work of the good periods. We take, for instance, a bar
+of ornament between two written columns of an early fourteenth
+century MS., and at the first glance we suppose it to
+be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of a winding
+tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud. Presently,
+however, we see that, in order to observe the law of
+principality, there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud,
+nearly half-way up, which forms a center to the whole rod;
+and when we begin to examine the order of the leaves, we
+find it varied carefully. Let <span class="sc">A</span> stand for scarlet bud, <i>b</i> for
+blue leaf, <i>c</i> for two blue leaves on one stalk, <i>s</i> for a stalk
+without a leaf, and <span class="sc">R</span>, for the large red leaf. Then, counting
+from the ground, the order begins as follows:</p>
+
+<p><i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; and we think we shall
+have two <i>b</i>'s and an <span class="sc">A</span> all the way, when suddenly it becomes
+<i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">R</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; and we think we are going to
+have <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span> continued; but no: here it becomes <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>,
+<i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>c</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; and we think we are surely going to
+have <i>b</i>, <i>s</i> continued, but behold it runs away to the end with
+a quick <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>!<a name="FnAnchor_69" href="#Footnote_69"><span class="sp">[69]</span></a> Very often, however, the designer
+is satisfied with <i>one</i> surprise, but I never saw a good
+illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
+kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting
+without a snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's
+drawing of Rome with the large balustrade for a foreground
+in the Hakewell's Italy series: the single baluster
+struck out of the line, and showing the street below through
+the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
+otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.</p>
+
+<p>224. If you look back to <a href="#fig_48">Fig. 48</a> you will see, in the arrangement
+of the battlements, a simple instance of the use
+of such variation. The whole top of the tower, though actually
+three sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous
+series of five masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166"></a>166</span>
+square and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the
+tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being
+couples, there is enough monotony in the series to make a
+change pleasant; and the last battlement, therefore, is a little
+higher than the first two,&mdash;a little lower than the second two,&mdash;and
+different in shape from either. Hide it with your
+finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements
+look.</p>
+
+<p>225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations
+of the laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole
+shape of the walls' mass being square, it is well, still for the
+sake of contrast, to oppose it not only by the element of curvature,
+in the ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that of
+sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes in the
+projecting point of the roof. Also, because the walls are
+thick and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with
+weakness; therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this
+roof as it sinks between them. The whole mass being nearly
+white, we want a contrasting shadow somewhere; and get it,
+under our piece of decrepitude. This shade, with the tiles of
+the wall below, forms another pointed mass, necessary to the
+first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior angle with
+your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the
+law of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has
+some share in the feeling with which you look at the battlements;
+there is a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of
+their top, on one side down to the left, on the other to the
+right. Still less would you think the law of radiation had
+anything to do with the matter: but if you take the extreme
+point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow
+first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you,
+if you continue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow
+the second curve, the top of the tiles of the wall, and it will
+strike the top of the right-hand battlement; then draw a
+curve from the highest point of the angled battlement on the
+left, through the points of the roof and its dark echo; and you
+will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167"></a>167</span>
+lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these
+main ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow
+the curve of the upper roof, it will take you to the top of the
+highest battlement; and the stones indicated at the right-hand
+side of the tower are more extended at the bottom, in order to
+get some less direct expression of sympathy, such as irregular
+stones may be capable of, with the general flow of the curves
+from left to right.</p>
+
+<p>226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these
+laws are indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition.
+But, as you study longer, you will discover that these laws,
+and many more, are obeyed by the powerful composers in
+every <i>touch</i>: that literally, there is never a dash of their pencil
+which is not carrying out appointed purposes of this kind
+in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much
+difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of
+the great composers ruling his colors, and a common painter
+confused by them, as there is between a general directing
+the march of an army, and an old lady carried off her feet
+by a mob.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.</p>
+
+<p>227. Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law
+which enforces the unity of opposite things, by giving to each
+a portion of the character of the other. If, for instance, you
+divide a shield into two masses of color, all the way down&mdash;suppose
+blue and white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal,
+partly on one division, partly on the other, you will find it
+pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the animal blue
+which comes upon the white half, and white which comes
+upon the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the
+sake of perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of
+delight in interchange of color, since, in all ornamentation
+whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of good
+design.</p>
+
+<p>228. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168"></a>168</span>
+contrasts; as that, after red has been for some time on one
+side, and blue on the other, red shall pass to blue's side and
+blue to red's. This kind of alternation takes place simply
+in four-quartered shields; in more subtle pieces of treatment,
+a little bit only of each color is carried into the other, and
+they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most
+curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you
+have drawn some time carefully from Nature in light and
+shade, is the appearance of intentional artifice with which
+contrasts of this alternate kind are produced by her; the
+artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as long as it
+comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely
+at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly
+treat all her masses of shade and color, is so great, that if you
+only follow her closely, every one who looks at your drawing
+with attention will think that you have been inventing the
+most artificially and unnaturally delightful interchanges of
+shadow that could possibly be devised by human wit.</p>
+
+<p>229. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at
+length by Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade: it seems
+of all his principles of composition to be the one he is most
+conscious of; many others he obeys by instinct, but this he
+formally accepts and forcibly declares.</p>
+
+<p>The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of
+course, to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and
+strengthened by receiving each, as far as they can, some
+impress or reflection, or imparted power, from the other.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.</p>
+
+<p>230. It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while
+contrast exhibits the <i>characters</i> of things, it very often
+neutralizes or paralyzes their <i>power</i>. A number of white
+things may be shown to be clearly white by opposition of a
+black thing, but if we want the full power of their gathered
+light, the black thing may be seriously in our way. Thus,
+while contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169"></a>169</span>
+employ them, concentrating the power of several into a mass.
+And, not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the
+wisdom of man is continually called upon to reconcile these
+opposite methods of exhibiting, or using, the materials in his
+power. By change he gives them pleasantness, and by consistency
+value; by change he is refreshed, and by perseverance
+strengthened.</p>
+
+<p>231. Hence many compositions address themselves to the
+spectator by aggregate force of color or line, more than by
+contrasts of either; many noble pictures are painted almost
+exclusively in various tones of red, or gray, or gold, so as to
+be instantly striking by their breadth of flush, or glow, or
+tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by
+slight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some
+compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others
+slight and graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines
+of contrary character. And, in general, such compositions
+possess higher sublimity than those which are more mingled
+in their elements. They tell a special tale, and summon a
+definite state of feeling, while the grand compositions merely
+please the eye.</p>
+
+<p>232. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches
+most to the works of the greatest men; their separate pictures
+have all separate aims. We have not, in each, gray
+color set against somber, and sharp forms against soft, and
+loud passages against low: but we have the bright picture,
+with its delicate sadness; the somber picture, with its single
+ray of relief; the stern picture, with only one tender group
+of lines; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle
+at its flank; and so on. Hence the variety of their work,
+as well as its impressiveness. The principal bearing of this
+law, however, is on the separate masses or divisions of a
+picture: the character of the whole composition may be
+broken or various, if we please, but there must certainly be
+a tendency to consistent assemblage in its divisions. As an
+army may act on several points at once, but can only act
+effectually by having somewhere formed and regular masses,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170"></a>170</span>
+and not wholly by skirmishers; so a picture may be various
+in its tendencies, but must be somewhere united and coherent
+in its masses. Good composers are always associating their
+colors in great groups; binding their forms together by encompassing
+lines, and securing, by various dexterities of expedient,
+what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a
+large gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light
+being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and color to
+color. If, however, this be done by introducing false lights or
+false colors, it is absurd and monstrous; the skill of a painter
+consists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his
+objects, not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an
+easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another all
+black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the
+circumstances which will naturally produce white in one
+place, and brown in another. Generally speaking, however,
+breadth will result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study:
+Nature is always broad; and if you paint her colors in true
+relations, you will paint them in majestic masses. If you
+find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all probability,
+not only ill composed, but untrue.</p>
+
+<p>233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or
+scattering of light and color, has a certain contrasting charm,
+and is occasionally introduced with exquisite effect by good
+composers.<a name="FnAnchor_70" href="#Footnote_70"><span class="sp">[70]</span></a> Still it is never the mere scattering, but the
+order discernible through this scattering, which is the real
+source of pleasure; not the mere multitude, but the constellation
+of multitude. The broken lights in the work of a good
+painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not unshepherded,
+speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad painter
+fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
+it to be wished they were also of dissolution.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page171"></a>171</span></p>
+
+<p class="title1">9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.</p>
+
+<p>234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one
+of composition as of truth, but it must guide composition, and
+is properly, therefore, to be stated in this place.</p>
+
+<p>Good drawing is, as we have seen, an <i>abstract</i> of natural
+facts; you cannot represent all that you would, but must
+continually be falling short, whether you will or no, of the
+force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that your
+means and time do not admit of your giving the depth of
+color in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler.
+If you paint all the colors proportionately paler, as if an
+equal quantity of tint had been washed away from each of
+them, you still obtain a harmonious, though not an equally
+forcible, statement of natural fact. But if you take away
+the colors unequally, and leave some tints nearly as deep as
+they are in Nature, while others are much subdued, you have
+no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the observer,
+"Fancy all those colors a little deeper, and you will have the
+actual fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes
+away, something is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out
+of harmony.</p>
+
+<p>235. It will happen, however, much more frequently,
+that you have to darken the whole system of colors, than to
+make them paler. You remember, in your first studies of
+color from Nature, you were to leave the passages of light
+which were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. But,
+in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to put color
+into them; and then the other colors must be made darker,
+in some fixed relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately,
+though the whole scene is darker than reality, it is
+only as if you were looking at the reality in a lower light:
+but if, while you darken some of the tints, you leave others
+undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give
+the impression of truth.</p>
+
+<p>236. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen <i>all</i> the colors so
+much as to relieve the lights in their natural degree, you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172"></a>172</span>
+would merely sink most of your colors, if you tried to do so,
+into a broad mass of blackness: but it is quite possible to
+lower them harmoniously, and yet more in some parts of the
+picture than in others, so as to allow you to show the light you
+want in a visible relief. In well-harmonized pictures this is
+done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards
+the lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the
+very dark parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of
+course, to include large masses of middle tints. But the principal
+point to be observed in doing this, is to deepen the individual
+tints without dirtying or obscuring them. It is
+easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over with
+gray or brown; and easy to see the effect of the landscape,
+when its colors are thus universally polluted with black, by
+using the black convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions
+for falsifying Nature and degrading art which ever
+was put into an artist's hand.<a name="FnAnchor_71" href="#Footnote_71"><span class="sp">[71]</span></a> For the thing required is
+not to darken pale yellow by mixing gray with it, but to
+deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing
+black with it, but by making it deeper and richer crimson:
+and thus the required effect could only be seen in Nature, if
+you had pieces of glass of the color of every object in your
+landscape, and of every minor hue that made up those colors,
+and then could see the real landscape through this deep
+gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with
+glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to
+say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for
+pale gold, and so on, in the proportion you need; and then you
+may paint as forcibly as you choose, but your work will still
+be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio or Spagnoletto,
+or any other of the black slaves of painting.<a name="FnAnchor_72" href="#Footnote_72"><span class="sp">[72]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page173"></a>173</span></p>
+
+<p>237. Supposing those scales of color, which I told you to
+prepare in order to show you the relations of color to gray,
+were quite accurately made, and numerous enough, you would
+have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a deeper tone in
+any given mass of color, than to substitute for each of its hues
+the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you wanted,
+that is to say, if you wanted to deepen the whole two degrees,
+substituting for the yellow No. 5 the yellow No. 7, and for the
+red No. 9 the red No. 11, and so on: but the hues of any
+object in Nature are far too numerous, and their degrees too
+subtle, to admit of so mechanical a process. Still, you may
+see the principle of the whole matter clearly by taking a
+group of colors out of your scale, arranging them prettily,
+and then washing them all over with gray: that represents
+the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange
+the same group of colors, with the tints five or six degrees
+deeper in the scale; and that will represent the treatment of
+Nature by Titian.</p>
+
+<p>238. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the
+right of the thing by working from Nature.</p>
+
+<p>The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this
+kind is a good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with
+some white clouds in it. Paint the clouds in true and
+tenderly gradated white; then give the sky a bold full blue,
+bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and leaves
+grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green
+and brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to
+more complicated studies, matching the colors carefully first
+by your old method; then deepening each color with its own
+tint, and being careful, above all things, to keep truth of
+equal change when the colors are connected with each other,
+as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much more
+aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision
+with which you observe the relation of colors in dark sides
+and light sides, and the influence of modifying reflections,
+than by mere accuracy of added depth in independent colors.</p>
+
+<p>239. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174"></a>174</span>
+the most important of those which the artist has to regard.
+But there are all kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to
+its mode of production. There is even a harmony of touch.
+If you paint one part of it very rapidly and forcibly, and
+another part slowly and delicately, each division of the picture
+may be right separately, but they will not agree together: the
+whole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony. Similarly,
+if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm
+day, and another by a gray light in a cold day, though both
+may have been sunlight, and both may be well toned,
+and have their relative shadows truly cast, neither will look
+like light; they will destroy each other's power, by being out
+of harmony. These are only broad and definable instances
+of discordance; but there is an extent of harmony in all good
+work much too subtle for definition; depending on the
+draughtsman's carrying everything he draws up to just the
+balancing and harmonious point, in finish, and color, and
+depth of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and style of
+touch, all considered at once; and never allowing himself to
+lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing at
+the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly
+in another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's etchings,
+you will be able, I think, to feel the nature of harmonious
+treatment in a simple kind, by comparing them with any
+of Richter's illustrations to the numerous German story-books
+lately published at Christmas, with all the German
+stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in
+character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is <i>perfect</i>
+in harmony. The pure and simple effects of daylight which
+he gets by his thorough mastery of treatment in this respect,
+are quite unrivaled, as far as I know, by any other work executed
+with so few touches. His vignettes to Grimm's German
+stories, already recommended, are the most remarkable
+in this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary, are
+of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human
+character, with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy;
+but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out of harmony,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175"></a>175</span>
+violent blacks in one place being continually opposed
+to trenchant white in another; and, as is almost sure to be the
+case with bad harmonists, the local color hardly felt anywhere.
+All German work is apt to be out of harmony, in consequence
+of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its
+willful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind
+of excitement, which dwells violently on particular points,
+and makes all the lines of thought in the picture to stand on
+end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work is
+always as quiet as a couchant leopard, and as strong.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>240. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition
+which occur to me as capable of being illustrated or defined;
+but there are multitudes of others which, in the present state
+of my knowledge, I cannot define, and others which I never
+hope to define; and these the most important, and connected
+with the deepest powers of the art. I hope, when I have
+thought of them more, to be able to explain some of the laws
+which relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that ignobleness
+especially which we commonly call "vulgarity" and which,
+in its essence, is one of the most curious subjects of inquiry
+connected with human feeling. Others I never hope to
+explain, laws of expression, bearing simply on simple matters;
+but, for that very reason, more influential than any
+others. These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily
+sensations are; it being just as impossible, I think, to show,
+finally, why one succession of musical notes<a name="FnAnchor_73" href="#Footnote_73"><span class="sp">[73]</span></a> shall be lofty
+and pathetic, and such as might have been sung by Casella
+to Dante, and why another succession is base and ridiculous,
+and would be fit only for the reasonably good ear of Bottom,
+as to explain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176"></a>176</span>
+The best part of every great work is always inexplicable: it
+is good because it is good; and innocently gracious, opening
+as the green of the earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>241. But though you cannot explain them, you may always
+render yourself more and more sensitive to these higher qualities
+by the discipline which you generally give to your character,
+and this especially with regard to the choice of incidents;
+a kind of composition in some sort easier than the artistical
+arrangements of lines and colors, but in every sort
+nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.</p>
+
+<p>242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last
+vignette to Rogers's Poems, the plow in the foreground
+has three purposes. The first purpose is to meet the stream
+of sunlight on the river, and make it brighter by opposition;
+but any dark object whatever would have done this. Its
+second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of
+the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression
+of repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its
+third and chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned
+in the furrow (the vessels also being moored, and having their
+sails down), to be a type of human labor closed with the
+close of day. The parts of it on which the hand leans are
+brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief dark
+of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of
+man as a punishment: but they make the soft light of the
+setting sun brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These
+thoughts may never occur to us as we glance carelessly at the
+design; and yet their under current assuredly affects the
+feelings, and increases, as the painter meant it should, the
+impression of melancholy, and of peace.</p>
+
+<p>243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the
+plates I have marked as most desirable for your possession:
+the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the
+advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near
+object to relieve its brightness.  But the incident which
+Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull at
+a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page177"></a>177</span>
+his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its
+unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element,
+and warns us of the sea's advance just as surely as the
+abandoned plow told us of the ceased labor of the day.</p>
+
+<p>244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single
+incidents of this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the
+arrangement of the whole subject, that the mind of a great
+composer is known. A single incident may be suggested by
+a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading
+of a chapter. But the great composers so arrange <i>all</i>
+their designs that one incident illustrates another, just as one
+color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham," of the
+Yorkshire series, which, as to its locality, may be considered
+a companion to the last drawing we have spoken of, the "Lancaster
+Sands," presents as interesting an example as we could
+find of Turner's feeling in this respect. The subject is a
+simple north-country village, on the shore of Morecambe
+Bay; not in the common sense a picturesque village; there are
+no pretty bow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance
+to the rustic doors, or quaint gables; nothing but a
+single street of thatched and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged
+in a somewhat monotonous line, the roofs so green with moss
+that at first we hardly discern the houses from the fields and
+trees. The village street is closed at the end by a wooden
+gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through
+it, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in
+which a right of way lies through the yard. The road
+which leads to this gate is full of ruts, and winds down a
+bad bit of hill between two broken banks of moor ground,
+succeeding immediately to the few inclosures which surround
+the village; they can hardly be called gardens: but a decayed
+fragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line,
+with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a
+smock-frock, is stretched between the trunks of some stunted
+willows; a <i>very</i> small haystack and pig-sty being seen at
+the back of the cottage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled,
+lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge wooden
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178"></a>178</span>
+collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the
+leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being
+about country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is
+a better house, with three chimneys and a dormer window in
+its roof, and the roof is of stone shingle instead of thatch,
+but very rough. This house is no doubt the clergyman's:
+there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from any
+other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney
+at the back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather
+thick, the fire not having been long lighted. A few hundred
+yards from the clergyman's house, nearer the shore, is the
+church, discernible from the cottages only by its low two-arched
+belfry, a little neater than one would expect in
+such a village; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite incumbent:<a name="FnAnchor_74" href="#Footnote_74"><span class="sp">[74]</span></a>
+and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two
+fragments of a border war-tower, standing on their circular
+mound, worn on its brow deep into edges and furrows by the
+feet of the village children. On the bank of moor, which
+forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's dog barking
+at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding another, a
+gentle white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of
+a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in her
+blue apron, fastened up round her waist; she stands with her
+pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she has
+a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under the blue
+apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, bare-footed,
+stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground
+is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet);&mdash;whether boy
+or girl we are not sure: it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out
+bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trousers on;
+probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179"></a>179</span>
+keep the sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed
+cows among the moorland hollows, and helps us at present to
+watch (holding the bonnet's edge down) the quarrel of the
+vixenish cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long stick,
+we allow to proceed without any interference. A little to the
+right the hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just
+taken her apronful to the white cow; but the hay is very thin,
+and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks; we must
+glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the
+willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together,
+kneeling against the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart
+without dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky
+hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone
+emerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their
+brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds against the sky,
+which, clear and calm, and as golden as the moss, stretches
+down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows
+its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seawards: perhaps
+one of the village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may
+have built it there, that his mother may first see the sails of
+his ship whenever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill,
+and beyond the border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves
+flowing in over the sand in long curved lines slowly; shadows
+of cloud, and gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating&mdash;miles
+away; but no sail is visible, not one fisher-boat
+on the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon.
+Beyond all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun,
+with rosy light on all their crags.</p>
+
+<p>245. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of
+harmony there is in this composition; the entire purpose of
+the painter to give us the impression of wild, yet gentle,
+country life, monotonous as the succession of the noiseless
+waves, patient and enduring as the rocks; but peaceful, and
+full of health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the pure
+mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly
+between days of toil and nights of innocence.</p>
+
+<p>246. All noble composition of this kind can be reached
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180"></a>180</span>
+only by instinct; you cannot set yourself to arrange such a
+subject; you may see it, and seize it, at all times, but never
+laboriously invent it. And your power of discerning what is
+best in expression, among natural subjects, depends wholly
+on the temper in which you keep your own mind; above all,
+on your living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely
+sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days
+is wholly incompatible with any true perception of natural
+beauty. If you go down into Cumberland by the railroad,
+live in some frequented hotel, and explore the hills with
+merry companions, however much you may enjoy your tour
+or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so
+much as one pictorial subject rightly; you will not see into
+the depth of any. But take knapsack and stick, walk towards
+the hills by short day's journeys,&mdash;ten or twelve miles a
+day&mdash;taking a week from some starting-place sixty or seventy
+miles away: sleep at the pretty little wayside inns, or the
+rough village ones; then take the hills as they tempt you, following
+glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart guides,
+wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything
+which it is the ordinary traveler's duty to see, or pride to do.
+Never force yourself to admire anything when you are not in
+the humor; but never force yourself away from what you feel
+to be lovely, in search of anything better; and gradually the
+deeper scenes of the natural world will unfold themselves to
+you in still increasing fullness of passionate power; and your
+difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose subjects, but
+only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious
+thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which
+will of course be noble or original in proportion to your own
+depth of character and general power of mind; for it is not
+so much by the consideration you give to any single drawing,
+as by the previous discipline of your powers of thought, that
+the character of your composition will be determined. Simplicity
+of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and
+modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp
+of daily life will make you enjoy coarse colors and affected
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181"></a>181</span>
+forms. Habits of patient comparison and accurate judgment
+will make your art precious, as they will make your actions
+wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in your living
+spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
+the works of your hands.&mdash;Faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; "><span class="sc">J. Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_41" href="#FnAnchor_41">[41]</a> I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading Pre-Raphaelites
+have all about equal power over color in the abstract, Rossetti
+and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for rendering
+color under effects of light; and of these two, Rossetti composes with
+richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of beauty, Hunt's stern realism
+leading him continually into harshness. Rossetti's carelessness, to do him
+justice, is only in water-color, never in oil.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_42" href="#FnAnchor_42">[42]</a> All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise of
+the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees would
+have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to work in dead
+color. Any color will do for some people, if it is browned and shining;
+but fallacy in dead color is detected on the instant. I even believe that
+whenever a painter begins to <i>wish</i> that he could touch any portion of his
+work with gum, he is going wrong.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish between
+translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have said above, a
+dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but luster or <i>shininess</i> is
+always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best painter-friends (the
+"best" being understood to attach to both divisions of that awkward
+compound word,) tried the other day to persuade me that luster was an
+ignobleness in anything; and it was only the fear of treason to ladies'
+eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from
+yielding the point to him. One is apt always to generalize too quickly
+in such matters; but there can be no question that luster is destructive of
+loveliness in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever may be the
+pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes shine (though
+perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she would be sorry if
+her cheeks did; and which of us would wish to polish a rose?</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_43" href="#FnAnchor_43">[43]</a> But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed imperial, or
+gray paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is best. Coarse,
+gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and blunderers; no good
+draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner worked much on a thin
+tough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his sketches in tight bundles
+that would go deep into his pockets.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_44" href="#FnAnchor_44">[44]</a> I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I address
+you as a beginner, or an amateur: a great artist can sometimes get out of
+a difficulty with credit, or repent without confession. Yet even Titian's
+alterations usually show as stains on his work.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_45" href="#FnAnchor_45">[45]</a> It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few colors: it
+saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing, and you may
+at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange them in your
+color-box in the order I have set them down, you will always easily put
+your finger on the one you want.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Cobalt</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Smalt</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Antwerb blue</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Prussian blue</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Black</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Gamboge</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Emerald green</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Hooker's green</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Lemon yellow</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Cadmium yellow</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Yellow ocher</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Roman ocher</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Raw sienna</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Burnt sienna</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Light red</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Indian red</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Mars orange</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Extract of vermilion</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Carmine</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Violet carmine</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Brown madder</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Burnt umber</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Vandyke brown</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Sepia</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but
+you need not care much about permanence in your work as yet, and they
+are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more fugitive still,
+and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color, put in the box merely
+to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and Prussian blue. No. 1 is
+the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a noble color for laying broken shadows
+with, to be worked into afterwards with other colors.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's
+"Chromatography" at once; only do not attend to anything it says about
+principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements of practical
+serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on each other when
+mixed, etc.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_46" href="#FnAnchor_46">[46]</a> A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly
+prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet
+of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of cardboard an
+inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each color
+beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have no occasion to
+wash any of the colors away. But the first rough method is generally all
+you want, as, after a little practice, you only need to <i>look</i> at the hue
+through the opening in order to be able to transfer it to your drawing at
+once.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_47" href="#FnAnchor_47">[47]</a> If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have
+many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I would
+lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except black, Prussian
+blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave for students.
+I don't say this jestingly; I believe such a tax would do more to
+advance real art than a great many schools of design.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_48" href="#FnAnchor_48">[48]</a> I say <i>modern</i>, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors, which is
+the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist. The best
+color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not quite right.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_49" href="#FnAnchor_49">[49]</a> See <a href="#note6">Note 6</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_50" href="#FnAnchor_50">[50]</a> The worst general character that color can possibly have is a prevalent
+tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying heap
+of vegetables; this color is <i>accurately</i> indicative of decline or paralysis in
+missal-painting.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_51" href="#FnAnchor_51">[51]</a> That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The gradations of
+color in the various shadows belonging to various lights exhibit form, and
+therefore no one but a colorist can ever draw <i>forms</i> perfectly (see Modern
+Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end); but all notions of explaining form
+by superimposed color, as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color
+adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple is prettier because it is
+striped, but it does not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because
+it is flushed, but you would see the form of the cheek bone better if it were
+not. Color may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as in grounding
+a bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance of projection,
+and whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground,
+the bas-relief will be just as clearly or just as imperfectly relieved, as
+long as the colors are of equal depth. The blue ground will not retire the
+hundredth part of an inch more than the red one.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_52" href="#FnAnchor_52">[52]</a> See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more point
+connected with the management of color, under the head "Law of Harmony."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_53" href="#FnAnchor_53">[53]</a> See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. viii. § 6.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_54" href="#FnAnchor_54">[54]</a> See <a href="#note7">Note 7</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_55" href="#FnAnchor_55">[55]</a> "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are peaceful
+things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events; that
+one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition of another
+history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimilarity and
+non-succession are results of interference and disquietude. Thus, though
+an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of
+the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way;
+hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a
+cuckoo."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_56" href="#FnAnchor_56">[56]</a> This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, the masts being so delicate that
+they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original they have
+orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_57" href="#FnAnchor_57">[57]</a> The cost of art in getting a bridge level is <i>always</i> lost, for you must
+get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you only can make
+the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and pretending to
+have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted money in
+building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the bridge should not
+be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope, whatever it
+may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and
+not pushed aside into the approach, as in our Waterloo road; the only
+rational excuse for doing which is that when the slope must be long it is
+inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any
+restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment.
+To this I answer: first, it is not more dangerous in reality,
+though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective parapet,
+but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a useless
+rail; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on the bridge and
+make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite safe, because a
+little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your wide embankment at
+the side loses good ground; and so my picturesque bridges are right as
+well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again some day instead of
+the frightful straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept
+from the pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_58" href="#FnAnchor_58">[58]</a> I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in other
+books; but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of this
+part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap xvii.; and Stones of
+Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_59" href="#FnAnchor_59">[59]</a> If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without having
+gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of the ramification
+of stone pine, <a href="#fig_4">Fig. 4</a>, <a href="#page017">p. 17</a>, and examine the curves of its boughs
+one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated under the heads A
+and B.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_60" href="#FnAnchor_60">[60]</a> The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these figures
+is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by compasses.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_61" href="#FnAnchor_61">[61]</a> I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely facsimiles
+of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate my
+meaning as I write&mdash;often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to something
+else. This one is really a little too careless; but it would take more time
+and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat than the matter is
+worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_62" href="#FnAnchor_62">[62]</a> Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature dependent,
+as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of continual
+injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure by its
+aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of course, space
+here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated apply
+to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to be familiar to the
+student.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_63" href="#FnAnchor_63">[63]</a> There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves
+upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to attract attention,
+by their pretty play and change. If you examine them, you will
+find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but that, through
+each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in the form of a round
+or oval spot; that is to say, it produces the image of the sun itself, cast
+either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of
+the ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they
+fall through any small aperture: but the openings between leaves are the
+only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to attract his attention
+to it by its frequency, and lead him to think what this type may
+signify respecting the greater Sun; and how it may show us that, even
+when the opening through which the earth receives light is too small to
+let us see the Sun Himself, the ray of light that enters, if it comes straight
+from Him, will still bear with it His image.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_64" href="#FnAnchor_64">[64]</a> In the smaller figure (32), it will be seen that this interruption is
+caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge; and this object is
+serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the
+picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily represented
+in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation of our point here, it
+has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the curve it begins
+being indicated by the dashes only.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_65" href="#FnAnchor_65">[65]</a> Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_66" href="#FnAnchor_66">[66]</a> If you happen to meet with the plate of Dürer's representing a coat-of-arms
+with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the concave
+curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage carried round
+it in front; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in opposing
+the rich folds of the dress.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_67" href="#FnAnchor_67">[67]</a> Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to
+oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set
+behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's edge.</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_68" href="#FnAnchor_68">[68]</a>
+
+<p class="poemq">
+"A prudent chief not always must display <br />
+His powers in equal ranks and fair array, <br />
+But with the occasion and the place comply, <br />
+Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly. <br />
+Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, <br />
+Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream." <br />
+
+<span style="padding-left: 16em; "><i>Essay on Criticism.</i></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_69" href="#FnAnchor_69">[69]</a> I am describing from an MS., <i>circa</i> 1300, of Gregory's Decretalia, in
+my own possession.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_70" href="#FnAnchor_70">[70]</a> One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is
+little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scattered
+gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great part
+of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being marked through this
+division.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_71" href="#FnAnchor_71">[71]</a> I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by considerable
+power of effect, which prevails in modern French art, must be
+owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French landscape
+always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror, and
+painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its perversion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_72" href="#FnAnchor_72">[72]</a> Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in their
+bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_73" href="#FnAnchor_73">[73]</a> In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned by their
+mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned about;
+we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot reason any refractory
+person into liking it, if they do not: and yet there is distinctly a right and
+a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in
+music.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_74" href="#FnAnchor_74">[74]</a> "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
+but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called ecclesiastical
+sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the
+principal elements of "Puseyism,"&mdash;I use this word regretfully, no other
+existing which will serve for it,&mdash;had been known and felt in our wild
+northern districts long before.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page182"></a>182</span></p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page183"></a>183</span></p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<p class="title1">ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.</p>
+
+<p class="title2"><span class="sc">Note 1</span>, <a name="note1" href="#page042">p. 42</a>.&mdash;"<i>Principle of the stereoscope.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists,
+that they can, in some degree, imitate in a picture the effect
+of the stereoscope, by confusion of lines. There are indeed
+one or two artifices by which, as stated in the text, an
+appearance of retirement or projection may be obtained, so
+that they partly supply the place of the stereoscopic effect,
+but they do not imitate that effect. The principle of the
+human sight is simply this:&mdash;by means of our two eyes we
+literally see everything from two places at once; and, by
+calculated combination, in the brain, of the facts of form so
+seen, we arrive at conclusions respecting the distance and
+shape of the object, which we could not otherwise have
+reached. But it is just as vain to hope to paint at once the two
+views of the object as seen from these two places, though only
+an inch and a half distant from each other, as it would be
+if they were a mile and a half distant from each other. With
+the right eye you see one view of a given object, relieved
+against one part of the distance; with the left eye you see
+another view of it, relieved against another part of the distance.
+You may paint whichever of those views you please;
+you cannot paint both. Hold your finger upright, between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184"></a>184</span>
+you and this page of the book, about six inches from your
+eyes, and three from the book; shut the right eye, and hide
+the words "inches from," in the second line above this, with
+your finger; you will then see "six" on one side of it, and
+"your," on the other. Now shut the left eye and open the
+right without moving your finger, and you will see "inches,"
+but not "six." You may paint the finger with "inches"
+beyond it, or with "six" beyond it, but not with both. And
+this principle holds for any object and any distance. You
+might just as well try to paint St. Paul's at once from both
+ends of London Bridge as to realize any stereoscopic effect in
+a picture.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 2</span>, <a name="note2" href="#page059">p. 59</a>.&mdash;"<i>Dark lines turned to the light.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>248. It ought to have been farther observed, that the
+inclosure of the light by future shadow is by no means the
+only reason for the dark lines which great masters often
+thus introduce. It constantly happens that a local color will
+show its own darkness most on the light side, by projecting
+into and against masses of light in that direction; and then
+the painter will indicate this future force of the mass by
+his dark touch. Both the monk's head in <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a> and dog in
+<a href="#fig_20">Fig. 20</a> are dark towards the light for this reason.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 3</span>, <a name="note3" href="#page098">p. 98</a>.&mdash;"<i>Softness of reflections.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>249. I have not quite insisted enough on the extreme care
+which is necessary in giving the tender evanescence of the
+edges of the reflections, when the water is in the least agitated;
+nor on the decision with which you may reverse the object,
+when the water is quite calm. Most drawing of reflections
+is at once confused and hard; but Nature's is at once intelligible
+and tender. Generally, at the edge of the water, you
+ought not to see where reality ceases and reflection begins;
+as the image loses itself you ought to keep all its subtle and
+varied veracities, with the most exquisite softening of its edge.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185"></a>185</span>
+Practice as much as you can from the reflections of ships in
+calm water, following out all the reversed rigging, and
+taking, if anything, more pains with the reflection than with
+the ship.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 4</span>, <a name="note4" href="#page100">p. 100</a>.&mdash;"<i>Where the reflection is darkest, you will<br />
+see through the water best.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>250. For this reason it often happens that if the water
+be shallow, and you are looking steeply down into it, the
+reflection of objects on the bank will consist simply of pieces
+of the bottom seen clearly through the water, and relieved
+by flashes of light, which are the reflection of the sky. Thus
+you may have to draw the reflected dark shape of a bush:
+but, inside of that shape, you must not draw the leaves of
+the bush, but the stones under the water; and, outside of this
+dark reflection, the blue or white of the sky, with no stones
+visible.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 5</span>, <a name="note5" href="#page101">p. 101</a>.&mdash;"<i>Approach streams with reverence.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>251. I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents
+or waterfalls, as I do not consider them subjects for beginners
+to practice upon; but, as many of our younger artists are
+almost breaking their hearts over them, it may be well to
+state at once that it is physically impossible to draw a
+running torrent quite rightly, the luster of its currents and
+whiteness of its foam being dependent on intensities of light
+which art has not at its command. This also is to be observed,
+that most young painters make their defeat certain by attempting
+to draw running water, which is a lustrous object in
+rapid motion, without ever trying their strength on a lustrous
+object standing still. Let them break a coarse green-glass
+bottle into a great many bits, and try to paint those, with all
+their undulations and edges of fracture, as they lie still on
+the table; if they cannot, of course they need not try the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186"></a>186</span>
+rushing crystal and foaming fracture of the stream. If
+they can manage the glass bottle, let them next buy a fragment
+or two of yellow fire-opal; it is quite a common and
+cheap mineral, and presents, as closely as anything can, the
+milky bloom and color of a torrent wave: and if they can
+conquer the opal, they may at last have some chance with
+the stream, as far as the stream is in any wise possible. But,
+as I have just said, the bright parts of it are <i>not</i> possible, and
+ought, as much as may be, to be avoided in choosing subjects.
+A great deal more may, however, be done than any artist has
+done yet, in painting the gradual disappearance and lovely
+coloring of stones seen through clear and calm water.</p>
+
+<p>Students living in towns may make great progress in rock-drawing
+by frequently and faithfully drawing broken edges
+of common roofing slates, of their real size.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 6</span>, <a name="note6" href="#page125">p. 125</a>.&mdash;"<i>Nature's economy of color.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>252. I heard it wisely objected to this statement, the other
+day, by a young lady, that it was not through economy that
+Nature did not color deep down in the flower bells, but
+because "she had not light enough there to see to paint
+with." This may be true; but it is certainly not for want of
+light that, when she is laying the dark spots on a foxglove,
+she will not use any more purple than she has got already
+on the bell, but takes out the color all round the spot, and
+concentrates it in the middle.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 7</span>, <a name="note7" href="#page138">p. 138</a>.&mdash;"<i>The law of repetition.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>253. The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful
+picture of Vandyck's in the Manchester Exhibition, representing
+three children in court dresses of rich black and red.
+The law in question was amusingly illustrated, in the lower
+corner of that picture, by the introduction of two crows, in
+a similar color of court dress, having jet black feathers and
+bright red beaks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page187"></a>187</span></p>
+
+<p>254. Since the first edition of this work was published,
+I have ascertained that there are two series of engravings
+from the Bible drawings mentioned in the list at <a href="#page050">p. 50</a>.
+One of these is inferior to the other, and in many respects
+false to the drawing; the "Jericho," for instance, in the
+false series, has common bushes instead of palm trees in the
+middle distance. The original plates may be had at almost
+any respectable printseller's; and ordinary impressions,
+whether of these or any other plates mentioned in the list
+at <a href="#page050">p. 50</a>, will be quite as useful as proofs: but, in buying
+Liber Studiorum, it is always well to get the best impressions
+that can be had, and if possible impressions of the
+original plates, published by Turner. In case these are not
+to be had, the copies which are in course of publication by
+Mr. Lupton (4 Keppel Street, Russell Square) are good
+and serviceable; but no others are of any use.&mdash;[Note
+of 1857.]</p>
+
+<p>I have placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's
+College) some photographs from the etchings made by Turner
+for the Liber; the original etchings being now unobtainable,
+except by fortunate accident. I have selected the subjects
+carefully from my own collection of the etchings; and though
+some of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the
+photographs, the student will find these proofs the best
+lessons in pen-drawing accessible to him.&mdash;[Note of 1859]</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page188"></a>188</span></p>
+
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p class="title1">THINGS TO BE STUDIED.</p>
+
+<p>255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student
+is exposed, is that of liking things that he should not. It
+is not so much his difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set
+himself to conquer: and although, under the guidance of a
+master, many works of art may be made instructive, which
+are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of them
+being duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he
+studies alone, will be in allowing himself to possess only
+things, in their way, so free from faults, that nothing he
+copies in them can seriously mislead him, and to contemplate
+only those works of art which he knows to be either perfect
+or noble in their errors. I will therefore set down, in clear
+order, the names of the masters whom you may safely admire,
+and a few of the books which you may safely possess. In
+these days of cheap illustration, the danger is always rather
+of your possessing too much than too little. It may admit of
+some question, how far the looking at bad art may set off
+and illustrate the characters of the good; but, on the whole,
+I believe it is best to live always on quite wholesome food,
+and that our enjoyment of it will never be made more acute
+by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste
+the ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course
+the works of the great masters can only be serviceable to the
+student after he has made considerable progress himself.
+It only wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young persons,
+to drag them through picture galleries; at least, unless
+they themselves wish to look at particular pictures. Generally,
+young people only care to enter a picture gallery
+when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the
+other end of it; and they had better do that in the garden
+below. If, however, they have any real enjoyment of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189"></a>189</span>
+pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the principal
+point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
+them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing
+is of the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of
+much use to old ones), but what interests them; and therefore,
+though it is of great importance to put nothing but good
+art into their possession, yet, when they are passing through
+great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to look
+precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as
+art, it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in
+which art can interest them is when they look at it, not as
+art, but because it represents something they like in Nature.
+If a boy has had his heart filled by the life of some great
+man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to
+see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in which
+he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains,
+and dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a
+likeness to a Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the
+wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape;
+and if a girl's mind is filled with dreams of angels
+and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because she
+thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for
+her to begin the study of religious art.</p>
+
+<p>256. When, however, the student has made some definite
+progress, and every picture becomes really a guide to him,
+false or true, in his own work, it is of great importance that
+he should never look, with even partial admiration, at bad
+art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the
+matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In which,
+with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to
+the epistolary address, as being the more convenient.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>First, in Galleries of Pictures:</p>
+
+<p>1. You may look, with trust in their being always right,
+at Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and
+Velasquez; the authenticity of the picture being of course
+established for you by proper authority.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page190"></a>190</span></p>
+
+<p>2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however,
+question of right and wrong,<a name="FnAnchor_75" href="#Footnote_75"><span class="sp">[75]</span></a> at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino,
+Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio,
+Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and
+the modern Pre-Raphaelites.<a name="FnAnchor_76" href="#Footnote_76"><span class="sp">[76]</span></a> You had better look at no
+other painters than these, for you run a chance, otherwise,
+of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by some
+of the other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and
+Rubens; and of being, besides, corrupted in taste by the
+base ones, as Murillo, Salvator, Claude, Gaspar Poussin,
+Teniers, and such others. You may look, however, for
+examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation, being
+sure that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the
+Carracci, Bronzino, and the figure pieces of Salvator.</p>
+
+<p>Among those named for study under question, you cannot
+look too much at, nor grow too enthusiastically fond of,
+Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites;
+but, if you find yourself getting especially fond
+of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you must
+be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you
+begin to like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are
+losing your feeling for color; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino
+especially, you must be getting too fond of rigid detail;
+and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough especially, you
+must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art,
+such as you may be able to get yourself, or to see at private
+houses or in shops, the works of the following masters are
+the most desirable, after the Turners, Rembrandts, and
+Dürers, which I have asked you to get first:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page191"></a>191</span></p>
+
+<p class="title4">1. Samuel Prout.<a name="FnAnchor_77" href="#Footnote_77"><span class="sp">[77]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest
+value, wholly unrivaled in power of composition, and in
+love and feeling of architectural subject. His somewhat
+mannered linear execution, though not to be imitated in your
+own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally copied, for
+discipline's sake, with great advantage: it will give you a
+peculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any
+other way; and there is no fear of your getting into any
+faultful mannerism as long as you carry out the different
+modes of more delicate study above recommended.</p>
+
+<p>If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it
+your chief study, you should draw much from photographs
+of it; and then from the architecture itself, with the same
+completion of detail and gradation, only keeping the
+shadows of due paleness,&mdash;in photographs they are always
+about four times as dark as they ought to be,&mdash;and treat
+buildings with as much care and love as artists do their rock
+foregrounds, drawing all the moss, and weeds, and stains
+upon them. But if, without caring to understand architecture,
+you merely want the picturesque character of it, and
+to be able to sketch it fast, you cannot do better than take
+Prout for your exclusive master; only do not think that you
+are copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at
+the end of them. Get first his "Rhine," and draw the
+subjects that have most hills, and least architecture in them,
+with chalk on smooth paper, till you can lay on his broad
+flat tints, and get his gradations of light, which are very
+wonderful; then take up the architectural subjects in the
+"Rhine," and draw again and again the groups of figures,
+etc., in his "Microcosm," and "Lessons on Light and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192"></a>192</span>
+Shadow." After that, proceed to copy the grand subjects in
+the "Sketches in Flanders and Germany;" or "in Switzerland
+and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the
+Switzerland is very far inferior. Then work from Nature,
+not trying to Proutize Nature, by breaking smooth buildings
+into rough ones, but only drawing <i>what you see</i>, with Prout's
+simple method and firm lines. Don't copy his colored works.
+They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk and pencil
+drawings; and you will become a mere imitator, and a very
+feeble imitator, if you use color at all in Prout's method.
+I have not space to explain why this is so, it would take a
+long piece of reasoning; trust me for the statement.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">2. John Lewis.</p>
+
+<p>His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very
+valuable. Get them, if you can, and also some engravings
+(about eight or ten, I think, altogether) of wild beasts,
+executed by his own hand a long time ago; they are very
+precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is
+rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by
+himself; still it is well worth having.</p>
+
+<p>But let <i>no</i> lithographic work come into the house, if you
+can help it, nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those
+sketches of Lewis's.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">3. George Cruikshank.</p>
+
+<p>If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of
+"Grimm's German Stories," which were illustrated by him
+long ago, pounce upon them instantly; the etchings in them
+are the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I
+know, have been done since etching was invented. You
+cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.</p>
+
+<p>All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when
+they touch on the worst vulgarities of modern life; and
+often much spoiled by a curiously mistaken type of face,
+divided so as to give too much to the mouth and eyes and
+leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set about two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193"></a>193</span>
+thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But
+his manner of work is always right; and his tragic power,
+though rarely developed, and warped by habits of caricature,
+is, in reality, as great as his grotesque power.</p>
+
+<p>There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your
+principal work lies among art of so totally different a character
+as most of that which I Have recommended to you; and
+you may, therefore, get great good by copying almost anything
+of his that may come in your way; except only his
+illustrations, lately published, to "Cinderella," and "Jack
+and the Bean-stalk," and "Tom Thumb," which are much
+overlabored, and confused in line. You should get them, but
+do not copy them.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">4. Alfred Rethel.</p>
+
+<p>I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance
+of Death," with text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but
+to be had now of any London bookseller for the sum, I believe,
+of eighteen pence, and containing six plates full of
+instructive character; the other, of two plates only, "Death
+the Avenger," and "Death the Friend." These two are far
+superior to the "Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will
+be enough in themselves to show all that Rethel can teach
+you. If you dislike ghastly subjects, get "Death the
+Friend" only.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">5. Bewick.</p>
+
+<p>The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the
+most masterly thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is
+worked just as Paul Veronese would have worked in wood,
+had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too coarse in execution,
+and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies, show,
+nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and
+there are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or
+satirical, which have never since been equaled in illustrations
+of this simple kind; the bitter intensity of the feeling
+being just like that which characterizes some of the leading
+Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page194"></a>194</span></p>
+
+<p class="title4">6. Blake.</p>
+
+<p>The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest
+rank in certain characters of imagination and expression; in
+the mode of obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a
+very useful example to you. In expressing conditions of glaring
+and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">7. Richter.</p>
+
+<p>I have already told you what to guard against in looking at
+his works. I am a little doubtful whether I have done well
+in including them in this catalogue at all; but the imaginations
+in them are so lovely and numberless, that I must risk,
+for their sake, the chance of hurting you a little in judgment
+of style. If you want to make presents of story-books to
+children, his are the best you can now get; but his most
+beautiful work, as far as I know, is his series of Illustrations
+to the Lord's Prayer.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">8. Rossetti.</p>
+
+<p>An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood-cuts
+from drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite
+masters. They are terribly spoiled in the cutting, and
+generally the best part, the expression of feature, <i>entirely</i>
+lost;<a name="FnAnchor_78" href="#Footnote_78"><span class="sp">[78]</span></a> still they are full of instruction, and cannot be studied
+too closely. But observe, respecting these wood-cuts, that if
+you have been in the habit of looking at much spurious work,
+in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or artificial,
+you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine
+work, which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is
+merely art, such as Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend
+you, though the chances are that you will not care about it;
+but genuine works of feeling, such as "Maud" or "Aurora
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195"></a>195</span>
+Leigh" in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in
+painting, are sure to offend you: and if you cease to work
+hard, and persist in looking at vicious and false art, they
+will continue to offend you. It will be well, therefore, to
+have one type of entirely false art, in order to know what to
+guard against. Flaxman's outlines to Dante contain, I
+think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and feebleness
+which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in
+thought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution.
+Base or degraded choice of subject, such as you will constantly
+find in Teniers and others of the Dutch painters, I need
+not, I hope, warn you against; you will simply turn away
+from it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble drawing, which
+makes mistakes in every direction at once, cannot teach
+you the particular sort of educated fallacy in question. But,
+in these designs of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling,
+and fair knowledge of anatomy, and firm setting down of
+lines, all applied in the foolishest and worst possible way;
+you cannot have a more finished example of learned error,
+amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with a steady
+hand.<a name="FnAnchor_79" href="#Footnote_79"><span class="sp">[79]</span></a> Retzsch's outlines have more real material in them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196"></a>196</span>
+than Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy and power;
+in artistic principle they are nearly as bad, and in taste,
+worse. All outlines from statuary, as given in works on
+classical art, will be very hurtful to you if you in the least
+like them; and <i>nearly</i> all finished line engravings. Some
+particular prints I could name which possess instructive
+qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them, and
+the best way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether.<a name="FnAnchor_80" href="#Footnote_80"><span class="sp">[80]</span></a>
+If you happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of
+them, and if you are fond of the large finished prints from
+Raphael, Correggio, etc., it is wholly impossible that you
+can make any progress in knowledge of real art till you have
+sold them all,&mdash;or burnt them, which would be a greater
+benefit to the world. I hope that, some day, true and noble
+engravings will be made from the few pictures of the great
+schools, which the restorations undertaken by the modern
+managers of foreign galleries may leave us; but the existing
+engravings have nothing whatever in common with the good
+in the works they profess to represent, and, if you like them,
+you like in the originals of them hardly anything but their
+errors.</p>
+
+<p>258. Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected
+by your taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons
+who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false
+taste in art, and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me not a
+little; but I have never known any one with false taste in
+books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest
+importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of
+sake, in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197"></a>197</span>
+swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of
+your own, with a spring and a lake in it, pure and good.
+I cannot, of course, suggest the choice of your library to you:
+every several mind needs different books; but there are some
+books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read Homer,<a name="FnAnchor_81" href="#Footnote_81"><span class="sp">[81]</span></a>
+Plato, Æschylus, Herodotus, Dante,<a name="FnAnchor_82" href="#Footnote_82"><span class="sp">[82]</span></a> Shakspeare, and Spenser,
+as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement
+of shelves to right and left of them for purposes of
+perpetual study. Among modern books avoid generally magazine
+and review literature. Sometimes it may contain a useful
+abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the
+chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead
+you. If you want to understand any subject whatever,
+read the best book upon it you can hear of: not a review of
+the book. If you don't like the first book you try, seek for
+another; but do not hope ever to understand the subject
+without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that
+class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most
+poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full
+of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern
+satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and
+it always leads you to reverence or love something with your
+whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the satire
+of the venomous race of books from the satire of the noble and
+pure ones; but in general you may notice that the cold-blooded,
+Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at
+sentiment; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin.
+Then, in general, the more you can restrain your serious
+reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history, and natural
+history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the healthier your
+mind will become. Of modern poetry, keep to Scott, Wordsworth,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198"></a>198</span>
+Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings,
+Thomas Hood, Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore,
+whose "Angel in the House" is a most finished piece of
+writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet modern
+domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
+is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has
+produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as
+sickly and useless; and Shelley, as shallow and verbose;
+Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able to
+discern the magnificence in him from the wrong. Never
+read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself;
+there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the
+world already.</p>
+
+<p>259. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and
+Helps. Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners,"
+because his teaching, though to some of us vitally
+necessary, may to others be hurtful. If you understand and
+like him, read him; if he offends you, you are not yet ready
+for him, and perhaps may never be so; at all events, give him
+up, as you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you, till
+you are stronger. Of fiction, read "Sir Charles Grandison,"
+Scott's novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young
+lady, Madame de Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making
+these, I mean, your constant companions. Of course
+you must, or will, read other books for amusement once or
+twice; but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity
+in them, existing in nothing else of their kind; while
+their peculiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of
+the greatest value in teaching you to feel the same characters
+in art. Read little at a time, trying to feel interest in little
+things, and reading not so much for the sake of the story as
+to get acquainted with the pleasant people into whose company
+these writers bring you. A common book will often
+give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which
+will give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of
+less importance to you in your earlier years, that the books
+you read should be clever than that they should be right. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199"></a>199</span>
+do not mean oppressively or repulsively instructive; but
+that the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings
+they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to
+read the wittiest or the most suggestive books: it is better, in
+general, to hear what is already known, and may be simply
+said. Much of the literature of the present day, though
+good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a tendency to
+agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too frequently
+in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible
+state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It
+may, indeed, become necessary for you, as you advance in
+life, to set your hand to things that need to be altered in the
+world, or apply your heart chiefly to what must be pitied in
+it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the safest temper
+is one of reverence, and the safest place one of obscurity.
+Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your
+teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet
+virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which point
+out, in common life, and in familiar things, the objects for
+hopeful labor, and for humble love.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_75" href="#FnAnchor_75">[75]</a> I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in saying that
+this second class of painters have questionable qualities. The greatest
+men have often many faults, and sometimes their faults are a part of their
+greatness; but such men are not, of course, to be looked upon by the
+student with absolute implicitness of faith.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_76" href="#FnAnchor_76">[76]</a> Including, under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the
+Old Water-color, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still life,
+I believe, that ever existed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_77" href="#FnAnchor_77">[77]</a> The order in which I place these masters does not in the least imply
+superiority or inferiority. I wrote their names down as they occurred to
+me; putting Rossetti's last because what I had to say of him was connected
+with other subjects; and one or another will appear to you great,
+or be found by you useful, according to the kind of subjects you are
+studying.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_78" href="#FnAnchor_78">[78]</a> This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first illustration
+to the "Palace of Art," which would have been the best in the book had
+it been well engraved. The whole work should be taken up again, and
+done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly from Pre-Raphaelite designs,
+with which no other modern work can bear the least comparison.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_79" href="#FnAnchor_79">[79]</a> The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in the
+"Seven Lamps," and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from Nature,
+and simple groups in marble, which were always good and interesting.
+Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and it is generally to be
+remembered that, in speaking of artists whose works I cannot be supposed
+to have specially studied, the errors I fall into will always be on
+the side of praise. For, of course, praise is most likely to be given when
+the thing praised is above one's knowledge; and, therefore, as our knowledge
+increases, such things may be found less praiseworthy than we
+thought. But blame can only be justly given when the thing blamed is
+below one's level of sight; and, practically, I never do blame anything
+until I have got well past it, and am certain that there is demonstrable
+falsehood in it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly trust-worthy,
+having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory
+word that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with respect
+to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far by sudden
+admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or other deceptive
+accidents; and this the more, because I never care to check an expression
+of delight, thinking the chances are, that, even if mistaken, it will do
+more good than harm; but I weigh every word of blame with scrupulous
+caution. I have sometimes erased a strong passage of blame from second
+editions of my books; but this was only when I found it offended the
+reader without convincing him, never because I repented of it myself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_80" href="#FnAnchor_80">[80]</a> Large line engravings, I mean, in which the lines, as such, are conspicuous.
+Small vignettes in line are often beautiful in figures no less
+than landscape; as, for instance, those from Stothard's drawings in
+Rogers's Italy; and, therefore, I have just recommended the vignettes to
+Tennyson to be done by line engraving.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_81" href="#FnAnchor_81">[81]</a> Chapman's, if not the original.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_82" href="#FnAnchor_82">[82]</a> Gary's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which are the
+best translations of Plato. Herodotus and Æschylus can only be read in
+the original. It may seem strange that I name books like these for
+"beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for all ages; and an
+intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, even in
+Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 30325 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #30325 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30325)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Elements of Drawing, by John Ruskin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Elements of Drawing
+       In Three Letters to Beginners
+
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2009  [eBook #30325]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Marius Borror, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30325-h.htm or 30325-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30325/30325-h/30325-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30325/30325-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      One typographical error has been corrected: it is listed
+      at the end of the text.
+
+      Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph were
+      moved to the nearest paragraph's begining.
+
+
+
+
+
+Library Edition
+
+THE COMPLETE WORKS
+OF
+JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+ELEMENTS OF DRAWING AND
+PERSPECTIVE
+THE TWO PATHS
+UNTO THIS LAST
+MUNERA PULVERIS
+SESAME AND LILIES
+ETHICS OF THE DUST
+
+
+National Library Association
+New York             Chicago
+
+
+THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING
+
+IN THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                                                 ix
+
+    LETTER I.
+  ON FIRST PRACTICE                                        1
+
+    LETTER II.
+  SKETCHING FROM NATURE                                   65
+
+    LETTER III.
+  ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION                               106
+
+
+    APPENDIX I.
+  ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES                                     183
+
+    APPENDIX II.
+  THINGS TO BE STUDIED                                   188
+
+
+
+
+["The Elements of Drawing" was written during the winter of 1856. The
+First Edition was published in 1857; the Second followed in the same
+year, with some additions and slight alterations. The Third Edition
+consisted of sixth thousand, 1859; seventh thousand, 1860; and eighth
+thousand, 1861.
+
+The work was partly reproduced in "Our Sketching Club," by the Rev. R.
+St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., 1874; with new editions in 1875, 1882, and
+1886.
+
+Mr. Ruskin meant, during his tenure of the Slade Professorship at
+Oxford, to recast his teaching, and to write a systematic manual for the
+use of his Drawing School, under the title of "The Laws of Fésole." Of
+this only vol. i. was completed, 1879; second edition, 1882.
+
+As, therefore, "The Elements of Drawing" has never been completely
+superseded, and as many readers of Mr. Ruskin's works have expressed a
+desire to possess the book in its old form, it is now reprinted as it
+stood in 1859.]
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+As one or two questions, asked of me since the publication of this work,
+have indicated points requiring elucidation, I have added a few short
+notes in the first Appendix. It is not, I think, desirable otherwise to
+modify the form or add to the matter of a book as it passes through
+successive editions; I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some
+obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains, and will
+remain, in its original form, which I had carefully considered. Should
+the public find the book useful, and call for further editions of it,
+such additional notes as may be necessary will be always placed in the
+first Appendix, where they can be at once referred to, in any library,
+by the possessors of the earlier editions; and I will take care they
+shall not be numerous.
+
+  _August 3, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual of drawing, I
+ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but
+those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly
+state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is
+too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance
+of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear
+questionable in the method of its treatment.
+
+ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of
+children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it
+advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of
+art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on
+what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free
+will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in
+its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors
+almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely
+daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-box may be taken away
+till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on
+soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colors at
+command; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that
+imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children
+delight in, (generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical
+art delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the
+parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things
+it can see and likes,--birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.
+
+iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should only be
+granted as a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its
+drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should
+always be within a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he
+can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in
+it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind;
+but should be firmly restricted to a _few_ prints and to a few books. If
+a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a
+boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by
+the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in
+them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give
+themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is
+concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his
+colors and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,
+and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line
+is too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy;
+_accuracy_ being the first and last thing they look for. If the child
+shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should
+neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show
+pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it
+well, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any
+more than they would praise it for being stout. They should praise it
+only for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;
+otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly.
+The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated by George
+Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or
+fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;
+and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
+hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to
+know something of the first principles of art.
+
+iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought
+forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at
+present devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther
+experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in
+several important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are
+sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
+without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so
+materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word
+or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be
+thought willful eccentricity.
+
+v. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all
+directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they
+propose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil
+or water-color, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter
+work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such
+accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to
+design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught as
+an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the
+second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in
+the branch Government Schools of Design.
+
+vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to
+the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it
+seems to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as
+_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the
+skill by which an inventive workman designs and molds a beautiful cup,
+is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
+afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the
+faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original
+piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as
+those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate
+copies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
+reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education
+of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael; then let
+Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or
+a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most
+convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the
+platter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain
+first the best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any
+consideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your
+trained artist to determine how far art can be popularized, or
+manufacture ennobled.
+
+vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual
+temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends
+wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a
+master or a school can teach; so that while powers of invention
+distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from
+school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of
+sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be without
+exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate.
+
+viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to
+obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's
+power, a delicate method of work, such as may insure his seeing truly.
+For I am nearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is
+very little difficulty in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that
+this difficulty be still great, 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. It is surely also a more important thing,
+for young people and unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate
+the art of others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the
+modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of
+judgment. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern
+water-color painting, can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo;
+they must forever remain blind to the refinement of such men's
+penciling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a
+degree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode
+recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot
+go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand
+what masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some
+proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting
+of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of
+natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labor than I have
+asked him to undergo.
+
+ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it
+possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works
+unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight road which admits
+unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the
+hedges need to be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring
+back the erring traveler. The system followed in this work will,
+therefore, at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are
+familiar with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College;
+for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate him
+from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead into, is _at
+once_ set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds entertainment in
+his efforts and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest
+object which it is possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and,
+practically, I find a child's toy, a white leather ball, better than
+anything else; as the gradations on balls of plaster of Paris, which I
+use sometimes to try the strength of pupils who have had previous
+practice, are a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has
+been objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the
+most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;[A] but I do not want it
+to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, is
+the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. This he
+learns most satisfactorily from a sphere; because any solid form,
+terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes some of its
+appearance of projection to its perspective; but in the sphere, what,
+without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade,
+the image of a solid ball; and this fact is just as striking to the
+learner, whether his circular outline be true or false. He is,
+therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes the
+ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out
+to him, and he does better next time, and better still the next. But his
+mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the outline left to
+take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of
+immediate intelligibility,--strictly speaking, it is merely the edge of
+the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an outline,
+in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from the first, that
+Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another; but outlines
+none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is
+recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only
+means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and
+discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and
+extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the
+handling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the
+solitary student can only find out his own mistakes by help of the
+traced limit, and can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise
+in which nothing but firmness is required; and during which all other
+considerations (as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely excluded.
+
+x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that
+recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the
+most important and special of all that are involved in my teaching:
+namely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local
+color. I believe that the endeavor to separate, in the course of
+instruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local
+color, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the student's
+power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much as it
+retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by any
+discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the only
+distinctive one in my system, so far as it _is_ a system. For the
+recommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration,
+whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other
+reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and
+teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or
+stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold
+their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."
+
+xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with
+regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous
+or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted student, such formalities
+are indispensable, and I am not without hope that the sense of secure
+advancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the
+following out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible
+to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be
+otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only
+desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as
+that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or
+whether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working
+world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give
+no price for it.
+
+xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have
+not imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would
+be worth while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a
+master's help, and in the way perspective is at present explained in
+treatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is
+not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the
+rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep
+of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot
+foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
+subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by
+the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever
+trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its
+laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in
+the easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult
+ones. It would take about a month's labor to draw imperfectly, by laws
+of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five
+minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending
+the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is
+true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused
+themselves with it; and all the great painters put fine saloons and
+arcades behind their Madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in
+perspective: but even this was generally done by them only to catch the
+public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they
+took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a
+crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their
+capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in
+the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only
+they left just perspective enough to please the public.
+
+xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David
+Roberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic
+arch to scale at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was
+professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he
+professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in
+true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much perspective
+as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his
+buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not
+justify this; and would recommend the student at least to treat
+perspective with common civility, but to pay no court to it. The best
+way he can learn it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in
+a frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance
+at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be
+placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass,
+but as high or as low as the student likes; then with a brush at the end
+of a stick, and a little body-color that will adhere to the glass, the
+lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them
+through it. When so traced they are all in true perspective. If the
+glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true
+perspective, only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane,
+while common perspective always supposes the plane of the picture to be
+vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom yourself to inclose
+your subject, before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held
+upright before you; it will show you what you may legitimately take into
+your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow foreground near
+you, and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building
+you can properly take in, etc.[B]
+
+xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because
+I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good
+purpose by an amateur. As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be
+drawn on the same principles as anything else.
+
+xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student
+should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended
+practice he find himself in difficulties which I have not enough
+provided against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under
+drawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street),
+and who will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that can
+remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself
+in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do
+so; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me
+when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough
+guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious
+embarrassment; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions
+will find, on the whole, that the best answerer of questions is
+perseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.
+
+  [1857.]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [A] Or, more accurately, appears to be so, because any one can see
+    an error in a circle.
+
+  [B] If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more
+    of perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of
+    49 Acacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master,
+    and to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly,
+    easily, and rightly. [Mr. Runciman has died since this was written:
+    Mr. Ward's present address is Bedford Chambers, 28 Southampton
+    Street, Strand, London, W.C.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+ON FIRST PRACTICE.
+
+
+1. MY DEAR READER,--Whether this book is to be of use to you or not,
+depends wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you
+desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse
+in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in
+listless hours, I cannot help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that
+you may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such
+things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your own memory
+of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you
+wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world,
+and to preserve something like a true image of beautiful things that
+pass away, or which you must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to
+understand the minds of great painters, and to be able to appreciate
+their work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely
+taking up the thoughts of other people about it; then I _can_ help you,
+or, which is better, show you how to help yourself.
+
+2. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers, which
+indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much
+easier to learn to draw well, than it is to learn to play well on any
+musical instrument; but you know that it takes three or four years of
+practice, giving three or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary
+command over the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly
+command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with it,
+can be acquired without painstaking, or in a _very_ short time. The kind
+of drawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in
+a term or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not
+drawing at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not
+always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;
+profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of
+vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,
+after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will
+try to copy the commonest piece of real work--suppose a lithograph on
+the titlepage of a new opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest
+illustrated newspaper of the day,--they will find themselves entirely
+beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much
+more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young
+lady is supposed to have command; and that wood-cut was drawn in urgent
+haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by
+people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power;
+both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any
+simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.
+
+3. Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a
+new language, without some hard and disagreeable labor. But do not, on
+the other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear
+that you may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is
+indeed true that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw
+instinctively, and get on almost without teaching; though never without
+toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are
+many degrees: it will take one person a much longer time than another to
+attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are
+never quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the
+faculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in
+the experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to
+draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available
+power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all
+persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a
+decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess
+such knowledge.
+
+4. Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains,
+and to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I
+can promise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an
+hour's practice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in
+whatever way you find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours'
+practice, will give you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever
+you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other
+people's work: of which hours if you have one to spare at present, we
+may as well begin at once.
+
+
+EXERCISE I.
+
+5. Everything that you can see in the world around you, presents itself
+to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors
+variously shaded.[1] Some of these patches of color have an appearance
+of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk has of
+threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs: but whether this be
+the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch
+of some definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to
+produce extents of smooth color, without texture.
+
+6. This can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft
+at the point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpracticed
+hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it
+is better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and
+fine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by
+working over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be
+properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the best
+artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument,
+in order thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be
+content to do so for a considerable period.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
+
+7. Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of
+color, we must be able to lay on _one_ color properly, in whatever
+gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore,
+first to lay on tints or patches of gray, of whatever depth we want,
+with a pointed instrument. Take any finely pointed steel pen (one of
+Gillott's lithographic crowquills is best), and a piece of quite smooth,
+but not shining, note-paper, cream laid, and get some ink that has stood
+already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black, and as thick
+as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and draw four
+straight lines, so as to inclose a square, or nearly a square, about as
+large as _a_, Fig. 1. I say nearly a square, because it does not in the
+least matter whether it is quite square or not, the object being merely
+to get a space inclosed by straight lines.
+
+8. Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so
+completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch of gray
+silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as at _b_. Cover it
+quickly, first with straightish lines, in any direction you like, not
+troubling yourself to draw them much closer or neater than those in the
+square _a_. Let them quite dry before retouching them. (If you draw
+three or four squares side by side, you may always be going on with one
+while the others are drying.) Then cover these lines with others in a
+different direction, and let those dry; then in another direction still,
+and let those dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk of blotting,
+and then draw the lines as quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on
+as swiftly as the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to
+reach this great speed at first, you will go over the edge of the
+square, which is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now
+and then than to draw the lines very slowly; for if you do, the pen
+leaves a little dot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil
+your work. So draw each line quickly, stopping always as nearly as you
+can at the edge of the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge
+are afterwards to be removed with the penknife, but not till you have
+done the whole work, otherwise you roughen the paper, and the next line
+that goes over the edge makes a blot.
+
+9. When you have gone over the whole three or four times, you will find
+some parts of the square look darker than other parts. Now try to make
+the lighter parts as dark as the rest, so that the whole may be of equal
+depth or darkness. You will find, on examining the work, that where it
+looks darkest the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines
+than elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little
+scratches and dots, _between_ the lines in the paler parts; and where
+there are any very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them out lightly with
+the penknife, for the eye must not be attracted by any line in
+particular. The more carefully and delicately you fill in the little
+gaps and holes the better; you will get on faster by doing two or three
+squares perfectly than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and
+begins to look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly
+to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use
+the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it
+softly into an even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty
+consists in getting evenness: one bit will always look darker than
+another bit of your square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look
+over the whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a mess,
+give it up and begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you
+have done your best with every square. The tint at last ought at least
+to be as close and even as that in _b_, Fig. 1. You will find, however,
+that it is very difficult to get a pale tint; because, naturally, the
+ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper
+more than you want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by
+leaving the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine,
+lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last,
+passing the penknife over the whole. By keeping several squares in
+progress at one time, and reserving your pen for the light one just when
+the ink is nearly exhausted, you may get on better. The paper ought, at
+last, to look lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines
+distinctly visible.
+
+
+EXERCISE II.
+
+10. As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to
+vary it by proceeding with another at the same time. The power of
+shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of hand and keenness of
+sight; but there are other qualities required in drawing, dependent not
+merely on lightness, but steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect
+in its power, must be made accurate as well as keen, and not only see
+shrewdly, but measure justly.
+
+11. Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on botany containing
+_outline_ plates of leaves and flowers, it does not matter whether bad
+or good: Baxter's British Flowering Plants is quite good enough. Copy
+any of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by
+the eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,
+rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right:
+when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the book; on
+this paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your
+own; and having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all
+patiently, till you have got it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with
+a very soft pencil, and do not rub out so hard[2] as to spoil the
+surface of your paper; never mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not
+roughen it; and let the false outlines alone where they do not really
+interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to
+hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have
+got it as right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the
+point; rest your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to
+hold the pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising
+your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on
+one part of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the
+present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of
+shade; all such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for
+your exercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is
+better, however, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does
+not in the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but
+it matters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place
+than in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even
+line slowly and in any direction; all dashing lines, or approximations
+to penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the
+ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it
+in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.
+
+12. As soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you
+have made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in
+the slowness. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a
+sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[3] the real
+difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but
+keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.
+
+
+EXERCISE III.
+
+13. Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares,
+and chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for
+rest.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading
+instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to
+produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2, the dark tint passing gradually
+into the lighter ones. Nearly all expression of form, in drawing,
+depends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is
+always most skillful which passes from one tint into another very little
+paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, as
+in Fig. 2, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black,
+passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every part of
+the band may have visible change in it. The perception of gradation is
+very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many artists), and you
+will probably, for some time, think your gradation skillful enough, when
+it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece of gray shaded
+ribbon, and comparing it with your drawing, you may arrive, in early
+stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction with it. Widen your
+band little by little as you get more skillful, so as to give the
+gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the same time to
+look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest and the most
+beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and try to
+consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a piece of
+paper colored blue, or gray, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe
+how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the
+window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on the outside and
+inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look round and
+hollow;[4] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus gradually you
+will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the light as it
+increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your eye gets keen
+and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.
+
+14. But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects
+in which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad
+omen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of
+by you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of
+sky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
+between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the
+corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to
+gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as
+_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without color, no, nor with color
+either; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your
+spots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the
+sense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
+for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all
+great painters, however delicate their perception of color, are fond of
+the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,
+and in a wood-cut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black
+lines; and if you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will
+never gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common wood-cuts,
+in the cheap publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given
+to the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but you must
+make your lines as fine as you can, as well as far apart, towards the
+light; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross
+irregularly in any directions easy to your hand, depending on nothing
+but their gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of
+lines, however, I shall have to tell you more, presently; in the
+meantime, do not trouble yourself about it.
+
+
+EXERCISE IV.
+
+15. As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an
+H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest
+possible to the palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen,
+lightening, however, now with india-rubber instead of the penknife. You
+will find that all _pale_ tints of shade are thus easily producible with
+great precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark
+power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt
+to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere,
+however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing
+any single speck or line that may be too black, with the _point_ of the
+knife: you must not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink.
+If you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over with
+india-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine
+touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to
+perfect evenness with the darker spots.
+
+You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work
+with it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.
+
+16. At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured
+that some clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking
+amazement, and ask you who could set you to that "niggling;" and if you
+persevere in it, you will have to sustain considerable persecution from
+your artistical acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good
+drawing depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You do not hear them
+tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with a crash among
+the keys, in imitation of the great masters: yet they might, as
+reasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your
+knowledge. Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the
+sense of being careless, confident, or exhibitory,--no,--no, and a
+thousand times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be bad
+advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done quickly, but good
+and beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find no boldness
+in the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not
+bold at her work, do you think you ought to be at yours? So never mind
+what people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently; and if
+you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that though
+there are all kinds and ways of art,--large work for large places, small
+work for narrow places, slow work for people who can wait, and quick
+work for people who cannot,--there is one quality, and, I think, only
+one, in which all great and good art agrees;--it is all delicate art.
+Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this at present,
+because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and subtle care,
+the great painters put into touches that at first look coarse; but,
+believe me, it is true, and you will find it is so in due time.
+
+17. You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil
+drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant
+by a chance touch of the india-rubber, than by an hour's labor with the
+point; and you may wonder why I tell you to produce tints so painfully,
+which might, it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two
+reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able
+to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you
+wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the india-rubber does it: and,
+secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams
+of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little
+pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves;
+in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:
+in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be
+represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an
+instrument known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage the
+point properly, you will indeed be able to do much also with this
+instrument, or with your fingers; but then you will have to retouch the
+flat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light into them, and that
+can only be done with the point. Labor on, therefore, courageously, with
+that only.
+
+
+EXERCISE V.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+18. When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil
+point, get a good large alphabet, and try to _tint_ the letters into
+shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure
+their height and extreme breadth with the compasses, as _a b_, _a c_,
+Fig. 3, and then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A,
+inclosed within the lines, being in what Turner would have called a
+"state of forwardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of
+the letter, draw pen-and-ink lines firmly round the tint, as at _d_, and
+remove any touches outside the limit, first with the india-rubber, and
+then with the penknife, so that all may look clear and right. If you rub
+out any of the pencil inside the outline of the letter, retouch it,
+closing it up to the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are
+all to be ruled,[5] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and
+hand; and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting the
+curved letters, such as Bs, Cs, etc., to stand quite straight, and come
+into accurate form.
+
+19. All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be
+persisted in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in
+any of them. An entire master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to
+be able to draw any form at once, as Giotto his circle; but such skill
+as this is only to be expected of the consummate master, having pencil
+in hand all his life, and all day long,--hence the force of Giotto's
+proof of his skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully,
+without attaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point
+being, not that every line should be precisely what we intend or wish,
+but that the line which we intended or wished to draw should be right.
+If we always see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the
+hand may stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it
+does not matter how firm the hand is. Do not therefore torment yourself
+because you cannot do as well as you would like; but work patiently,
+sure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of
+power; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a
+more amusing exercise for you.
+
+
+EXERCISE VI.
+
+20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of
+leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall,
+or other light ground: it must not be against strong light, or you will
+find the looking at it hurt your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or
+you will be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in
+shade; and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or rainy
+day is the best for this practice.
+
+21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the
+sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map
+with absolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the
+roundness of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them
+in with pencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct
+and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your
+paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is
+exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in
+curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them
+with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had
+to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy
+penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave
+the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the
+whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not
+take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused
+network or mist; leave them all out,[6] drawing only the main branches
+as far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not
+to draw a tree, but to learn how to do so. When you have got the thing
+as nearly right as you can,--and it is better to make one good study,
+than twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate,--take your pen, and put a
+fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking care,
+as far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so
+as not to make the boughs thicker: the main use of the outline is to
+affirm the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental
+roughnesses and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,
+or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement in
+this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may
+perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than
+your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to
+mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to be slovenly and
+careless, and the outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence
+into attention and precision. The outline should be about the thickness
+of that in Fig. 4, which represents the ramification of a small stone
+pine, only I have not endeavored to represent the pencil shading within
+the outline, as I could not easily express it in a wood-cut; and you
+have nothing to do at present with the indication of foliage above, of
+which in another place. You may also draw your trees as much larger than
+this figure as you like; only, however large they may be, keep the
+outline as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer
+sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure,
+otherwise you do not get good enough practice out of them.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you
+some new notion about trees. But when you are tired of tree boughs, take
+any forms whatever which are drawn in flat color, one upon another; as
+patterns on any kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance),
+executed in two colors only; and practice drawing them of the right
+shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the depth
+required.
+
+In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of
+representing depth of color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of
+ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a darker tint of gray
+than a pattern of yellow.
+
+23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use
+of the brush; and necessary for you to do so in order to provide
+yourself with the gradated scale of color which you will want. If you
+can, by any means, get acquainted with any ordinary skillful water-color
+painter, and prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a
+brush, by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long while
+yet, to begin to color, but because the brush is often more convenient
+than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, and the sooner
+you know how to manage it as an instrument the better. If, however, you
+have no opportunity of seeing how water-color is laid on by a workman of
+any kind, the following directions will help you:--
+
+
+EXERCISE VII.
+
+24. Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in water so
+as to take up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer till you cannot rub
+much more, and the color gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two
+teaspoonfuls of water to the color you have rubbed down, and mix it well
+up with a camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.
+
+25. Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or
+pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large
+as those of the very largest chess-board: they need not be perfect
+squares, only as nearly so as you can quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard
+on something sloping as much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your
+brush into the color you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid
+as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay a pond
+or runlet of color along the top edge. Lead this pond of color
+gradually downwards, not faster at one place than another, but as if you
+were adding a row of bricks to a building, all along (only building down
+instead of up), dipping the brush frequently so as to keep the color as
+full in that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only
+that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if it should,
+never mind; go on quietly with your square till you have covered it all
+in. When you get to the bottom, the color will lodge there in a great
+wave. Have ready a piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and
+with the dry brush take up the superfluous color as you would with a
+sponge, till it all looks even.
+
+26. In leading the color down, you will find your brush continually go
+over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps within it. Do not
+endeavor to retouch these, nor take much care about them; the great
+thing is to get the color to lie smoothly where it reaches, not in
+alternate blots and pale patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the
+square as fast as possible, with such attention to your limit as you are
+able to give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally
+to strike the color up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but the first
+thing is to get it even,--the power of rightly striking the edge comes
+only by time and practice: even the greatest artists rarely can do this
+quite perfectly.
+
+27. When you have done one square, proceed to do another which does not
+communicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares,
+as on a chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with
+the first, and put another coat over it, and so on over all the others.
+The use of turning the paper upside down is to neutralize the increase
+of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would otherwise
+take place from the ponding of the color.
+
+28. Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead of
+your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once acquired, will
+save you from much partial poisoning. Take care, however, always to draw
+the brush from root to point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even
+wipe it as you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing
+harm, provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at first,
+and cherish it; it will serve you longer and better than many bad ones.
+
+29. When you have done the squares all over again, do them a third time,
+always trying to keep your edges as neat as possible. When your color is
+exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much
+as you can grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate
+squares three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and
+dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them up to the
+same tint in the same way. The amount of jagged dark line which then
+will mark the limits of the squares will be the exact measure of your
+unskillfulness.
+
+30. As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses); and
+then draw straight lines irregularly across circles, and fill up the
+spaces so produced between the straight line and the circumference; and
+then draw any simple shapes of leaves, according to the exercise No.
+II., and fill up those, until you can lay on color quite evenly in any
+shape you want.
+
+31. You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot always
+put exactly the same quantity of water to the color, that the darker the
+color is, the more difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. Therefore,
+when you have gained some definite degree of power, try to fill in the
+forms required with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of
+laying several coats one over another; always taking care that the tint,
+however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid on, so much of
+it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line at the edge as it
+dries. A little experience will teach you how apt the color is to do
+this, and how to prevent it; not that it needs always to be prevented,
+for a great master in water-colors will sometimes draw a firm outline,
+when he _wants_ one, simply by letting the color dry in this way at the
+edge.
+
+32. When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with the darker
+color, no rapidity will prevent the tint from drying irregularly as it
+is led on from part to part. You will then find the following method
+useful. Lay in the color very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that you
+can only just see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the
+outlines, and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet
+everywhere. Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker color, and
+lay some of it _into_ the middle of the liquid color. It will spread
+gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now lead it up to the
+outlines already determined, and play it with the brush till it fills
+its place well; then let it dry, and it will be as flat and pure as a
+single dash, yet defining all the complicated forms accurately.
+
+33. Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably flat tint,
+you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the color with three or
+four teaspoonfuls of water; then, when it is mixed, pour away about
+two-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoonful of pale color. Sloping your
+paper as before, draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space
+between them of the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the
+top of your paper, between the lines; and having struck on the first
+brushful of color, and led it down a little, dip your brush deep in
+water, and mix up the color on the plate quickly with as much more water
+as the brush takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler color, lead
+the tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the color again, and thus
+lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between each
+replenishing of the brush, and stirring the color on the plate well, but
+as quickly as you can. Go on until the color has become so pale that you
+cannot see it; then wash your brush thoroughly in water, and carry the
+wave down a little farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry
+brush, and leave it to dry.
+
+34. If you get to the bottom of your paper before your color gets pale,
+you may either take longer paper, or begin, with the tint as it was when
+you left off, on another sheet; but be sure to exhaust it to pure
+whiteness at last. When all is quite dry, recommence at the top with
+another similar mixture of color, and go down in the same way. Then
+again, and then again, and so continually until the color at the top of
+the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and passes down into
+pure white paper at the end of your column, with a perfectly smooth
+gradation from one into the other.
+
+35. You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, instead
+of evenly gradated; this is because at some places you have taken up
+more water in your brush than at others, or not mixed it thoroughly on
+the plate, or led one tint too far before replenishing with the next.
+Practice only will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot
+always get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they
+ever leave them on their pictures without after-touching.
+
+36. As you get more power, and can strike the color more quickly down,
+you will be able to gradate in less compass;[7] beginning with a small
+quantity of color, and adding a drop of water, instead of a brushful;
+with finer brushes, also, you may gradate to a less scale. But slight
+skill will enable you to test the relations of color to shade as far as
+is necessary for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:--
+
+37. Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt,
+and vermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done
+with the Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[8] Cut a narrow
+slip, all the way down, of each gradated color, and set the three slips
+side by side; fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across
+all the three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the
+degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, etc. If you have gradated
+them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will be nearly
+equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, and any degree of
+the black slip will also, accurately enough for our purpose, balance in
+weight the degree similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then,
+when you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue color, if you
+can match their color by any compartment of the crimson or blue in your
+scales, the gray in the compartment of the gray scale marked with the
+same number is the gray which must represent that crimson or blue in
+your light and shade drawing.
+
+38. Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will
+find that you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[9] for yellow
+and scarlet, so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach
+to black; we cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark
+scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way
+down; passing _then_ gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken
+the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian blue to darken
+the cobalt. You will thus have three more scales, passing from white
+nearly to black, through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and
+through scarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make
+another with green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet; the
+sepia alone will make a forcible brown one; and so on, until you have as
+many scales as you like, passing from black to white through different
+colors. Then, supposing your scales properly gradated and equally
+divided, the compartment or degree No. 1 of the gray will represent in
+chiaroscuro the No. 1 of all the other colors; No. 2 of gray the No. 2
+of the other colors, and so on.
+
+39. It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should
+understand the principle; for it would never be possible for you to
+gradate your scales so truly as to make them practically accurate and
+serviceable; and even if you could, unless you had about ten thousand
+scales, and were able to change them faster than ever juggler changed
+cards, you could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side
+of a frost-bitten apple. But when once you fully understand the
+principle, and see how all colors contain as it were a certain quantity
+of darkness, or power of dark relief from white--some more, some less;
+and how this pitch or power of each may be represented by equivalent
+values of gray, you will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an
+approximation by a glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at
+all.
+
+40. You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any
+shapes of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble or
+tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells, etc., as tenderly as you
+can, in the darknesses that correspond to their colors; and when you
+find you can do this successfully, it is time to begin rounding.
+
+
+EXERCISE VIII.
+
+41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the first
+round or oval stone you can find, not very white, nor very dark; and the
+smoother it is the better, only it must not _shine_. Draw your table
+near the window, and put the stone, which I will suppose is about the
+size of _a_ in Fig. 5 (it had better not be much larger), on a piece of
+not very white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the
+light may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point
+interferes with your sight of your work. You must not let the _sun_ fall
+on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore choose a window which
+the sun does not come in at. If you can shut the shutters of the other
+windows in the room it will be all the better; but this is not of much
+consequence.
+
+42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything; I mean,
+anything that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot
+be drawn at all, only the idea of them more or less suggested; but if
+you can draw the stone _rightly_, everything within reach of art is also
+within yours.
+
+For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of representing
+_Roundness_. If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and
+straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing else that you may be
+able to do will be of any use. For Nature is all made up of roundnesses;
+not the roundness of perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces.
+Boughs are rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are
+rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there is no more
+flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. The world itself is
+round, and so is all that is in it, more or less, except human work,
+which is often very flat indeed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you
+have won the battle.
+
+43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will see that the
+side of it next the window is lighter than most of the paper; that the
+side of it farthest from the window is darker than the paper; and that
+the light passes into the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to
+the right on the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of
+things being more or less as in _a_, Fig. 5, the spots on the stone
+excepted, of which more presently.
+
+44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that everything
+you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker
+than the things about it, or of a different color from them. It is
+either seen as a patch of one color on a ground of another; or as a pale
+thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And
+if you can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the same size,
+shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will
+produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best
+draughtsman--Titian and Paul Veronese themselves--could do no more than
+this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an
+inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is
+to be done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper, on
+a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on spaces of red,
+white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in
+the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what
+you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there,
+if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper
+with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain,
+unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need
+not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up
+for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will
+find obedience easier and happier than you think.
+
+45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the forms and the
+evenness of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are
+dissatisfied with your work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It
+may not be wrong--in all probability is not wrong, in any (so-called)
+great point. But its edges are not true enough in outline; and its
+shades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it
+more tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.
+
+46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have
+a finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can
+draw with nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log
+of wood charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
+gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends
+on early precision in the commencement; much more in singing or drawing.
+
+47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in Fig. 5, but to copy the
+stone before you in the way that my sketch is done. To which end, first
+measure the extreme length of the stone with compasses, and mark that
+length on your paper; then, between the points marked, leave something
+like the form of the stone in light, scrawling the paper all over, round
+it; _b_, in Fig. 5, is a beginning of this kind. Rather leave too much
+room for the high light, than too little; and then more cautiously fill
+in the shade, shutting the light gradually up, and putting in the dark
+slowly on the dark side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of
+shape, because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible
+for you to draw the shape of the stone quite truly, and you must
+gradually gain correctness by means of these various exercises: what you
+have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to look solid and
+round, not much minding what its exact contour is--only draw it as
+nearly right as you can without vexation; and you will get it more right
+by thus feeling your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the
+outline at first. For you can _see_ no outline; what you see is only a
+certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it; and
+those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, by
+scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right shape, with the
+same gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really more
+likely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
+confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline.
+For instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin at _a_, in Fig. 5,
+whose form, though irregular, required more care in following than that
+of a common stone, I was going to draw it also under another effect;
+reflected light bringing its dark side out from the background: but when
+I had laid on the first few touches I thought it would be better to
+stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at _b_. In which beginning it
+will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I can more or
+less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work on, the lines
+which suggest the outline being blended with the others if I do not want
+them; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the
+irregularities of such a sketch will probably secure a higher completion
+at last, than if half an hour had been spent in getting a true outline
+before beginning.
+
+48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark.
+In order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round
+hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper the color
+of that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper with the hole in it,
+between you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards,
+so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
+through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like
+one of the patches of color you have been accustomed to match, only
+changing in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen
+through it. You will be able thus actually to _match_ the color of the
+stone at any part of it, by tinting the paper beside the circular
+opening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite _black_,
+but that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.[10]
+
+49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of
+the paper it lies on, look luminous through the opening; so that the
+little circle then tells as a light spot instead of a dark spot. When
+this is so, you cannot imitate it, for you have no means of getting
+light brighter than white paper: but by holding the paper more sloped
+towards the light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which
+before looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if
+you can place the paper in such a position that every part of the stone
+looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a spot of
+shade, and if your drawing is put in the same light, you can imitate or
+match every gradation. You will be amazed to find, under these
+circumstances, how slight the differences of tint are, by which, through
+infinite delicacy of gradation, Nature can express form.
+
+If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light
+through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it
+white; you can do no more.
+
+50. When you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed
+to finish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the
+stone as closely as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or
+fissures of any kind, whether between stones in walls, or in the grain
+of timber or rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they
+present, are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
+shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light and shade,
+however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, with a dark
+or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the
+bottom. This is one of the instances in which it may be as well to
+understand the reason of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing,
+for the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in
+general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some, we are sure
+to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the
+importance of those on which the attention is fixed causes us to
+exaggerate them, so that merely scientific draughtsmen caricature a
+third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose
+eye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not
+therefore trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
+people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are destitute
+of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help,
+especially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils
+to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their work, I can
+always show them how the thing is, and what appearance they are missing
+in it; but when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
+here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.
+
+51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object--for instance, the
+stone you are drawing--has a light side turned towards the light, a dark
+side turned away from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on
+something else (as by the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may
+sometimes be placed so as to see only the light side and shadow,
+sometimes only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both or either
+without the shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all
+the three, as the stone does here.
+
+52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now
+with your side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to
+the window. You will see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the
+other distinctly in shade. Here are light side and dark side, with no
+seen shadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on
+the other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.
+
+53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise, as you hold
+your hand, wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is
+turned from the light, the paper being of course farther from the
+window. You will see, as it passes, a strong gleam of light strike on
+your hand, and light it considerably on its dark side. This light is
+_reflected_ light. It is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes
+first in coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a
+ball would be if somebody threw it through the window at the wall and
+you caught it at the rebound.
+
+Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet
+cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as
+you wave the book, is now reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find
+the gleam is blue. Thus every object will cast some of its own color
+back in the light that it reflects.
+
+54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your
+hand: every object in the room on that side of it reflects some, but
+more feebly, and the colors mixing all together form a neutral[11]
+light, which lets the color of your hand itself be more distinctly seen
+than that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no
+reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.
+
+55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct light, and
+partly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the
+atmosphere and clouds. The color of their light sides depends much on
+that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colors of
+the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand what
+color an object will have at any point of its surface, that color
+depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of
+rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides
+is, that their color will be changeful, and that a picture which gives
+them merely darker shades of the color of the light sides must assuredly
+be bad.
+
+56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You
+will see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow
+of your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of
+shade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a
+rosy color somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
+all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the
+flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is, that much
+light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but
+very little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that
+chink under your finger.
+
+57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of
+the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the
+object. I say in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to
+prevent its being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or
+the ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand
+farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing
+gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some
+positions of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow
+altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a
+stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside
+the hand of one of his figures, and because he had been taught by rule
+that "shadow was darker than the dark side," he would never think of the
+reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the hand, just as
+if no glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of
+the true effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and
+wonders why the hand is so light on its dark side.
+
+58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a _rule_ in
+matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general
+way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it,
+supposing the colors otherwise the same; that is to say, when a white
+object casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark
+surface: the rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow
+of a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark,
+usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the
+ultimate truth in such matters is to _look_ for it; but, in the
+meantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the stone
+are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply,
+while the other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little
+darker shadow at the bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the
+stone surface is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And,
+therefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint, more
+or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or
+streak in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white
+one, you may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision,
+into either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on the side of
+it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that the light comes
+from, you will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
+side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete success of the
+effect depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the
+drawing; that is to say, on the evident correspondence of the form of
+the shadow with the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or
+anything irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience
+in following the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
+labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of shadow.
+
+59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the
+stains and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the
+forms. Very often, spots or bars of local color do more to express form
+than even the light and shade, and they are always interesting as the
+means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her
+lights; an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
+of composition. _a_, in Fig. 5, is a rough sketch of a fossil
+sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint,
+coming through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in
+the light; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller
+whiter spots in the dark. You may take such scattered lights as these
+out with the penknife, provided you are just as careful to place them
+rightly as if you got them by a more laborious process.
+
+60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation
+expresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on
+anything natural or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided
+it be not too complicated in form. I have asked you to draw a stone
+first, because any irregularities and failures in your shading will be
+less offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
+surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may as
+well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little
+while, till you find you can really shade delicately. You may then take
+up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on
+the table is as good as anything, and try to express them in the same
+way; only now you will find that your shades must be wrought with
+perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds.
+Always remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many
+scrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work
+resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel
+or napkin must be put on something that may be locked up, so that its
+folds shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
+the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery
+(there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the
+cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate
+your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then
+ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies from Nature,
+whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of
+the folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
+painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its
+sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the
+greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement
+of form than delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded
+surface will help you. Try whether it does or not: and if the patterned
+drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
+helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and simple
+checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even
+though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern
+occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications
+of it among the folds with scrupulous care.
+
+61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The
+greatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater
+they are, the more pains they take to do it truly.[12] Nor can there be
+better practice at any time, as introductory to the nobler complication
+of natural detail. For when you can draw the spots which follow the
+folds of a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
+spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps;
+but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able
+to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully
+drawn, will be the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the
+sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask
+drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
+living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet bank.
+
+62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or
+other finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much
+about the wooliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade
+and fold, and true in pattern. We shall see, in the course of
+after-practice, how the penned lines may be made indicative of texture;
+but at present attend only to the light and shade and pattern. You will
+be puzzled at first by _lustrous_ surfaces, but a little attention will
+show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right
+drawing of their light and shade, and reflections. Put a small black
+japanned tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it
+reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its
+own color mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw these
+reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as
+you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the luster
+to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects in
+general practice; only you should do one or two in order to understand
+the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as you cannot
+avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the shining of
+silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression of their
+folds. Observe also that there are very few things which are totally
+without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles you, on
+some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another object.
+
+63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the
+point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I
+give you leave to use the brush with one color,--sepia, or blue black,
+or mixed cobalt and blue black, or neutral tint; and this will much
+facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminary, you must do
+one or two more exercises in tinting.
+
+
+EXERCISE IX.
+
+64. Prepare your color as directed for Exercise VII. Take a brush full
+of it, and strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush
+gets dry, sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting
+the paper very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a
+number of more or less minute interstices in the color. The lighter and
+faster every dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry; and, as soon
+as it is dry, with little color in your brush, so that you can bring it
+to a fine point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to
+make the whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more
+color, always trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly
+applied color exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new
+color dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first.
+Retouch it therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A
+very small bit of color thus filled up with your very best care, and
+brought to look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give
+you better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in
+carelessly; so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most
+minute spot of white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then
+go to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a
+marked limit; then advance a little farther, and so on; thus always
+seeing distinctly what is done and what undone.
+
+
+EXERCISE X.
+
+65. Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of
+paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four fifths of the square, or
+thereabouts, leaving the edge rather irregular than straight, and let it
+dry. Then another coat over three fifths; another over two fifths; and
+the last over one fifth; so that the square may present the appearance
+of gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the one
+beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,
+when filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those
+used in the pen etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately
+beyond each edge, so as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones
+imperceptibly. By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a
+multitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,
+you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of
+each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with
+the next tint. The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded
+from dark to pale, with no bars, only a crossing texture of touches,
+something like chopped straw, over the whole.[13]
+
+66. Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade
+you like; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of
+color, prepared _very_ pale, quite flat over all of it, except the
+highest light, leaving the edge of your color quite sharp. Then another
+wash, extending only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that
+sharp also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still
+darker parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry
+sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the
+darks, and work the whole delicately together as you would with the pen,
+till you have got it to the likeness of the true light and shade. You
+will find that the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now
+get effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen merely.
+
+67. The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not
+trouble or vex the color, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the
+paper: color looks much more lovely when it has been laid on with a dash
+of the brush, and left to dry in its own way, than when it has been
+dragged about and disturbed; so that it is always better to let the
+edges and forms be a little wrong, even if one cannot correct them
+afterwards, than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great
+masters in water color can lay on the true forms at once with a dash,
+and bad masters in water color lay on grossly false forms with a dash,
+and leave them false; for people in general, not knowing false from
+true, are as much pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular
+blot as with the presence of power in the determined one; but _we_, in
+our beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then
+correct with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be
+right, at whatever cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we
+can be right with freedom.
+
+68. I have hitherto limited you to color mixed with two or three
+teaspoonfuls of water; but, in finishing your light and shade from the
+stone, you may, as you efface the edge of the palest coat towards the
+light, use the color for the small touches with more and more water,
+till it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a
+perfect gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when they
+are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the color
+tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and dash
+away the superfluous color on blotting paper, you will find that,
+touching the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated
+touches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth to
+shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this
+properly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and
+shadows of William Hunt's drawings.[14]
+
+69. As you get used to the brush and color, you will gradually find out
+their ways for yourself, and get the management of them. And you will
+often save yourself much discouragement by remembering what I have so
+often asserted,--that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be
+refinement that is wanting, not force; and connection, not alteration.
+If you dislike the state your drawing is in, do not lose patience with
+it, nor dash at it, nor alter its plan, nor rub it desperately out, at
+the place you think wrong; but look if there are no shadows you can
+gradate more perfectly; no little gaps and rents you can fill; no forms
+you can more delicately define: and do not _rush_ at any of the errors
+or incompletions thus discerned, but efface or supply slowly, and you
+will soon find your drawing take another look. A very useful expedient
+in producing some effects, is to wet the paper, and then lay the color
+on it, more or less wet, according to the effect you want. You will soon
+see how prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can
+reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it darker. Also,
+while the color is still damp on the paper, by drying your brush
+thoroughly, and touching the color with the brush so dried, you may take
+out soft lights with great tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of
+experiments of this kind, noticing how the color behaves; but
+remembering always that your final results must be obtained, and can
+only be obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the pen
+drawing.
+
+70. You will find also, as you deal with more and more complicated
+subjects, that Nature's resources in light and shade are so much richer
+than yours, that you cannot possibly get all, or anything like all, the
+gradations of shadow in any given group. When this is the case,
+determine first to keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for
+instance, there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a black
+inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper as a light mass,
+the green book as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass;
+and do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so as
+to equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference
+between the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the
+power of the former to draw so delicately as to express form in a
+dark-colored object with little light, and in a light-colored object
+with little darkness; and it is better even to leave the forms here and
+there unsatisfactorily rendered than to lose the general relations of
+the great masses. And this, observe, not because masses are grand or
+desirable things in your composition (for with composition at present
+you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact that things
+do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and that we see paper,
+book, and inkstand as three separate things, before we see the wrinkles,
+or chinks, or corners of any of the three. Understand, therefore, at
+once, that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in
+reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor
+markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature; you
+are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in doing this find
+that you cannot get the projection of things sufficiently shown; but
+never mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,
+but great need that their relations of shade to each other should be
+preserved. All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration
+of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more
+or less bad: a thoroughly fine drawing or painting will always show a
+slight tendency towards flatness.
+
+71. Observe, on the other hand, that, however white an object may be,
+there is always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must
+therefore have a slight tone of gray over everything in your picture
+except on the extreme high lights; even the piece of white paper, in
+your subject, must be toned slightly down, unless (and there are
+thousand chances against its being so) it should all be turned so as
+fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white
+objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian,
+you will soon understand this.[15]
+
+72. As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush
+the undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed
+to draw more complicated and beautiful things.[16] And first, the boughs
+of trees, now not in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the
+first bit of branch or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut
+off the ends of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only
+about a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit
+of branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw
+it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above
+all things, to get an accurate expression of its structure at the fork
+of the branch. When once you have mastered the tree at its _armpits_,
+you will have little more trouble with it.
+
+73. Always draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you
+see it. Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is
+behind it, ugly or not, else you will never know whether the light and
+shade are right; they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of
+the background. And this general law is to be observed in all your
+studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly, else you
+never know if what you have done is right, or whether you _could_ have
+done it rightly had you tried. There is nothing _visible_ out of which
+you may not get useful practice.
+
+74. Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with
+four or five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of
+light-colored or white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be
+relieved in dark from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape
+carefully with pencil as you did the complicated boughs, in order to be
+sure that all their masses and interstices are right in shape before you
+begin shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in the
+manner of Fig. 6, which is a young shoot of lilac.
+
+75. You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be at
+first puzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because the look of
+retirement or projection depends not so much on the perspective of the
+leaves themselves as on the double sight of the two eyes. Now there are
+certain artifices by which good painters can partly conquer this
+difficulty; as slight exaggerations of force or color in the nearer
+parts, and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not
+attempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves,
+shut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the point
+of one of the leaves against; and so sketch the whole bough as you see
+it in a fixed position, looking with one eye only. Your drawing never
+can be made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with
+_both_ eyes,[17] but it can be made perfectly like the object seen with
+one, and you must be content when you have got a resemblance on these
+terms.
+
+76. In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, take
+a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and as flat as
+you can, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, as if you wanted
+to know how thin it was; outline it so. Then slope it down gradually
+towards you, and watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held
+perpendicularly down before you. Draw it in three or four different
+positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each
+position, and you will soon find out how it must be.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+77. Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then larger clusters;
+and practice, in this way, more and more complicated pieces of bough and
+leafage, till you find you can master the most difficult arrangements,
+not consisting of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you
+do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures,
+that you take a much more lively interest than before in the work of the
+great masters; you will see that very often their best backgrounds are
+composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,
+brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or two form the
+chief interest of their foregrounds. If you live in London you may test
+your progress _accurately_ by the degree of admiration you feel for the
+leaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and
+Ariadne. All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of
+foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of vegetation, that
+it is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any
+possibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too
+intricate, to be thus dealt with.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+78. You must now therefore have recourse to some confused mode of
+execution, capable of expressing the confusion of Nature. And, first,
+you must understand what the character of that confusion is. If you look
+carefully at the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards'
+distance, you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at
+first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will see,
+mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which
+are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the
+edge turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for,
+supposing the real leaf shape to be as at _a_, Fig. 7, this, when
+removed some yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at
+_b_; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk and point
+disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes little more than a
+line; and the result is the condition at _c_, only with this farther
+subtlety in the look of it, inexpressible in the wood-cut, that the
+stalk and point of the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye,
+have yet some influence in _checking the light_ at the places where they
+exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf which
+remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only be rendered by
+two layers of color, one subduing the sky tone a little, the next
+drawing the broken portions of the leaf, as at _c_, and carefully
+indicating the greater darkness of the spot in the middle, where the
+under side of the leaf is.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we cannot reach
+such accuracy; but we shall be able to render the general look of the
+foliage satisfactorily by the following mode of practice.
+
+79. Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches long.
+Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that will support it steadily; put
+it about eight feet away from you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a
+sheet of not very white paper behind it, as usual. Then draw very
+carefully, first placing them with pencil, and then filling them up with
+ink, every leaf-mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you see
+them against the paper: Fig. 8 is a bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do not
+be afraid of running the leaves into a black mass when they come
+together; this exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of
+such masses are when seen against the sky.
+
+80. Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common
+tree,--oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in fact, if you are good, and
+industrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times
+a week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can
+get branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough, for this
+reason,--all masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the
+side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organization of
+branches from that seen in the view from above. They are generally seen
+more or less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature puts
+her best composition into the profile arrangement. But the view from
+above or below occurs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary
+you should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the tree.
+The difference between the two views is often far greater than you could
+easily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9, _a_ is the upper view and _b_
+the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. Fig. 8 is an intermediate
+view of a larger bough; seen from beneath, but at some lateral distance
+also.
+
+81. When you have done a few branches in this manner, take one of the
+drawings you have made, and put it first a yard away from you, then a
+yard and a half, then two yards; observe how the thinner stalks and
+leaves gradually disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness
+where they were; and make another study of the effect at each distance,
+taking care to draw nothing more than you really see, for in this
+consists all the difference between what would be merely a miniature
+drawing of the leaves seen near, and a full-size drawing of the same
+leaves at a distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would
+really appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass
+held at the same distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your
+drawing. You can always ascertain this full size of any object by
+holding your paper upright before you, at the distance from your eye at
+which you wish your drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object
+you have to draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the outline
+of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You will
+always find it, thus measured, smaller than you supposed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
+
+82. When you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your
+own drawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real
+trees, because the black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and
+does not shake, and is not confused by sparkles of luster on the
+leaves,) you may try the extremities of the real trees, only not doing
+much at a time, for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex
+your sight. And this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the
+outline itself; at least the chemical action of the light in a
+photograph extends much within the edges of the leaves, and, as it
+were, eats them away, so that no tree extremity, stand it ever so still,
+nor any other form coming against bright sky, is truly drawn by a
+photograph; and if you once succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you
+will find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
+photograph can be.
+
+83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the
+dark form of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those
+sprays, and in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much
+more embarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some luster, and all
+are more or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in
+any given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and
+foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or
+hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves,--often very
+forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes
+the blue of the sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself
+flashing like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen
+as darknesses through the translucent parts of the leaf; a most
+important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape
+artists in general.
+
+84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance,
+the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvelous and quaint
+confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of
+growth, and unity of action, but wholly indefinable and inextricable,
+part by part, by any amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out
+in facsimile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and you
+must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will more or
+less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of
+Nature, without absolute delineation of detail.
+
+85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form
+only, because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural
+object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this
+inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of
+handling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are
+intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and
+hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and
+dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first
+the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot
+draw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of
+mist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single grass
+blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power
+over decisive form, you may safely--and must, in order to perfection of
+work--carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity of
+hand.
+
+86. But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now look at
+Art as well as at Nature, and see what means painters and engravers have
+actually employed for the expression of these subtleties. Whereupon
+arises the question, what opportunity you have to obtain engravings? You
+ought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain
+number of good examples of Turner's engraved works: if this be not in
+your power, you must just make the best use you can of the shop windows,
+or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly, the
+difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to
+better use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess
+yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or
+Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the
+annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular points
+deserving your study in each engraving.[18] Be sure, therefore, that
+your selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each
+letter. Do not get more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the
+twelve at first; for the more engravings you have, the less attention
+you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the enjoyment
+derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a certain
+point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it were, over a
+larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated in
+different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his
+attention should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his
+enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at many, with
+divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and his best way of
+discovering it is to think long over few things, and watch them
+earnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and
+to see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality
+know anything rightly. Beware of _handbook_ knowledge.
+
+87. These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to
+copy; and they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of
+composition, than they are at present; still, it will do you a great
+deal of good, sometimes to try how far you can get their delicate
+texture, or gradations of tone: as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt
+to incline too much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For
+instance, the texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its
+tiled roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite
+as work can possibly be; and it will be a great and profitable
+achievement if you can at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at
+all imitate the dark distant country at p. 7, or the sky at p. 80, of
+the same volume, or the foliage at pp. 12 and 144, it will be good gain;
+and if you can once draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9 of
+the Italy, or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the
+moonlight at p. 223, you will find that even Nature herself cannot
+afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or towers, or
+moonlight.
+
+88. You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same effect.
+And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, and begin to think
+that engraving is not drawing, and that copying it cannot help you to
+draw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the
+difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless
+habit of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when
+one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of
+drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is
+more difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is
+true that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it
+at certain stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a
+habit of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying
+to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched--that
+is, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line made is
+white instead of black, which renders it much more difficult to judge of
+what you are about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good for
+you, because it will awaken you to the real labor and skill of the
+engraver, and make you understand a little how people must work, in this
+world, who have really to _do_ anything in it.
+
+89. Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as a
+model--far from it; but it is necessary you should be able to do as
+well[19] before you think of doing better, and you will find many little
+helps and hints in the various work of it. Only remember that _all_
+engravers' foregrounds are bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling
+parallel lines of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy;
+nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances, and portions of
+the foliage in the plates marked _f_, which you may copy. The best for
+this purpose, if you can get it, is the "Chain bridge over the Tees,"
+of the England series; the thicket on the right is very beautiful and
+instructive, and very like Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and
+"Powis" is also remarkably good.
+
+90. Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what harm
+there is in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if possible,
+with a Rembrandt etching, or a photograph of one (of figures, not
+landscape). It does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or
+finished one, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will
+teach you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that
+Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid
+with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all
+interesting. The "Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and
+Isaac," and such others, containing incident and character rather than
+chiaroscuro, will be the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it
+well; then exchange it, at little loss, for another; and so, gradually,
+obtain a good knowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity
+of examining his work at museums, etc., do so with the greatest care,
+not looking at _many_ things, but a long time at each. You must also
+provide yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert Dürer's. This
+you will not be able to copy; but you must keep it beside you, and refer
+to it as a standard of precision in line. If you can get one with a
+_wing_ in it, it will be best. The crest with the cock, that with the
+skull and satyr, and the "Melancholy," are the best you could have, but
+any will do. Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two
+masters, Rembrandt and Dürer. Rembrandt is often too loose and vague;
+and Dürer has little or no effect of mist or uncertainty. If you can see
+anywhere a drawing by Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the
+two characters; but there are no engravings which present this
+perfection, and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate
+study of Rembrandt and Dürer. Lean rather to Dürer; it is better, for
+amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on that of vagueness:
+and though, as I have just said, you cannot copy a Dürer, yet try every
+now and then a quarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer
+you can come; you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the
+"Melancholia" too often.
+
+91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Dürer, you may still learn
+much by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or
+Leech's wood-cuts in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and
+Richter's[20] on the severe side. But in so doing you will need to
+notice the following points:
+
+92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an
+artist does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,--that is to say,
+one in which no lines shall be prominently visible,--and he is reduced
+to show the black lines, either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is
+better to make these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of
+texture and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass
+or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech with
+zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that
+Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding
+of surfaces by the direction of the lines which shade them. All these
+various means of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can
+learn them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of
+shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way, but in the
+only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after use of
+such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to get as
+much record of the object as you can in a given time; and that you
+continually make efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions
+of the objects rightly.
+
+93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating that
+of surface, observe these few points:
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
+
+If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they
+_can_ indicate anything by their direction, they should explain rather
+than oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of
+wood-cut from Titian, Fig. 10, the lines are serviceable by expressing,
+not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the
+flow of its grain. And Albert Dürer, whose work was chiefly engraving,
+sets himself always thus to make his lines as _valuable_ as possible;
+telling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you
+were always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to
+express effects of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert
+Dürer's way of work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as
+the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and the great
+painters always conceive their subject as complete, even when they are
+sketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not limited
+in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will often
+scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines,
+that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to
+themselves. When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is
+one inclining from the left upwards to the right, or vice versâ, from
+the right downwards to the left; and when done very quickly, the line is
+hooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next. Hence,
+you will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a _very_ great
+master full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you
+will find him using simple straight lines from left to right, when an
+inferior master would have used curved ones. Fig. 11 is a fair facsimile
+of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits these characters very
+distinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded
+most commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a
+point increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master
+if you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded
+with straight lines.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
+
+94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest
+dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Fig. 11, and pass
+them for the work of great masters; and how the power of determining the
+genuineness of a drawing depends entirely on your knowing the facts of
+the objects drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is _all_
+conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's work, at
+its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity, but
+the _economy_ of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to
+judge of this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do,
+otherwise you cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,
+you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All
+judgment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature.
+
+95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous
+execution is never affectedly impetuous. If a great man is not in a
+hurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he
+puts none into his hand; if he thinks his effect would be better got
+with _two_ lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with
+one. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),
+that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution
+of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the
+easy execution will fall from your hand as it did from his: but if you
+merely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will
+not only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every
+judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and
+despise you accordingly.
+
+96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:
+
+All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an
+artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his
+outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he
+can by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so
+restricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad
+draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This
+hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state
+in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded
+with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure
+outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up
+afterwards with color, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or
+tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing
+wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves
+it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and
+his work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist
+habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his
+drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade
+than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched
+with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
+
+97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the English
+imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad
+work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste. And of such outlines,
+the worst are those which are darkened in some part of their course by
+way of expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such
+others; because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately
+represents the form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus,
+the outline _a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12, are both _true_ outlines
+of a ball; because, however thick the line may be, whether we take the
+interior or exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true
+circle. But _c_ is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner
+or outer edge of the black line must be an untrue circle, else the line
+could not be thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force," as it
+is called, is gained by falsification of the contours; so that no artist
+whose eye is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed
+often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and
+again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the
+first line by setting others beside and across it; and then a careless
+observer supposes it has been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes also,
+at a place where shade is afterwards to inclose the form, the painter
+will strike a broad dash of this shade beside his outline at once,
+looking as if he meant to thicken the outline; whereas this broad line
+is only the first installment of the future shadow, and the outline is
+really drawn with its inner edge.[21] And thus, far from good
+draughtsmen darkening the lines which turn away from the light, the
+_tendency_ with them is rather to darken them towards the light, for it
+is there in general that shade will ultimately inclose them. The best
+example of this treatment that I know is Raphael's sketch, in the
+Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows
+part of the left eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate the
+nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones
+behind the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will see in
+Fig. 11 the same principle variously exemplified; the principal dark
+lines, in the head and drapery of the arms, being on the side turned to
+the light.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
+
+98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not
+affect your drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines
+as _equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two
+following purposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II.,
+for if you cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to
+terminate your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is
+absent; or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are
+pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined,
+for the most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer
+one being shown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more
+distant one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required
+to round each tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot
+often get time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each
+tree as is done by Dürer in Fig. 13, you will get a most useful
+memorandum of their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only
+observe in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick
+one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of
+Dürer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately
+descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a
+shape, definitely observed and set down; it contains a true
+"signalement" of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of
+hedge, all round that village. If you have not time to draw thus
+carefully, do not draw at all--you are merely wasting your work and
+spoiling your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice you
+may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet;
+except sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell you
+presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to
+objects which have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone,
+when it rises against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline
+folds in drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at
+all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no
+good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute.
+You see, in that wood-cut of Dürer's, his reason for even limiting
+himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains,
+is that he may leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more
+by the dark sky and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real
+and sunny only by the addition of these shades.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
+
+99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go
+back to our question about tree-drawing left unanswered at page 48.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
+
+We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it
+is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the
+difficulty is to keep organization in the midst of mystery. And you will
+never succeed in doing this unless you lean always to the definite side,
+and allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through all
+your early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your first
+step must be to conditions like Figs. 14 and 15, which are careful
+facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful wood-cut of Dürer's, the
+"Flight into Egypt." Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a
+time, but thoroughly; then trace the Dürer, and apply it to your
+drawing, and do not be content till the one fits the other, else your
+eye is not true enough to carry you safely through meshes of real
+leaves. And in the course of doing this, you will find that not a line
+nor dot of Dürer's can be displaced without harm; that all add to the
+effect, and either express something, or illumine something, or relieve
+something. If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree
+drawing, of which so many rich examples are given constantly in our
+cheap illustrated periodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last
+year's _Illustrated News_ or others are full of them), you will see
+that, though good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are
+thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might just as well
+go one way as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce
+all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a
+little careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near
+the same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor
+any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will
+imitate so much as one leaf of Dürer's. Yet there is considerable
+intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine
+leaves of his, as well as of the grass.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
+
+100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner, you may draw
+from Nature as much as you like in the same way; and when you are tired
+of the intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more
+easy massing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10 (p. 55). This is facsimilëd
+from an engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in
+manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough
+model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even
+so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig.
+16,[22] taking care always to have thorough command over your hand;
+that is, not to let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran
+glibly over the paper, but because in Nature it has actually a free and
+noble shape, and you have faithfully followed the same.
+
+101. And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as well as
+true shape, and that we are going to draw from Nature at our pleasure,
+other considerations enter into the business, which are by no means
+confined to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this
+letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting
+of correspondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only
+to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one--tiresomeness inseparable
+from directions touching the beginning of any art,--and to believe me,
+even though I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,
+
+                                      Very faithfully yours,
+
+                                                         J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] (_N.B._--This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous
+    or curious readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are
+    willing to take the statement in the text on trust.)
+
+    The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We
+    see nothing but flat colors; and it is only by a series of
+    experiments that we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates
+    the dark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates
+    that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical
+    power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the
+    _innocence of the eye_; that is to say, of a sort of childish
+    perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such, without
+    consciousness of what they signify,--as a blind man would see them
+    if suddenly gifted with sight.
+
+    For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain
+    directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat
+    dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly
+    endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by
+    the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and
+    part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the color of primroses); and, if
+    there were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass
+    was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow color. We
+    should try to gather some of them, and then find that the color went
+    away from the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not
+    from the primroses; and by a series of experiments we should find
+    out that the sun was really the cause of the color in the one,--not
+    in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
+    unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions
+    touching the signification of certain colors, we always suppose that
+    we _see_ what we only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the
+    real aspect of the signs we have learned to interpret. Very few
+    people have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow.
+
+    Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as
+    nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the
+    colors of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at
+    once in the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two
+    colors that form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade
+    and light, but bluish green barred with gold.
+
+    Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great
+    fact about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience
+    and touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white,
+    variously gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by
+    experience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of
+    brown, variously darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art
+    of Painting consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of
+    these patches of color, and putting patches of the same size, depth,
+    and shape on canvas. The only obstacle to the success of painting
+    is, that many of the real colors are brighter and paler than it is
+    possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to represent
+    them.
+
+  [2] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate
+    drawing, than india-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper
+    less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides,
+    you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not
+    for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very
+    lightly; or, if heavily, pressing it only, not passing it over the
+    paper, and leave what pencil marks will not come away so, without
+    minding them. In a finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often
+    serviceable, helping the general tone, and enabling you to take out
+    little bright lights.
+
+  [3] What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is
+    the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose
+    hand is so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can
+    let it fly as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of
+    a great master at real _work_ is _never_ free: its swiftest dash is
+    under perfect government. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause
+    within a hair's breadth of any appointed mark, in their fastest
+    touches; and follow, within a hair's breadth, the previously
+    intended curve. You must never, therefore, aim at freedom. It is not
+    required of your drawing that it should be free, but that it should
+    be right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and then your
+    work will be free in the best sense; but there is no merit in doing
+    wrong easily.
+
+    These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,
+    which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible.
+    The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter
+    it is at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other
+    lines, and concealed by them; the object in perfect shading being to
+    conceal the lines as much as possible.
+
+    And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of
+    hand than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in
+    Nature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he
+    draws them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find
+    mistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present
+    if you find your hand gaining command over the curves.
+
+  [4] If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed,
+    they will be useful models.
+
+  [5] Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this
+    permission. My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that
+    the pupil's eye should be trained to accurate perception of the
+    relations of curve and right lines, by having the latter absolutely
+    true, than that he should practice drawing straight lines. But also,
+    I believe, though I am not quite sure of this, that he never _ought_
+    to be able to draw a straight line. I do not believe a perfectly
+    trained hand ever can draw a line without some curvature in it, or
+    some variety of direction. Prout could draw a straight line, but I
+    do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great draughtsman can,
+    as far as I have observed, draw every line _but_ a straight one.
+
+  [6] Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused
+    quick touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of
+    twigs round the main branches; but do not take much trouble about
+    them.
+
+  [7] It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow
+    gradation than an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as
+    with the pen, to make the gradation go _far_.
+
+  [8] Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.
+
+  [9] The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is
+    always indicated by the color of the solid cake in the box.
+
+  [10] The figure _a_, Fig. 5, is very dark, but this is to give an
+    example of all kinds of depths of tint, without repeated figures.
+
+  [11] Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite
+    different tones in its neutrality, according to the colors of the
+    various reflected rays that compose it.
+
+  [12] If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might
+    perhaps be able to show you some metaphysical ones for the
+    enjoyment, by truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by
+    light and shade and perspective in patterned surfaces; but this is
+    at present not to the point; and all that you need to know is that
+    the drawing of such things is good exercise, and moreover a kind of
+    exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner,
+    all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.
+
+  [13] The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be
+    able, when you begin to color, to let one hue be seen in minute
+    portions, gleaming between the touches of another.
+
+  [14] William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.
+
+  [15] At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal
+    examples of Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most
+    neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of
+    his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the
+    larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark
+    of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a
+    minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated
+    to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will
+    begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid
+    in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focused to
+    two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on
+    the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing
+    child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same
+    thing.
+
+  [16] I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as
+    they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not
+    by difference of method.
+
+  [17] If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will
+    know why; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the
+    statement, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and
+    much loss of time. See, however, Note 1, in Appendix I.
+
+  [18] The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See
+    note at the end of Appendix I. The letters mean as follows:--
+
+    _a_ stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns,
+         cottages, etc.
+    _c_ clouds, including mist and aërial effects.
+    _f_ foliage.
+    _g_ ground, including low hills, when not rocky.
+    _l_ effects of light.
+    _m_ mountains, or bold rocky ground.
+    _p_ power of general arrangement and effect.
+    _q_ quiet water.
+    _r_ running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their
+         line of flow is beautifully marked.
+
+    _From the England Series._
+
+    _a c f r._ Arundel.                   _a f p._ Lancaster.
+      _a f l._ Ashby de la Zouche.      _c l m r._ Lancaster Sands.*
+    _a l q r._ Barnard Castle.*           _a g f._ Launceston.*
+      _f m r._ Bolton Abbey.            _c f l r._ Leicester Abbey.
+      _f g r._ Buckfastleigh.*              _f r._ Ludlow.
+      _a l p._ Caernarvon.                _a f l._ Margate.
+      _c l q._ Castle Upnor.              _a l q._ Orford.
+      _a f l._ Colchester.                  _c p._ Plymouth.
+        _l q._ Cowes.                         _f._ Powis Castle.
+      _c f p._ Dartmouth Cove.*           _l m q._ Prudhoe Castle.
+      _c l q._ Flint Castle.*           _f l m r._ Chain Bridge over
+    _a f g l._ Knaresborough.*                      Tees.*
+        _m r._ High Force of Tees.*         _m q._ Ulleswater.
+      _a f q._ Trematon.                    _f m._ Valle Crucis.
+
+    _From the Keepsake._
+
+      _m p q._ Arona.                         _p._ St. Germain en Laye.
+        _l m._ Drachenfels.*              _l p q._ Florence.
+        _f l._ Marly.*                      _l m._ Ballyburgh Ness.*
+
+    _From the Bible Series._
+
+        _f m._ Mount Lebanon.             _a c g._ Joppa.
+          _m._ Rock of Moses at         _c l p q._ Solomon's Pools.*
+                Sinai.                      _a l._ Santa Saba.
+      _a l m._ Jericho.                     _a l._ Pool of Bethesda.
+
+    _From Scott's Works._
+
+        _p r._ Melrose.*                    _c m._ Glencoe.
+        _f r._ Dryburgh.*                   _c m._ Loch Coriskin.*
+
+
+        _a l._ Caerlaverock.
+
+    _From the Rivers of France._
+
+        _a q._ Château of Amboise, with     _a p._ Rouen Cathedral.
+                large bridge on right.      _f p._ Pont de l'Arche.
+      _l p r._ Rouen, looking down the    _f l p._ View on the Seine,
+                river, poplars on right.*           with avenue.
+      _a l p._ Rouen, with cathedral      _a c p._ Bridge of Meulan.
+                and rainbow, avenue     _c g p r._ Caudebec.*
+                on left.
+
+  [19] As _well_;--not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on
+    the steel than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be
+    able to get tones as even, and touches as firm.
+
+  [20] See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be
+    studied."
+
+  [21] See Note 2 in Appendix I.
+
+  [22] This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it
+    looks like it. You will find it explained presently.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+SKETCHING FROM NATURE.
+
+
+102. MY DEAR READER,--The work we have already gone through together
+has, I hope, enabled you to draw with fair success either rounded and
+simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like
+those of leaves; provided only these masses or complexities will stay
+quiet for you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to
+baffle your patience. But if we are now to go out to the fields, and to
+draw anything like a complete landscape, neither of these conditions
+will any more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we copy
+their heaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to
+shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light
+where its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving in
+eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence; and instead of
+the small clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point,
+embarrassing enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as little
+to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its
+foam.
+
+103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation becomes
+more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it _is_
+possible; and when you have time and opportunity, some portions of a
+landscape may, as you gain greater skill, be rendered with an
+approximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you
+may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed
+to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive; and you must
+give more and more effort daily to the observance of characteristic
+points, and the attainment of concise methods.
+
+104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons.
+First, that it is always accessible as a study; and secondly, that its
+modes of growth present simple examples of the importance of leading or
+governing lines. It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot
+seize all, that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and
+grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form.
+I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive
+of the past history and present action of the thing. They show in a
+mountain, first, how it was built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is
+now being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it.
+In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its
+childhood: how troublesome trees have come in its way, and pushed it
+aside, and tried to strangle or starve it; where and when kind trees
+have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it
+bent; what winds torment it most; what boughs of it behave best, and
+bear most fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show
+the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which the
+water or vapor is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets shore,
+or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing
+distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always,
+whether in life or in art, _knowing the way things are going_. Your
+dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your
+wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so,--the
+animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course,
+the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a
+form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and
+will have power over its futurity. Those are its _awful_ lines; see that
+you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16
+(p. 63) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at
+Sestri near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their
+first budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every direction
+round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it. Then,
+when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up again; some
+of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of
+growing upright, if they can; and this struggle of theirs to recover
+their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow
+sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence
+their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, forky
+pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them,
+with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea; or if they are
+to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and
+the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy
+green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give that
+spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their
+chief beauty is in these.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
+
+105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small, you will notice
+that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there
+is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the
+tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at _c_,
+Fig. 17, is common to all trees that I know of, and it gives them a
+certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their
+branches which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely
+send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the
+branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and
+a path to take, which fills a definite place, and each terminates all
+its minor branches at its outer extremity, so as to form a greater outer
+curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for each species.
+That is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as _a_, Fig.
+17, but as _b_, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor
+divisions right out to the bounding curve; not but that smaller
+branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart of the tree, but the idea
+and main purpose in every branch are to carry all its child branches
+well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however small, take
+its part in filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the
+type of each separate bough is again not _a_, but _b_, Fig. 18;
+approximating, that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of
+broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to a
+rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless habit of
+drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging
+to the other, as in Fig. 19. If you look at the tree-boughs in any
+painting of Wilson's you will see this structure, and nearly every other
+that is to be avoided, in their intensest types. You will also notice
+that Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it
+had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing pines seem to fancy,
+in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two sides of the
+trunk, instead of all round it: always, therefore, take more pains in
+trying to draw the boughs of trees that grow _towards_ you than those
+that go off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the
+foreshortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing them to
+observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, though not
+of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and approximates, in its
+position, to the look of a hand held out to receive something, or
+shelter something. If you take a looking-glass, and hold your hand
+before it slightly hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers
+open, as if you were going to support the base of some great bowl,
+larger than you could easily hold; and sketch your hand as you see it in
+the glass with the points of the fingers towards you; it will materially
+help you in understanding the way trees generally hold out their hands:
+and if then you will turn yours with its palm downwards, as if you were
+going to try to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will
+get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such
+other spreading trees.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
+
+106. Fig. 20 will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which
+these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it
+carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group
+together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the
+springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the
+ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers
+of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimilëd from an etching of
+Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure
+and firm lines; it will also show you how the particular action in
+foliage, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, may be
+intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look
+more tall and upright still, because their line is continued below by
+the figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes on the
+bank are made to look more rounded because their line is continued in
+one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These
+figures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully
+hereafter when we come to talk about composition; but, if you please,
+we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
+about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with
+composition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive
+representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking
+forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the
+"Law of Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth:
+indeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here
+than there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles
+of composition somewhat awkwardly.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
+
+107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite
+so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon
+enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old
+house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw
+the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good
+draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are
+weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the
+run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where
+it lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful, however few
+slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those
+hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them), and crowd
+gradually together at the top of the gable, partly diminishing in
+perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most
+English old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always
+the direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the
+earth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in any bank or height
+worth drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides.
+Figure 20 will give you some idea of the way in which such facts may be
+expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground
+all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people always
+turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how the
+water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the
+roots of the trees?
+
+108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature to aim
+exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts of form;
+using the pen--not now the steel, but the quill--firmly and steadily,
+never scrawling with it, but saying to yourself before you lay on a
+single touch,--"_that_ leaf is the main one, _that_ bough is the guiding
+one, and this touch, _so_ long, _so_ broad, means that part of
+it,"--point or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you
+look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it, and never
+let your hand run away with you, or get into any habit or method of
+touch. If you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from
+one end of it to the other without a tremor; if you want a shaking and
+broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a
+musician's finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that
+there is no general way of doing _any_ thing; no recipe can be given you
+for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be
+ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or
+rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to
+draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody "told you to _do_ grass."
+So a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all over
+like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of
+Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field
+puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's hawser, or kneaded like
+hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus saber, or fused like a glass
+bottle, or crystallized like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf:
+look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you to "do a
+stone."
+
+109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, and that
+you can render any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of
+Turner's or Dürer's work,[24] you must add a simple but equally careful
+light and shade to your pen drawing, so as to make each study as
+complete as possible; for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if
+you have the means, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber
+Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note
+below.[25] If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any
+of these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell
+you presently); but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You
+will see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint
+shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched part of it
+accurately; to which end put the print against the window, and trace
+slowly with the greatest care every black line; retrace this on smooth
+drawing-paper; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at
+the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the
+right side, not making a line which is too curved or too straight
+already in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over it.
+And in doing this, never work after you are tired, nor to "get the thing
+done," for if it is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true
+zeal and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and
+inattentive labor of a whole day. If you have not made the touches right
+at the first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with
+little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they need: you
+cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this etched
+outline by you in order to study at your ease the way in which Turner
+uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow;[26] it is only
+in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this.
+Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this
+etching which you like, and put on the light and shade with the brush,
+and any brown color that matches that of the plate;[27] working it with
+the point of the brush as delicately as if you were drawing with pencil,
+and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the paper,
+till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving.
+
+110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked
+to close resemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject
+carelessly done. Not that in drawing afterwards from Nature you are to
+be obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having
+fully accomplished the drawing _something_ rightly, you will
+thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you could
+otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out
+quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which
+it would have wholly refused if you had not put it to severest work.
+Nothing is more strange in art than the way that chance and materials
+seem to favor you, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make
+yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it,
+and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you would have
+them. Show the camel's hair, and the color in it, that no bending nor
+blotting is of any use to escape your will; that the touch and the shade
+_shall_ finally be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that
+hour of corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to all
+your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its appointed border.
+If you cannot obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a
+photograph[28] of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a
+village or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some calm water
+of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
+any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working, as I have
+just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of
+the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, however; first,
+there are portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at
+present to be at all able to copy; and, secondly, there are portions
+always more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene, and
+involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher.
+Both these characters will be advantageous to you for future study,
+after you have gained experience, but they are a little against you in
+early attempts at tinting; still you must fight through the difficulty,
+and get the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or gray,
+like those of the photograph.
+
+111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like
+photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long
+as your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not
+perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete
+results in tints merely, requires both long time and consummate skill;
+and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over
+or under them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any
+other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber
+Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest
+shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with
+the most subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the
+expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
+ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most
+tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist, or cloud.
+Most of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this
+principle, the touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of
+transparency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by
+great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good
+public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios
+either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss
+to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of
+photographs also are now taken from the best drawings by the old
+masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes and other societies
+organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to possess
+themselves of examples of these, and to make them accessible to students
+of drawing in the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
+the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
+photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre,
+to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be
+all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more
+serviceable than a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery
+of second-rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
+because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk
+separately, or color separately, may be seen by the poorest student in
+any cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity of
+tinting with line he cannot generally see but by some special inquiry,
+and in some out of the way places he could not find a single example of
+it. Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that you
+cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make the matter out
+alone, thus:
+
+112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to
+express its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid
+color instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and
+laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your
+bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or
+gray, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the
+photograph; and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife or
+blotting paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by
+a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen
+may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of
+texture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you
+have, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with
+the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two.
+Practice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes
+only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,
+sometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in
+full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the
+parts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you
+will do well to repeat frequently, whether you can get prints and
+drawings as well as photographs, or not.
+
+113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or
+its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in
+your power of working from Nature on all subjects that interest you,
+which you should do in four different ways.
+
+First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay
+quiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly
+perfect as you can, with gray or brown color of any kind, reinforced and
+defined with the pen.
+
+114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in
+detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and
+shade, make a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time
+to a Düreresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to you
+interesting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,
+try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
+memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
+sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your
+experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look
+of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of
+tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to
+prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,
+however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
+carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your
+Düreresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing
+be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or
+disguised.
+
+115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with
+a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of
+gray, which will fix the pencil. While this fixing color is wet, take
+out the higher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry,
+scratch out the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes,
+carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper is
+to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well; for you can
+get more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on
+cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with body-color
+white, unless you are consummately skillful. There is no objection to
+your making your Düreresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
+touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend much on your
+white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake.
+
+116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for
+Düreresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the
+shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can
+at once, and to get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more
+color again and again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
+which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out your
+chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the color off
+here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the
+wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it
+off with your sponge, etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and
+mark the outline characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber
+Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying away
+pieces of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on
+complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky,
+etc.; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or
+slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
+endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for
+display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable; there are a velocity
+and a dash which not only are compatible with perfect drawing, but
+obtain certain results which cannot be had otherwise. And it is
+perfectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed and decision,
+while your continual course of practice is such as to insure your
+retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
+circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find
+yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
+
+117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape
+scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making
+memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of
+no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
+study, nor a Düreresque one, may yet become of singular value in
+consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens
+often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
+element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21, seen
+within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers
+to which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's
+distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
+painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and
+the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without indication of their
+cause, as in Fig. 22 _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
+it would appear, as in Fig. 22 _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
+strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of gray on the light
+hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
+continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
+singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
+touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
+accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
+
+118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are in haste, with
+an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure
+your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very
+subtle; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so
+everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you
+are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is
+both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the
+gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the
+sharp touches, on which the best of the detail depends, getting
+gradually deadened by time, or to find the places where force was wanted
+look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the
+steady use of the pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it;
+keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
+well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but
+never being without this.
+
+119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to
+draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
+note one or two points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and
+the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
+means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
+peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
+to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
+There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
+only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
+nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
+will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
+a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
+pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of
+beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:
+
+120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account of their
+associations; or at least do not draw them because you love them; but
+merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw
+places that you love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat
+brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset
+hedges; besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor to
+make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your
+progress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious
+that the drawing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it
+is done. All you have to care about is to make it _right_, and to learn
+as much in doing it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in
+your friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you
+may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or
+the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it _is_ for practice, and not
+because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor
+because you wish to please your friend by drawing her room.
+
+121. Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am
+addressing you as a beginner--a time may come when your work will be
+precious to everybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know
+that it is worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will
+know that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing,
+send them a couple of cakes of color and a piece of Bristol board: those
+materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than if you
+had spread the one over the other.
+
+The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will much
+protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings
+pretty.
+
+122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if
+complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments,
+chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of
+furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret
+yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do not
+shine.
+
+(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw,
+and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things
+as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or
+profitless study than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study
+than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general,
+everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.
+
+(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen
+through another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before
+your chosen cottage, or between you and the turn of the river; its near
+branches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to
+represent this; and though, when the tree _is_ there, you must not
+imaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look
+for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,
+rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a
+thin tree in front of it, rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and
+rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems.
+
+(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps
+nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque
+and unmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge,
+with trees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the
+cattle line.
+
+Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that
+the subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that
+you should think you had entirely mastered _it_. But at first, and even
+for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure;
+which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.
+
+123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may,
+perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all banks
+are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large landscapes.
+If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places where the
+ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots of
+trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things within your
+reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, etc.
+Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful
+bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and color than high
+chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the flowery ground
+below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study: a not very
+thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up
+it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
+
+124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always
+beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of
+pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric porticoes. Any old
+English village, or cluster of farmhouses, drawn with all its ins and
+outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a
+French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to English as
+Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is
+incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have
+recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their
+expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty
+of component lines.
+
+In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden
+is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of
+cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,
+and bossy roses; you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
+anything in purer thoughts.
+
+Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood, and
+study them ripple by ripple.
+
+Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a
+peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old
+manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and
+cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in
+England from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an
+impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring
+vergerism about them.
+
+125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is
+redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece
+of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its
+complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
+color. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching
+among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
+hills will be comparatively easy.
+
+126. When you have practiced for a little time from such of these
+subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find
+difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a
+master's help: these difficulties will vary according to the character
+of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to
+another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would
+make this too large a book if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate;
+you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her
+own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on
+your own part will make some difficulties disappear; and that others
+will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists' work as
+may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
+a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are
+somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks may, I think, be
+conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing
+of vegetation, water, and skies.
+
+127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said
+enough about trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and
+tried to draw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be
+ready by this time to hear a little more of them. You will also
+recollect that we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing
+intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so
+because I wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing
+them for yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle
+considerations as to method in drawing them. And by this time, I
+imagine, you must have found out two principal things, universal facts,
+about leaves; namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their
+lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law
+of radiation, already referred to;[29] and the second, that this
+divergence is never formal, but carried out with endless variety of
+individual line. I must now press both these facts on your attention a
+little farther.
+
+128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of
+the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with
+the passages referring to them in Modern Painters, in which they are
+highly praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only
+works by a modern[30] draughtsman which express in any wise the energy
+of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There
+are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general character,
+obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame,
+Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether
+inferior in power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you
+must not take even Harding for a model, though you may use his works for
+occasional reference; and if you can afford to buy his Lessons on
+Trees,[31] it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at
+present help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well
+that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,
+because their great influence on young students renders it desirable
+that their real character should be thoroughly understood.
+
+129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on Trees, a
+pretty wood-cut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and
+in a very interesting arrangement of lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy
+of Mr. Harding, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think
+everything depends on black dots; still, the main lines are good, and
+very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we come to the
+point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil
+that he may practice from them till his hand gets into the habit of
+arranging lines freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr.
+Harding to be universal in application; "all outlines expressive of
+foliage," he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
+groups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23 below; and the
+characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner
+ends to a common center;" that "their ends terminate in [are inclosed
+by] ovoid curves;" and that "the outer ends are most emphatic."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
+
+130. Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and
+inclosure, the main principle of this method of execution confirms, in a
+very interesting way, our conclusions respecting foliage composition.
+The reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be
+most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one end
+of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other: but
+ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
+more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and,
+as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as
+any mere habit of touch _can_ express. But, unfortunately, there is
+another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,
+which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose
+sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be
+carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual
+individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the
+moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the
+leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of
+growth with its companions in the radiating group.
+
+131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster
+may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one
+than _b_ in Fig. 9, p. 47, nor a less formal one than this shoot of
+Spanish chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24; but in either of them,
+even the general reader, unpracticed in any of the previously
+recommended exercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed
+with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if
+he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will
+find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free
+touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch
+whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it;
+but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
+the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close
+to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw
+the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it,
+and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point
+of a leaf here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
+by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
+through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really
+_can_ see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig.
+9 nor Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as
+Fig. 25.[32]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
+
+132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these
+_three_ laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is,
+first, the organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism,
+or concurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of
+rocks, and clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the
+members subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under
+which the separate character of each is more or less concealed.
+
+I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This
+is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your
+common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they
+were moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;
+he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps
+of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;
+and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
+unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,
+or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is
+the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of
+government; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of
+their authority rather than in its denial.
+
+133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and
+liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great
+masters separate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the
+men of inferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice
+of individuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep
+of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or
+mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has
+great feeling for masses of form and harmony of color; but in the detail
+gives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species
+of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible.
+Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are
+essential to masterly work, the individuality is the _more_ essential,
+and the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment
+separates the great masters _finally_ from the inferior ones. It is the
+more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in
+visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a
+lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no
+government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common
+affection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it
+possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to
+have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
+dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in
+which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than
+himself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than
+himself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be
+relieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be
+instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a
+stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
+walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in everlasting
+multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.
+Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of
+form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some
+great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and
+their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life.
+
+134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you enjoy the pursuit
+of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning
+them, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters
+in a piece of painting by merely considering what are the noble
+characters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of
+manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and
+refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What
+advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness
+in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
+of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial
+composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or
+relieve human souls; that power precisely in the same relative degree,
+play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of
+a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in
+companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
+simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of
+goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its
+color, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.
+
+135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too
+far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete,
+that the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the
+more useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one
+particular, or in any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice, no
+moral virtue, which has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of
+painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the
+art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness,
+and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and
+modesty, and all other such habits, and every conceivable modification
+and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness,
+by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable vices
+and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character and
+passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king to the
+innocent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
+
+136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the
+investigation of the higher branches of composition, matters which it
+would be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to
+them here, in order that you may understand how the utmost noblenesses
+of art are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in
+your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the
+most noble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of
+individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,
+whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
+
+137. Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein
+consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the
+tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly
+observes, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great
+laws of growth and action in trees: it fails,--and observe, not in a
+minor, but in the principal point,--because it cannot rightly render any
+one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not
+from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true
+drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to a hand which has
+contracted a _habit_ of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,
+and stops, and says calmly,--That leaf is of such and such a character;
+I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers
+what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend.
+This process may be as quick as lightning when the master is great--one
+of the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process
+is always gone through; no touch or form is ever added to another by a
+good painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
+the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf No. 2; you
+cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or
+rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and
+pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully;
+make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it
+shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders;
+otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may
+therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[33] and you
+may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand
+so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you must
+never copy it; otherwise your progress will be at once arrested. The
+utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's manner,
+but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil to gain
+his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides
+drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding
+what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and
+complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand the one
+and love the other more and more, whether you can draw well yourself or
+not.
+
+138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above
+stated, that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen
+perfectly, but only by fragments, and under various conditions of
+obscurity.[34] This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature
+complete as a type of the human nature. We have, observe, first,
+Subordination; secondly, Individuality; lastly, and this not the least
+essential character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every
+serrated point and shining vein which escapes or deceives our sight
+among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or
+judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all
+that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at first think
+we understand, a closer and more loving watchfulness would show to be
+full of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
+
+139. The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
+completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at
+all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try
+always when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in
+light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
+definitely; preparing for the after development of the forms by
+chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future
+arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings
+of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples, and so peculiar. The
+character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains
+that Turner has taken. Thus the Æsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with
+the greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the near tree is
+etched as in Fig. 26. The work looks at first like a scholar's instead
+of a master's; but when the light and shade are added, every touch falls
+into its place, and a perfect expression of grace and complexity
+results. Nay, even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be
+able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the
+expression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are
+more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before
+Turner's time, had been employed, even by the best masters, in their
+distant masses. Fig. 27 is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of
+the old wood-cuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are too
+much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs too completely
+seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery in aspect, owing to the
+want of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat
+conventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses; and
+their exquisite delineation of the foreground, kept their
+conventionalism from degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and
+other derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and
+sinks gradually into scrawled work, like Fig. 28, about the worst which
+it is possible to get into the habit of using, though an ignorant person
+might perhaps suppose it more "free," and therefore better than Fig. 26.
+Note also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a
+bough is wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally
+somewhere, as in Fig. 26, just above the foliage. Very often the
+muscular action which is to be expressed by the line runs into the
+middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the branch at that place
+may be dimly seen, or not at all; and it is then only by the future
+shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappearance, will be
+indicated.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
+
+140. One point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In
+the minds of our ordinary water-color artists a distant tree seems only
+to be conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other
+masses, and giving cool color to the landscape, but differing no wise,
+in texture, from the blots of other shapes which these painters use to
+express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn
+trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed
+more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their
+_softness_ of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of
+color, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture,
+partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely
+softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to
+reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the
+surface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form
+and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife
+passed lightly _over_ this careful drawing will do a good deal; but you
+must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim much at this softness
+in the lines of the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and
+more or less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,
+according to the character of tree, various modes of execution adapted
+to express its texture; but always keep this character of softness in
+your mind, and in your scope of aim; for in most landscapes it is the
+intention of Nature that the tenderness and transparent infinitude of
+her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the most
+distinct opposition to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or
+buildings.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
+
+141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of
+representing water, of which important feature of landscape I have
+hardly said anything yet.
+
+Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional lines, whose
+horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In
+paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose.
+
+But these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of
+calm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection
+of the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these
+reflections, disturbing them here and there as you see the breeze or
+current disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you
+have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give you a
+true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate
+drawing as the picture above the pool; except only that if there be the
+least motion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be
+diffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and
+the oblique ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.
+
+142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing you
+need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturbance on the
+surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current
+plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to
+get the _curves_ of these lines true; the whole value of your careful
+drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false
+curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if
+you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and
+delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they
+are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking
+pains, work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by motion
+in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as may be; but when you
+are in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with vertical
+lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated reflection is with
+horizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw the descending
+shades delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best always
+when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you are not, to use the
+vertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflections become
+shaken, and must be drawn with bold undulatory descending lines.
+
+143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest
+possible importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their
+perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more stringent than that of
+any other lines in Nature. It will not be detected by the general
+observer, if you miss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or
+the perspective of a building;[36] but every intelligent spectator will
+feel the difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or shingle,
+and a false one. _Absolutely_ right, in difficult river perspectives
+seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and
+observe, there is NO rule for them. To develop the curve mathematically
+would require a knowledge of the exact quantity of water in the river,
+the shape of its bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even
+with these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician could
+solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it; nothing
+else.
+
+144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great
+differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the
+object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is
+simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water _actually_ reversed
+(not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the
+same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,
+whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid
+objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection,
+always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.
+
+If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror,
+lay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and
+draw them and their reflections; moving them about, and watching how
+their reflections alter, and chiefly how their reflected colors and
+shades differ from their own colors and shades, by being brought into
+other oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
+character in water-painting than mere difference in form.
+
+145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows
+on the bottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections;
+and in a clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of
+effect resulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it,
+mingling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
+water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand,
+do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything
+that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect.
+There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted
+always by refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone
+shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will
+be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the
+stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen
+through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which; and wherever the
+reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best,[37] and
+_vice versâ_. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these
+images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective,
+and where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of the
+water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it: but whether
+you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of
+the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye.
+The more you look down into the water, the better you see objects
+through it; the more you look along it, the eye being low, the more you
+see the reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given space
+of surface in a stream will entirely change while you stand still in the
+same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colors
+with which water is painted are an indication of the position of the
+spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of the shores.
+The most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is
+when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich
+reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an angle which
+exactly divides the visible colors between those of the stones and that
+of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple,
+obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the
+play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.
+
+146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if there be a strong
+color in the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss lakes,
+all these phenomena are doubly involved; for the darker reflections now
+become of the color of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for
+instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther,
+the color of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on the
+surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where the waves let
+light through them, at their edges; and the third, shown as a change of
+color on the objects seen through the water. Thus, the same wave that
+makes a white object look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will
+take a red or violet-colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure
+emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. With all this,
+however, you are not much concerned at present, but I tell it you partly
+as a preparation for what we have afterwards to say about color, and
+partly that you may approach lakes and streams with reverence,[38] and
+study them as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
+few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.[39] Not but
+that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you know precisely what
+you mean by them, as you will see by many of the Turner sketches, which
+are now framed at the National Gallery; but you must have painted water
+many and many a day--yes, and all day long--before you can hope to do
+anything like those.
+
+147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the
+clouds, I say nothing special about _ground_.[40] But there is too much
+to be said about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the
+principal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume
+of Modern Painters; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
+Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will
+give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of
+ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in
+irregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of
+the perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and
+much also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks
+on any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised
+to find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on
+which they fall.
+
+148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity
+about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject;--that the
+clouds, not being much liable to man's interference, are always
+beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of this in any other features
+of landscape. The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene
+especially depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts
+or the landlord quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a
+special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most
+delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer plows or builds upon.
+But the clouds, though we can hide them with smoke, and mix them with
+poison, cannot be quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore
+gloriously arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers
+of memory you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that
+interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united
+influence of every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn
+together in a marvelous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its
+appointed place, or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not
+able to recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is
+impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all the clouds
+at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will
+not fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before
+another.
+
+149. You must try therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching
+at the utmost possible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by
+any shorthand or symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character
+of each, as transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving
+afterwards such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable
+you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting from its
+general aspect; at other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a
+single cloud: sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes
+quite steady enough to let you mark out his principal masses; and one or
+two white or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay
+without serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in
+drawing them, practice occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will
+teach you better than any other stable thing the kind of softness there
+is in clouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies
+of sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
+artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding
+the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones
+tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as
+vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have
+done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or
+in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
+solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy
+nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;
+sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more _drifted_
+into form than they are _carved_ into form, the warm air around them
+cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain
+limits; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
+swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that
+of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is,
+that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms,
+especially considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn
+also at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the
+force of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that if we
+put shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed
+in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
+Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
+them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage.
+
+150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and
+there; one of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much the
+memorandum so obtained, as the lesson you will get respecting the
+softness of the cloud-outlines. You will always find yourself at a loss
+to see where the outline really is; and when drawn it will always look
+hard and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square,
+however often you alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the
+other and back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean
+between roundness and squareness in all its coils or battlements. I
+speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud: the lighter
+wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined;--they can only
+be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly
+developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough, and
+may be drawn with decision. When you have thus accustomed yourself a
+little to the placing and action of clouds, try to work out their light
+and shade, just as carefully as you do that of other things, looking
+exclusively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy
+and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some
+examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet drew the sky:
+even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in
+the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among the
+best of Turner's storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes
+to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.
+
+151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the
+present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to
+master the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for
+drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,
+which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the
+fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
+single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
+whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the
+subjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate
+work addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two
+things to be said on composition which may set the young artist's mind
+somewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defense from the urgency of
+ill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter here;
+trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your
+serious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book
+with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or
+
+                                           Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                         J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [23] It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."
+
+  [24] I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Dürer in their
+    strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design.
+    But you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.
+
+  [25] The following are the most desirable plates:--
+
+    Grande Chartreuse.               Little Devil's Bridge.
+    Æsacus and Hesperie.             River Wye (_not_ Wye and Severn).
+    Cephalus and Procris.            Holy Island.
+    Source of Arveron.               Clyde.
+    Ben Arthur.                      Lauffenburg.
+    Watermill.                       Blair Athol.
+    Hindhead Hill.                   Alps from Grenoble.
+    Hedging and Ditching.            Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook,
+    Dumblane Abbey.                   trees, and castle on the right.)
+    Morpeth.
+    Calais Pier.
+    Pembury Mill.
+
+    If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be
+    serviceable, except only the twelve following, which are quite
+    useless:--
+
+      1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.
+      2. Interior of church.
+      3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing
+          a pipe.
+      4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.
+      5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church
+          seen through them.
+      6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.
+      7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.
+      8. Rivaulx Abbey.
+      9. Wye and Severn.
+     10. Scene with castle in center, cows under trees on the left.
+     11. Martello Towers.
+     12. Calm.
+
+    It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original
+    etchings; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself
+    alone, for it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by
+    Turner, but to a very careful one; only observe, the Source of
+    Arveron, Raglan, and Dumblane were not etched by Turner; and the
+    etchings of those three are not good for separate study, though it
+    is deeply interesting to see how Turner, apparently provoked at the
+    failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and Raglan, took the plates
+    up himself, and either conquered or brought into use the bad etching
+    by his marvelous engraving. The Dumblane was, however, well etched
+    by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully engraved by him. The finest Turner
+    etching is of an aqueduct with a stork standing in a mountain
+    stream, not in the published series; and next to it, are the
+    unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to
+    have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouching and
+    finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via
+    Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest
+    of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that
+    of the aqueduct. Figure 20, above, is part of another fine
+    unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published
+    etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, Æsacus, Cephalus, and Stone
+    Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the
+    more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth,
+    are also very desirable.
+
+  [26] You will find more notice of this point in the account of
+    Harding's tree-drawing, a little farther on.
+
+  [27] The impressions vary so much in color that no brown can be
+    specified.
+
+  [28] You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a
+    Liber print as well.
+
+  [29] See the closing letter in this volume.
+
+  [30] [In 1857.]
+
+  [31] If you are not acquainted with Harding's works, (an unlikely
+    supposition, considering their popularity,) and cannot meet with the
+    one in question, the diagrams given here will enable you to
+    understand all that is needful for our purposes.
+
+  [32] I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it
+    being impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant
+    foliage in a wood-cut.
+
+  [33] His lithographic sketches, those for instance in the Park and
+    the Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater
+    merit than the more ambitious engravings in his Principles and
+    Practice of Art. There are many useful remarks, however, dispersed
+    through this latter work.
+
+  [34] On this law you do well, if you can get access to it, to look
+    at the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters.
+
+  [35] See Note 3 in Appendix I.
+
+  [36] The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of
+    buildings is of little consequence; but he will find it so
+    ultimately. See the remarks on this point in the Preface.
+
+  [37] See Note 4 in Appendix I.
+
+  [38] See Note 5 in Appendix I.
+
+  [39] It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in
+    water, so as to make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white
+    basin with the solution, and put anything you like to float on it,
+    or lie in it; walnut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc.
+    Then study the effects of the reflections, and of the stems of the
+    flowers or submerged portions of the floating objects, as they
+    appear through the blue liquid; noting especially how, as you lower
+    your head and look along the surface, you see the reflections
+    clearly; and how, as you raise your head, you lose the reflections,
+    and see the submerged stems clearly.
+
+  [40] Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works
+    of Prout in the Appendix.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION.
+
+
+152. MY DEAR READER,--If you have been obedient, and have hitherto done
+all that I have told you, I trust it has not been without much subdued
+remonstrance, and some serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when
+you were led by the course of your study to observe closely such things
+as are beautiful in color, you had not longed to paint them, and felt
+considerable difficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of
+black, or blue, or gray. You _ought_ to love color, 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 color because you think
+painting a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may color
+well. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce anything more than
+pleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in color,
+unless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other
+vocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and
+masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well, requires your
+life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is
+increased--not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more--by
+the addition of color to your work. For the chances are more than a
+thousand to one against your being right both in form and color with a
+given touch: it is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend
+to that only; but when you have to attend, at the same moment, to a much
+more subtle thing than the form, the difficulty is strangely
+increased,--and multiplied almost to infinity by this great fact, that,
+while form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any
+line that it is either right or wrong, color is wholly _relative_. Every
+hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add in other
+places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you have
+put a hotter color in another place, and what was in harmony when you
+left it, becomes discordant as you set other colors beside it; so that
+every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but
+with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is
+afterwards to be done being previously considered. You may easily
+understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and
+great genius besides, can make a colorist.
+
+153. But though you cannot produce finished colored drawings of any
+value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and be of great use to other
+people, by occasionally sketching with a view to color only; and
+preserving distinct statements of certain color facts--as that the
+harvest moon at rising was of such and such a red, and surrounded by
+clouds of such and such a rosy gray; that the mountains at evening were
+in truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's side were indeed
+of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have an eye for
+color; but you may presume that you have this, if you enjoy color.
+
+154. And, though of course you should always give as much form to your
+subject as your attention to its color will admit of, remember that the
+whole value of what you are about depends, in a colored sketch, on the
+color merely. If the color is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if
+you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true the
+words are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly; and if you color
+at all, you must color rightly. Give up all the form, rather than the
+slightest part of the color: just as, if you felt yourself in danger of
+a false note, you would give up the word, and sing a meaningless sound,
+if you felt that so you could save the note. Never mind though your
+houses are all tumbling down,--though your clouds are mere blots, and
+your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like crooked
+sixpences,--so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon, are of
+the right colors. Of course, the discipline you have gone through will
+enable you to hint something of form, even in the fastest sweep of the
+brush; but do not let the thought of form hamper you in the least, when
+you begin to make colored memoranda. If you want the form of the
+subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its color, take its
+color, and be sure you _have_ it, and not a spurious, treacherous,
+half-measured piece of mutual concession, with the colors all wrong, and
+the forms still anything but right. It is best to get into the habit of
+considering the colored work merely as supplementary to your other
+studies; making your careful drawings of the subject first, and then a
+colored memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in
+hue, and entirely minding its own business. This principle, however,
+bears chiefly on large and distant subjects: in foregrounds and near
+studies, the color cannot be had without a good deal of definition of
+form. For if you do not map the mosses on the stones accurately, you
+will not have the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pattern,
+and then none of the colors will look right; but it always simplifies
+the work much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied,
+when necessary, to fail of all but that.
+
+155. Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting coloring,
+which is the beginning and end of a painter's craft, I should need to
+make this a work in three volumes instead of three letters, and to
+illustrate it in the costliest way. I only hope, at present, to set you
+pleasantly and profitably to work, leaving you, within the tethering of
+certain leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from the
+works of art of which every year brings a greater number within your
+reach;--and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists
+will be more ready to give kindly, and better able to give wisely.
+
+156. And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colors, not moist colors:
+grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette every morning,
+keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for colors to be used in
+broad washes, and wash both plate and palette every evening, so as to be
+able always to get good and pure color when you need it; and force
+yourself into cleanly and orderly habits about your colors. The two best
+colorists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,[41] afford us, I am
+sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice. Turner
+was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures as men can
+well be; but the result of this was, with Turner, that the colors have
+altered in all his pictures, and in many of his drawings; and the result
+of it with Rossetti is, that though his colors are safe, he has
+sometimes to throw aside work that was half done, and begin over again.
+William Hunt, of the Old Water-color, is very neat in his practice; so,
+I believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the leading
+Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there can be no doubt about
+the goodness of the advice, if it were only for this reason, that the
+more particular you are about your colors the more you will get into a
+deliberate and methodical habit in using them, and all true speed in
+coloring comes of this deliberation.
+
+157. Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colors in order to
+pale them, instead of a quantity of water. You will thus be able to
+shape your masses more quietly, and play the colors about with more
+ease; they will not damp your paper so much, and you will be able to go
+on continually, and lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or
+delicately shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time.
+
+158. This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render them
+opaque, constitutes body-color drawing as opposed to transparent-color
+drawing, and you will, perhaps, have it often said to you that this
+body-color is "illegitimate." It is just as legitimate as oil-painting,
+being, so far as handling is concerned, the same process, only without
+its uncleanliness, its unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience; for oil
+will not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects of
+atmosphere without tenfold labor. And if you hear it said that the
+body-color looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, think so
+yourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain effects of glow
+and transparencies of gloom are not to be reached without transparent
+color, those glows and glooms are _not_ the noblest aim of art. After
+many years' study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in
+Italy, and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am now
+entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done in art
+must be done in dead color. The habit of depending on varnish or on
+lucid tints for transparency, makes the painter comparatively lose sight
+of the nobler translucence which is obtained by breaking various colors
+amidst each other: and even when, as by Correggio, exquisite play of hue
+is joined with exquisite transparency, the delight in the depth almost
+always leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro; it leads him
+to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,[42] and to enjoy, in
+general, quality of color more than grandeur of composition, and
+confined light rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest
+thoughts of the greatest men have always, so far as I remember, been
+reached in dead color, and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and
+Veronese are those which are likest frescoes.
+
+159. Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little
+chalky and coarse-looking body-color is, in a sketch, infinitely liker
+Nature than transparent color: the bloom and mist of distance are
+accurately and instantly represented by the film of opaque blue (_quite_
+accurately, I think, by nothing else); and for ground, rocks, and
+buildings, the earthy and solid surface is, of course, always truer than
+the most finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can
+ever be.
+
+160. Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. All kinds
+of color are equally illegitimate, if you think they will allow you to
+alter at your pleasure, or blunder at your ease. There is _no_ vehicle
+or method of color which admits of alteration or repentance; you must be
+right at once, or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle
+bullet in your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong, as to
+recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good color in oil, water,
+or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence spoken to me by
+Mulready: "Know what you have to do." The process may be a long one,
+perhaps: you may have to ground with one color; to touch it with
+fragments of a second; to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth
+into the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and
+to re-enforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have one, or ten,
+or twenty processes to go through, you must go _straight_ through them
+knowingly and foreseeingly all the way; and if you get the thing once
+wrong, there is no hope for you but in washing or scraping boldly down
+to the white ground, and beginning again.
+
+161. The drawing in body-color will tend to teach you all this, more
+than any other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling
+into the pestilent habit of sponging to get texture; a trick which has
+nearly ruined our modern water-color school of art. There are sometimes
+places in which a skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get
+certain conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could
+otherwise; and sometimes a skillfully rased piece of paper will, in the
+midst of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky
+body-color in representing the surfaces of rocks or building. But
+artifices of this kind are always treacherous in a tyro's hands,
+tempting him to trust in them: and you had better always work on white
+or gray paper as smooth as silk;[43] and never disturb the surface of
+your color or paper, except finally to scratch out the very highest
+lights if you are using transparent colors.
+
+162. I have said above that body-color drawing will teach you the use of
+color better than working with merely transparent tints; but this is not
+because the process is an easier one, but because it is a more complete
+one, and also because it involves some working with transparent tints in
+the best way. You are not to think that because you use body-color you
+may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get out of it. But you
+are to avail yourself of the characters of your material, which enable
+you most nearly to imitate the processes of Nature. Thus, suppose you
+have a red rocky cliff to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You
+paint your cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such a
+tint (and here is a great part of the skill needed) that when it is laid
+over the red, in the thickness required for the effect of the mist, the
+warm rock-color showing through the blue cloud-color, may bring it to
+exactly the hue you want (your upper tint, therefore, must be mixed
+colder than you want it); then you lay it on, varying it as you strike
+it, getting the forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done,
+with exquisite quality of color, from the warm tint's showing through
+and between the particles of the other. When it is dry, you may add a
+little color to retouch the edges where they want shape, or heighten the
+lights where they want roundness, or put another tone over the whole:
+but you can take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by
+any untoward accident mix the under and upper colors together, all is
+lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from the ground again if you
+like, or throw it into the fire if you like. But do not waste time in
+trying to mend it.[44]
+
+163. This discussion of the relative merits of transparent and opaque
+color has, however, led us a little beyond the point where we should
+have begun; we must go back to our palette, if you please. Get a cake of
+each of the hard colors named in the note below[45] and try experiments
+on their simple combinations, by mixing each color with every other. If
+you like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared piece of
+pasteboard, and put the pure colors in columns at the top and side; the
+mixed tints being given at the intersections, thus (the letters standing
+for colors):
+
+      b       c      d      e      f     etc.
+    a a b    a c    a d    a e    a f
+    b --     b c    b d    b e    b f
+    c --     --     c d    c e    c f
+    d --     --     --     d e    d f
+    e --     --     --     --     e f
+    etc.
+
+This will give you some general notion of the characters of mixed tints
+of two colors only, and it is better in practice to confine yourself as
+much as possible to these, and to get more complicated colors, either by
+putting the third _over_ the first blended tint, or by putting the third
+into its interstices. Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the
+effects that colors have on each other when thus put over, or beside,
+each other.
+
+164. When you have got a little used to the principal combinations,
+place yourself at a window which the sun does not shine in at,
+commanding some simple piece of landscape: outline this landscape
+roughly; then take a piece of white cardboard, cut out a hole in it
+about the size of a large pea; and supposing R is the room, _a d_ the
+window, and you are sitting at _a_, Fig. 29, hold this cardboard a
+little outside of the window, upright, and in the direction _b d_,
+parallel to the side of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch
+more light, as at _a d_, never turned as at _c d_, or the paper will be
+dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular
+hole. Match the colors of each important bit as nearly as you can,
+mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. When matched, put a
+touch of the same tint at the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark
+tree color," "hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash
+the tint away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will be ready
+to match another piece of the landscape.[46] When you have got the
+colors of the principal masses thus indicated, lay on a piece of each in
+your sketch in its right place, and then proceed to complete the sketch
+in harmony with them, by your eye.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
+
+165. In the course of your early experiments, you will be much struck by
+two things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy of light in sky and in
+sunlighted things; and the second, that among the tints which you can
+imitate, those which you thought the darkest will continually turn out
+to be in reality the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us,
+under ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by sight;
+thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be thought of darker
+green than an elm or oak near us; because we know by experience that the
+peculiar color they exhibit, at that distance, is the _sign_ of darkness
+of foliage. But when we try them through the cardboard, the near oak
+will be found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar,
+perhaps, pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and gray in Nature is,
+by the way, another somewhat surprising subject of discovery.
+
+166. Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may proceed
+to fill up your sketch; in doing which observe these following
+particulars:
+
+(1.) Many portions of your subject appeared through the aperture in the
+paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted grass, etc. Leave
+these portions, for the present, white; and proceed with the parts of
+which you can match the tints.
+
+(2.) As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must have
+observed how many changes of hue took place over small spaces. In
+filling up your work, try to educate your eye to perceive these
+differences of hue without the help of the cardboard, and lay them
+deliberately, like a mosaic-worker, as separate colors, preparing each
+carefully on your palette, and laying it as if it were a patch of
+colored cloth, cut out, to be fitted neatly by its edge to the next
+patch; so that the _fault_ of your work may be, not a slurred or misty
+look, but a patched bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out with
+scissors. For instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch tree, there will
+be probably white high lights, then a pale rosy gray round them on the
+light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper gray on the dark side,
+varied by reflected colors, and, over all, rich black strips of bark and
+brown spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray, leaving white for the high
+lights _and for the spots of moss_, and not touching the dark side. Then
+lay the gray for the dark side, fitting it well up to the rosy gray of
+the light, leaving also in this darker gray the white paper in the
+places for the black and brown moss; then prepare the moss colors
+separately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left for it.
+Not one grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights,
+must be visible when the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass,
+so cunningly must you fit the edges to each other. Finally, take your
+background colors, and put them on each side of the tree trunk, fitting
+them carefully to its edge.
+
+167. Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you, if you had not
+learned to draw first, and could not now draw a good outline for the
+stem, much less terminate a color mass in the outline you wanted?
+
+Your work will look very odd for some time, when you first begin to
+paint in this way, and before you can modify it, as I shall tell you
+presently how; but never mind; it is of the greatest possible importance
+that you should practice this separate laying on of the hues, for all
+good coloring finally depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and
+sometimes desirable, to lay one color and form boldly over another:
+thus, in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large
+pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through the
+interstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians constantly lay their
+blue ground first, and then, having let it dry, strike the golden brown
+over it in the form of the leaf, leaving the under blue to shine through
+the gold, and subdue it to the olive-green they want. But in the most
+precious and perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round
+it; and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is
+equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the color.
+Either your ground must be laid firmly first, and then your upper color
+struck upon it in perfect form, forever, thenceforward, unalterable; or
+else the two colors must be individually put in their places, and led up
+to each other till they meet at their appointed border, equally,
+thenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves absolute
+decision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or try this
+way and that with your color, it is all over with it and with you. You
+will continually see bad copyists trying to imitate the Venetians, by
+daubing their colors about, and retouching, and finishing, and
+softening: when every touch and every added hue only lead them farther
+into chaos. There is a dog between two children in a Veronese in the
+Louvre, which gives the copyists much employment. He has a dark ground
+behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then when it was dry,
+or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with some
+half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and forever. Had
+one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would have been wrong forever;
+no retouching could have mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some
+background, and then some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then
+the hair; work for hours at it, expecting it always to come right
+to-morrow--"when it is finished." They _may_ work for centuries at it,
+and they will never do it. If they can do it with Veronese's allowance
+of work, half a dozen sweeps of the hand over the dark background, well;
+if not, they may ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right,
+and get true answer from him--on Launce's conditions: "If he say 'ay,'
+it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing,
+it will."
+
+168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure that however
+large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. No color exists
+in Nature under ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not
+see this, it is the fault of your inexperience: you will see it in due
+time, if you practice enough. But in general you may see it at once. In
+the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray _must_ be gradated by the
+roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side; similarly the
+shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, whether by
+adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you
+will do at pleasure, according to the texture you wish to produce), you
+must, in every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than
+another, and get an even gradation between the two depths. This is very
+like laying down a formal law or recipe for you; but you will find it is
+merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically
+impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of color, but it is so
+supremely improbable, that you had better get into the habit of asking
+yourself invariably, when you are going to copy a tint--not "Is that
+gradated?" but "Which way is that gradated?" and at least in ninety-nine
+out of a hundred instances, you will be able to answer decisively after
+a careful glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that you
+did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of
+color may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one
+part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for it is not
+merely because the natural fact is so, that your color should be
+gradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the color itself depends
+more on this than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is to
+colors just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful
+by the pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as types,
+expressing the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul
+itself. What the difference is in mere beauty between a gradated and
+ungradated color, may be seen easily by laying an even tint of
+rose-color on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The victorious
+beauty of the rose as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the
+delicacy and quantity of its color gradations, all other flowers being
+either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less
+tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.
+
+169. (4.) But observe, it is not enough in general that color should be
+gradated by being made merely paler or darker at one place than another.
+Generally color changes as it diminishes, and is not merely darker at
+one spot, but also purer at one spot than anywhere else. It does not in
+the least follow that the darkest spots should be the purest; still less
+so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often the two gradations
+more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction from
+paleness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to
+dullness, but there will almost always be both of them, however
+reconciled; and you must never be satisfied with a piece of color until
+you have got both: that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on
+must be _quite_ blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot; and
+must be gradated from that into less pure blue,--grayish blue, or
+greenish blue, or purplish blue,--over all the rest of the space it
+occupies. And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while the
+color is wet, mix with it the color which is to subdue it, adding
+gradually a little more and a little more; or else, when the color is
+quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another color over it, leaving
+only a point of the first tint visible; or else, lay the subduing tints
+on in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board. Of
+each of these methods I have something to tell you separately; but that
+is distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without
+once more pressing upon you the preëminent necessity of introducing it
+everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like habit of hand, and
+yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get
+into a habit of never touching paper with color, without securing a
+gradation. You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six
+or seven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of color as large
+as a grain of wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice, that
+brilliancy of hue, and vigor of light, and even the aspect of
+transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character
+alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more from
+_equality_ of color than from nature of color. Give me some mud off a
+city crossing, some ocher out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and
+some coal-dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me
+time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red
+of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for
+the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep the masses of
+those colors unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth.
+
+170. (5.) Next, note the three processes by which gradation and other
+characters are to be obtained:
+
+A. Mixing while the color is wet.
+
+You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the hues in
+separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues together as you lay
+them on: but the separate masses are to be laid, when colors distinctly
+oppose each other at a given limit; the hues to be mixed, when they
+palpitate one through the other, or fade one into the other. It is
+better to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint
+the dark and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in
+reality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light,
+gradually one into the other; and, after being laid separately on, will
+need some farther touching to harmonize them: but they do so in a very
+narrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the trunk, and it is
+easier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate at first. Whereas it
+often happens that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one
+being continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of it:
+blue and green often do so in water; blue and gray, or purple and
+scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and
+truthful results may be obtained by laying one color into the other
+while wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with
+the brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color; only
+observe, never mix in this way two _mixtures_; let the color you lay
+into the other be always a simple, not a compound tint.
+
+171. B. Laying one color over another.
+
+If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and after it is quite dry,
+strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much
+more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly,
+if you lay a dark color first, and strike a little blue or white
+body-color lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by
+mixing the color and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
+artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not have you
+trust much to them: they are apt to make you think too much of quality
+of color. I should like you to depend on little more than the dead
+colors, simply laid on, only observe always this, that the _less_ color
+you do the work with, the better it will always be:[47] so that if you
+had laid a red color, and you want a purple one above, do not mix the
+purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red,
+but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over
+the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus produce the
+required purple; and if you want a green hue over a blue one, do not lay
+a quantity of green on the blue, but a _little_ yellow, and so on,
+always bringing the under color into service as far as you possibly can.
+If, however, the color beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have to
+lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must
+either remove the required parts of the under color daintily first with
+your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white over it massively,
+and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white with the upper color.
+This is better, in general, than laying the upper color itself so thick
+as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it be a transparent color,
+you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of
+trees over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places
+left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first in
+solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ocher, than to mix the
+sienna and white; though, of course, the process is longer and more
+troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches required are very
+delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must then mix the warm
+color thick at once, and so use it: and this is often necessary for
+delicate grasses, and such other fine threads of light in foreground
+work.
+
+172. C. Breaking one color in small points through or over another.
+
+This is the most important of all processes in good modern[48] oil and
+water-color painting, but you need not hope to attain very great skill
+in it. To do it well is very laborious, and requires such skill and
+delicacy of hand as can only be acquired by unceasing practice. But you
+will find advantage in noting the following points:
+
+173. (_a._) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or rippled water,
+or broken clouds, much may be done by touches or crumbling dashes of
+rather dry color, with other colors afterwards put cunningly into the
+interstices. The more you practice this, when the subject evidently
+calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of
+color. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of
+separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of color
+in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up
+minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the color you fill
+them with to show brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point
+of it, with a little white left beside or round it in the interstice,
+than to put a pale tint of the color over the whole interstice. Yellow
+or orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show
+brightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.
+
+174. (_b._) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed portions of
+another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost color in
+rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under
+one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons: the first, that the
+play of the two colors together is pleasant to the eye; the second, that
+much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the upper
+dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken
+crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose; in clouds they
+may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the
+cloud masses; and in water, the minor waves. All noble effects of dark
+atmosphere are got in good water-color drawing by these two expedients,
+interlacing the colors, or retouching the lower one with fine darker
+drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is
+barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for passages
+of delicate atmospheric light.
+
+175. (_c._) When you have time, practice the production of mixed tints
+by interlaced touches of the pure colors out of which they are formed,
+and use the process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get
+rich and luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old
+Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent
+memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower
+completely, but laying the ground color of one petal, and painting the
+spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of
+lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their
+position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds
+besides those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of the
+spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like; and
+work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute
+grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise you will never get their
+richness or bloom. You will be surprised to find as you do this, first,
+the universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon;
+secondly, that Nature is just as economical of _her_ fine colors as I
+have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way she paints,
+that her colors cost her something enormous; she will only give you a
+single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light; but down in
+the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the
+showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look
+close, only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the world
+at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the center of it.
+And so with all her colors. Sometimes I have really thought her
+miserliness intolerable: in a gentian, for instance, the way she
+economizes her ultramarine down in the bell is a little too bad.[49]
+
+176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for the sake
+of students, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments;
+but if you mean to be a colorist, you must lay a tax on them yourself
+when you begin to use true color; that is to say, you must use them
+little, and make of them much. There is no better test of your color
+tones being good, than your having made the white in your picture
+precious, and the black conspicuous.
+
+177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering
+or brilliant: it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of black clouds,
+and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew; but when white is well managed,
+it ought to be strangely delicious,--tender as well as bright,--like
+inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to
+seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space
+of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the
+colors. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint,
+by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need
+it, and by keeping the white itself subdued by gray, except at a few
+points of chief luster.
+
+178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a
+point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is
+too heavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some
+_color_,--never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently
+and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among
+them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points
+indicative of intense shade in the very center of masses of shadow.
+Shadows of absolutely negative gray, however, may be beautifully used
+with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued
+strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the
+spectator should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and
+enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold color and the
+white which it relieves. Of all the great colorists Velasquez is the
+greatest master of the black chords. His black is more precious than
+most other people's crimson.
+
+179. It is not, however, only white and black which you must make
+valuable; you must give rare worth to every color you use; but the white
+and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the
+other colors should be continually passing one into the other, being all
+evidently companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and
+neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You may
+melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue, and your blue into
+green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should,
+however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and
+this especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work,
+and giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine coloring,
+like fine drawing, is delicate; and so delicate that if, at last, you
+_see_ the color you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You
+ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone, by touches of color
+which individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom of
+any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom
+hurts it.
+
+180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are _odd_ colors.
+You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work ten minutes before you
+know what to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you feel that
+it is red; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it; presently
+afterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will
+always find your color too warm or too cold--no color in the box will
+seem to have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it
+were laid at a single touch with a single color.
+
+181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general, if you cannot
+choose and harmonize them by instinct, you will never do it at all. If
+you need examples of utterly harsh and horrible color, you may find
+plenty given in treatises upon coloring, to illustrate the laws of
+harmony; and if you want to color beautifully, color as best pleases
+yourself at _quiet times_, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as if it
+were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the color may
+be pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful. Look much at the
+morning and evening sky, and much at simple flowers--dog-roses,
+wood-hyacinths, violets, poppies, thistles, heather, and such like,--as
+Nature arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever any scientific
+person tells you that two colors are "discordant," make a note of the
+two colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have actually
+heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colors
+which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be
+felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!--a peacock's
+neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green
+lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds
+at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good eye for
+colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and
+green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral
+gray, and the like; and how she strikes these color-concords for general
+tones, and then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and
+you will gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and
+beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you enjoy them,
+depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at
+least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If
+color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it,
+you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color,
+whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.
+
+182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend much on your
+state of health and right balance of mind; when you are fatigued or ill
+you will not see colors well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not
+choose them well: thus, though not infallibly a test of character in
+individuals, color power is a great sign of mental health in nations;
+when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring always
+gets dull.[50] You must also take great care not to be misled by
+affected talk about colors from people who have not the gift of it:
+numbers are eager and voluble about it who probably never in all their
+lives received one genuine color-sensation. The modern religionists of
+the school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and
+chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
+strawberries and plums.
+
+183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea that color can help
+or display _form_; color[51] always disguises form, and is meant to do
+so.
+
+184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm
+colors" (reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold
+colors" (blue and gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this
+from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so
+great as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colors, as such,
+are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality (as
+depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue
+bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch
+farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always
+appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is
+quite true that in certain objects, blue is a _sign_ of distance; but
+that is not because blue is a retiring color, but because the mist in
+the air is blue, and therefore any warm color which has not strength of
+light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue
+is no more, on this account, a "retiring color," than brown is a
+retiring color, because, when stones are seen through brown water, the
+deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow is a retiring
+color, because, when objects are seen through a London fog, the farther
+off they are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red,
+can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or
+distance: they express them only under the peculiar circumstances which
+render them at the moment, or in that place, _signs_ of nearness or
+distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if
+you put the orange a great way off, its color will not look so bright;
+but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get
+the color of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a
+hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look at them the
+more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance,
+because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or gray. It
+may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale color will more
+or less express distance, and a powerful or dark color nearness; but
+even this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and
+tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far away; the rose
+color of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet, deep and full
+on the snow in the distance; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in
+the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak
+six miles from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong
+light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting intense
+reflections, all its colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint;
+while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole
+foreground with intense darks of purple, blue green, or ultramarine
+blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hopeless and absurd to expect
+any help from laws of "aërial perspective." Look for the natural
+effects, and set them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and
+_never_ alter a color because it won't look in its right place. Put the
+color strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it be faint,
+though close to you. Why should you suppose that Nature always means you
+to know exactly how far one thing is from another? She certainly intends
+you always to enjoy her coloring, but she does not wish you always to
+measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted
+the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance
+in "aërial perspective."
+
+185. There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which has some
+claims to be considered a constant one: namely, that dullness and
+heaviness of color are more or less indicative of nearness. All distant
+color is _pure_ color: it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely,
+not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any
+earthy or imperfect color, purify or harmonize it; hence a bad colorist
+is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do not of course mean
+that you are to use bad colors in your foreground by way of making it
+come forward; but only that a failure in color, there, will not put it
+out of its place; while a failure in color in the distance will at once
+do away with its remoteness; your dull-colored foreground will still be
+a foreground, though ill-painted; but your ill-painted distance will not
+be merely a dull distance,--it will be no distance at all.
+
+186. I have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to color
+petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, if you attend
+properly to your coloring, to get anything like the quantity of form you
+could in a chiaroscuro sketch; nevertheless, if you do not dash or rush
+at your work, nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be
+satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness
+over the course of the whole study, may just make the difference between
+a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If you
+determine well beforehand what outline each piece of color is to have,
+and, when it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as
+you can, into the form required; and then, after it is dry, consider
+thoroughly what touches are needed to complete it, before laying one of
+them on; you will be surprised to find how masterly the work will soon
+look, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered sketch. In no process
+that I know of--least of all in sketching--can time be really gained by
+precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in all sorts of
+ways; for not only truth of form, but force of light, is always added by
+an intelligent and shapely laying of the shadow colors. You may often
+make a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a
+complicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss
+cottages, for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows,
+and general character of shingly eaves, are expressed in Fig. 30 with
+one tint of gray, and a few dispersed spots and lines of it; all of
+which you ought to be able to lay on without more than thrice dipping
+your brush, and without a single touch after the tint is dry.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
+
+187. Here, then, for I cannot without colored illustrations tell you
+more, I must leave you to follow out the subject for yourself, with
+such help as you may receive from the water-color drawings accessible to
+you; or from any of the little treatises on their art which have been
+published lately by our water-color painters.[52] But do not trust much
+to works of this kind. You may get valuable hints from them as to
+mixture of colors; and here and there you will find a useful artifice or
+process explained; but nearly all such books are written only to help
+idle amateurs to a meretricious skill, and they are full of precepts and
+principles which may, for the most part, be interpreted by their
+_precise_ negatives, and then acted upon with advantage. Most of them
+praise boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is
+caution;--advise velocity, when the first condition of success is
+deliberation;--and plead for generalization, when all the foundations of
+power must be laid in knowledge of speciality.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+188. And now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you
+respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate art,--COMPOSITION. For
+though it is quite unnecessary for you yet awhile to attempt it, and it
+_may_ be inexpedient for you to attempt it at all, you ought to know
+what it means, and to look for and enjoy it in the art of others.
+
+Composition means, literally and simply, putting several things
+together, so as to make _one_ thing out of them; the nature and goodness
+of which they all have a share in producing. Thus a musician composes an
+air, by putting notes together in certain relations; a poet composes a
+poem, by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter a
+picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colors in pleasant order.
+
+In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of
+composition. A pavior cannot be said to compose the heap of stones which
+he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he
+scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that
+everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part,
+and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected
+with it.
+
+189. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the
+arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the world.[53] It is
+an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or colors, or forms, of the
+advantage of perfect fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a
+well-composed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared, but the
+least is as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is
+tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration:
+no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others prepare for, and are
+benefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered; the
+others prepare for, and sympathize with, its humility: and the result
+is, that each and every note has a value in the position assigned to it,
+which, by itself, it never possessed, and of which, by separation from
+the others, it would instantly be deprived.
+
+190. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value
+of those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a
+loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its
+position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly
+recognize it.
+
+Much more in a great picture; every line and color is so arranged as to
+advantage the rest. None are inessential, however slight; and none are
+independent, however forcible. It is not enough that they truly
+represent natural objects; but they must fit into certain places, and
+gather into certain harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red
+chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but
+that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces
+of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we ought to see that
+the work is masterly, merely by the positions and quantities of these
+patches of green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders it
+perfectly impossible to determine what the colors represent: or to see
+whether the red is a chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the
+blue is smoke, sky, or water.
+
+191. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we do, of
+the great laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition
+in the arts should strongly affect every order of mind, however
+unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the popular delight in rhythm and meter,
+and in simple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that _power_ of
+composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of great
+intellect. All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or
+less, remember it: powers of reflection and investigation are also
+common to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in these rests
+only on questions of _degree_. A. has a better memory than B., and C.
+reflects more profoundly than D. But the gift of composition is not
+given _at all_ to more than one man in a thousand; in its highest range,
+it does not occur above three or four times in a century.
+
+192. It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to
+give rules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily
+receive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty
+by rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were
+possible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have
+been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and
+Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of composition lies
+precisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in its being the
+operation of an individual mind of range and power exalted above others.
+
+But though no one can _invent_ by rule, there are some simple laws of
+arrangement which it is well for you to know, because, though they will
+not enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to
+set forth what goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than
+you could have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of good
+composers, you may better understand the grasp of their imagination,
+and the power it possesses over their materials. I shall briefly state
+the chief of these laws.
+
+
+1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.
+
+193. The great object of composition being always to secure unity; that
+is, to make out of many things one whole; the first mode in which this
+can be effected is, by determining that _one_ feature shall be more
+important than all the rest, and that the others shall group with it in
+subordinate positions.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
+
+This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of
+two leaves, _a_, Fig. 31, is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading
+leaf; but that at _b_ _is_ prettier, because it has a head or master
+leaf; and _c_ more satisfactory still, because the subordination of the
+other members to this head leaf is made more manifest by their gradual
+loss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we
+have in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.
+
+194. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger and brighter
+than the other lights, or one figure more prominent than the other
+figures, or one mass of color dominant over all the other masses; and in
+general you will find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that
+there shall be one light on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the
+sky, which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above
+all others. But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly
+concealed by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first
+traceable; and you will generally find they are vulgar pictures in which
+the law is strikingly manifest.
+
+195. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody: for instance, in
+such phrases as this--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+one note (here the upper G) rules the whole passage, and has the full
+energy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, corresponding to
+completely subordinated compositions in painting, are apt to be
+wearisome if often repeated. But, in such a phrase as this--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The A in the
+last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very equal current of
+power running through the whole; and such passages rarely weary. And
+this principle holds through vast scales of arrangement; so that in the
+grandest compositions, such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or
+Raphaels Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal figure;
+and very commonly the figure which is really chief does not catch the
+eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more conspicuous as
+we gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the
+figure meant to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose
+portrait it was evidently the painter's object to make as interesting as
+possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a drifting banner,
+and many figures more, occupy the center of the picture, and first
+catch the eye; little by little we are led away from them to a gleam of
+pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from the head which it
+shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more.
+
+196. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more or
+less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of explaining
+them to analyze one composition thoroughly, than to give instances from
+various works. I shall therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which
+will allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate each
+law by it as we proceed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 32.]
+
+Fig. 32 is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole subject; the
+old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the town of Coblentz on the
+right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. The leading or master feature is, of
+course, the tower on the bridge. It is kept from being _too_ principal
+by an important group on each side of it; the boats, on the right, and
+Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more forcible
+in color, but they are broken into small divisions, while the tower is
+simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its
+mass, but so reduced by aërial perspective of color that it cannot
+contend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the
+key of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects which
+seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly, to
+increase its preëminence.
+
+
+2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.
+
+197. Another important means of expressing unity is to mark some kind of
+sympathy among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest,
+because most surprising, kind of sympathy, is when one group imitates or
+repeats another; not in the way of balance or symmetry, but
+subordinately, like a far-away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted
+much on this law in all his writings on composition; and I think it is
+even more authoritatively present in the minds of most great composers
+than the law of principality.[54] It is quite curious to see the pains
+that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important passage of color; in
+the Pembroke Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with
+a red, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on the beach,
+are two fish in precisely the same relative positions; one red and one
+white. It is observable that he uses the artifice chiefly in pictures
+where he wishes to obtain an expression of repose: in my notice of the
+plate of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbors of England, I have
+already had occasion to dwell on this point; and I extract in the
+note[55] one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the
+composition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication is
+employed to a singular extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first
+repeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this
+lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of
+Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality
+does not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the
+towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were
+chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement of these towers
+would have been too easily seen, were it not for the little one which
+pretends to make a triad of the last group on the right, but is so faint
+as hardly to be discernible: it just takes off the attention from the
+artifice, helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which,
+however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.[56] Then
+there is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is
+divided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has two
+figures in it; while two figures are also sitting together on the great
+rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. Then, finally, the
+great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no
+answering form, has almost its _facsimile_ in the bank on which the girl
+is sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion of
+the picture as any object in the whole series. All this is done to
+deepen the effect of repose.
+
+198. Symmetry, or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal
+opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment under the law of
+Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical object, is of like
+things reflecting each other: it is not the balance of contrary natures
+(like that of day and night), but of like natures or like forms; one
+side of a leaf being set like the reflection of the other in water.
+
+Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. She takes the
+greatest care to secure some difference between the corresponding things
+or parts of things; and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only
+permitted in animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference
+between the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold your arms in
+precisely the same position at each side, your head upright, your body
+straight; divide your hair exactly in the middle and get it as nearly as
+you can into exactly the same shape over each ear; and you will see the
+effect of accurate symmetry: you will see, no less, how all grace and
+power in the human form result from the interference of motion and life
+with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with its
+changefulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest type
+of symmetry as understood by modern architects.
+
+199. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance of
+harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power:
+almost any works of the early painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto,
+etc., will furnish you with notable instances of it. The Madonna of
+Perugino in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and
+Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have.
+
+In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried out, in
+proportion to the wish of the painter to express disciplined calmness.
+In bad compositions, as in bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one
+side answering a tree on the other; but in good compositions, as in
+graceful statues, it is always easy and sometimes hardly traceable. In
+the Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how the
+boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other are set in
+nearly equal balance; the tower, as a central mass, uniting both.
+
+
+3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.
+
+200. Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, is by
+giving some orderly succession to a number of objects more or less
+similar. And this succession is most interesting when it is connected
+with some gradual change in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus
+the succession of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting
+when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more obscure in
+distance: so the succession of mountain promontories one behind another,
+on the flanks of a valley; so the succession of clouds, fading farther
+and farther towards the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of
+different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed
+order. If there be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects,
+there is no continuity; there is only repetition--monotony. It is the
+change in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually free,
+and able to escape, if they like, from the law that rules them, and yet
+submitting to it.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
+
+201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a moment to
+take up another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of
+Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset; so
+delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for
+me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a wood-cut; but the
+rough sketch, Fig. 33, is enough to give an idea of its arrangement.
+The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
+repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud
+and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun,
+meeting towards that point in the horizon where he has set; and the
+tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy
+haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just
+folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled
+silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap their hands,
+and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed
+arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting. But all
+this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old
+pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves,
+and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts
+escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.
+
+202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of
+this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our general
+illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the retiring
+arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint the subject at all;
+and it was this same principle which led him always to seize on subjects
+including long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially,
+observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather
+than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general
+laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I
+may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the
+study of composition.
+
+203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to
+lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels
+deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to
+sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to
+play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and
+another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves,
+and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers
+in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for
+play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and
+transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the
+other side when they set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers
+are just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good
+rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships
+can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping irregularly under their
+banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row
+over without being twisted against the rocks; and pools like wells,
+which no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the
+bottom; but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of
+sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-mason therefore
+throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great
+door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens
+through; a great arch for the great current, to give it room in flood
+time, and little arches for the little currents along the shallow shore.
+This, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great
+current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the
+smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two
+arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the
+same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that,
+where the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many
+and low: as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build
+his piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he
+comes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that,
+he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little
+one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they
+must be higher, or they will not stand; so the roadway must rise as the
+arches widen. And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its
+highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches
+running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank at the
+river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the
+side of the small ones: and the bend of the river assuredly concave
+towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or,
+if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the
+steep end of the bridge.
+
+Now this kind of bridge, sympathizing, as it does, with the spirit of
+the river, and marking the nature of the thing it has to deal with and
+conquer, is the ideal of a bridge; and all endeavors to do the thing in
+a grand engineer's manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are
+barbarous; not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves,
+but because the mind perceives at once that there has been cost
+uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.[57]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 34.]
+
+204. Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Turnerian bridge
+in Fig. 32 is of the absolutely perfect type, and is still farther
+interesting by having its main arch crowned by a watch-tower. But as I
+want you to note especially what perhaps was not the case in the real
+bridge, but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the
+arches diminish gradually, not one is _regularly_ diminished--they are
+all of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this clearly in Fig.
+32, but in the larger diagram, Fig. 34, over leaf, you will with ease.
+This is indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral
+currents near the shore are of course irregular in size, and a simple
+builder would naturally vary his arches accordingly; and also, if the
+bottom was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as
+a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition,
+that this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises the
+object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid law to the
+greater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and human souls, each
+different, each obedient, and each in harmonious service.
+
+
+4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.
+
+205. There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge of
+Turner's. Not only does it slope away unequally at its sides, but it
+slopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. And if you substitute a
+straight line for this curve (drawing one with a rule from the base of
+the tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in Fig. 34, and
+effacing the curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered
+grievously. You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects
+whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, except where
+the straight line is indispensable to their use or stability; and that
+when a complete system of straight lines, throughout the form, is
+necessary to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists,
+is in color and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape of any
+crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily,
+and you will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective
+of added color, or other interfering elements of beauty.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 35.]
+
+206. Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is
+necessary to a good composition that its continuities of object, mass,
+or color should be, if possible, in curves, rather than straight lines
+or angular ones. Perhaps one of the simplest and prettiest examples of a
+graceful continuity of this kind is in the line traced at any moment by
+the corks of a net as it is being drawn: nearly every person is more or
+less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now, it is almost
+always possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrangement
+or boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of
+the net, are actually connected with each other, but--and this is a
+still more noble and interesting kind of continuity--among features
+which appear at first entirely separate. Thus the towers of
+Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 32, appear at first independent of
+each other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. 35,
+the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and
+harmony among them. The reason of this is, that they are all bounded by
+one grand curve, traced by the dotted line; out of the seven towers,
+four precisely touch this curve, the others only falling hack from it
+here and there to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
+
+207. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of this
+kind: it is, in drawing large forests or mountain forms, essential to
+truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall
+into such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand
+did; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor
+covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these
+great curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to
+produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has been able to
+sketch at all among mountains; if not, let him merely draw for himself,
+carefully, the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where they
+are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them. The steeper
+shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at Brighton or
+Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills), is easily
+accessible to a Londoner; and he will soon find not only how constant,
+but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distinguished
+from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation, that is to
+say, its close approach to straightness in some part of its course;[58]
+and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never remaining
+equal in degree at different parts of its course.
+
+208. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
+
+A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line, from less to
+more curvature, or more to less, so that _no_ part of the line is a
+segment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses in any way whatever.
+Thus, in Fig. 36, _a_ is a bad curve because it is part of a circle, and
+is therefore monotonous throughout; but _b_ is a good curve, because it
+continually changes its direction as it proceeds.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
+
+The _first_ difference between good and bad drawing of tree boughs
+consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put leaves on the line
+_b_, as in Fig. 37, you can immediately feel the springiness of
+character dependent on the changefulness of the curve. You may put
+leaves on the other line for yourself, but you will find you cannot make
+a right tree spray of it. For _all_ tree boughs, large or small, as well
+as all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it
+is a point of primal necessity that your eye should always seize and
+your hand trace it. Here are two more portions of good curves, with
+leaves put on them at the extremities instead of the flanks, Fig. 38;
+and two showing the arrangement of masses of foliage seen a little
+farther off, Fig. 39, which you may in like manner amuse yourself by
+turning into segments of circles--you will see with what result. I hope
+however you have beside you, by this time, many good studies of tree
+boughs carefully made, in which you may study variations of curvature in
+their most complicated and lovely forms.[59]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
+
+209. B. Not only does every good curve vary in general tendency, but it
+is modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate curves. Thus the
+outlines of a tree trunk are never as at _a_, Fig. 40, but as at _b_. So
+also in waves, clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another
+essential difference between good and bad drawing, or good and bad
+sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement of minor curvatures
+carried, by good work, into the great lines. Strictly speaking, however,
+this is not variation in large curves, but composition of large curves
+out of small ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the beautiful
+element, but not a change in its nature.
+
+
+5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.
+
+210. We have hitherto been concerned only with the binding of our
+various objects into beautiful lines or processions. The next point we
+have to consider is, how we may unite these lines or processions
+themselves, so as to make groups of _them_.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 42.]
+
+Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in which, moving
+more or less side by side, they variously, but evidently with consent,
+retire from or approach each other, intersect or oppose each other;
+currents of melody in music, for different voices, thus approach and
+cross, fall and rise, in harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they
+approach the shore, flow into one another or cross, but with a great
+unity through all; and so various lines of composition often flow
+harmoniously through and across each other in a picture. But the most
+simple and perfect connection of lines is by radiation; that is, by
+their all springing from one point, or closing towards it; and this
+harmony is often, in Nature almost always, united with the other; as the
+boughs of trees, though they intersect and play amongst each other
+irregularly, indicate by their general tendency their origin from one
+root. An essential part of the beauty of all vegetable form is in this
+radiation; it is seen most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a
+convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf; but more beautifully in the
+complicated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is
+only a flat piece of radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all
+sides, and even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation
+more or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beautiful,
+because varied by the freedom of the separate branches. I believe it has
+been ascertained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their
+leaves, the lateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately
+the same at which the branches leave the great stem; and thus each
+section of the tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own
+leaf, were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses of
+foliage. This force in proportion to their age, and the lateral
+leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as
+before noticed, the lower the bough grows on the stem, the more it
+droops (Fig. 17, p. 67); besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a
+tendency to divide into two or more principal masses, which give a
+prettier and more complicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way
+up the center. Fig. 41 may thus be considered the simplest type of tree
+radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all
+secondary ramification is unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but
+if we take one half of such a tree, and merely give two secondary
+branches to each main branch (as represented in the general branch
+structure shown at _b_, Fig. 18, p. 68), we shall have the form Fig. 42.
+This I consider the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is
+curiously connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic
+ornamentation, into the discussion of which, however, we must not enter
+here. It will be observed, that both in Figs. 41 and 42 all the branches
+so spring from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their united
+radiation from the root R. This is by no means universally the case; but
+if the branches do not bend towards a point in the root, they at least
+converge to some point or other. In the examples in Fig. 43, the
+mathematical center of curvature, _a_, is thus, in one case, on the
+ground, at some distance from the root, and in the other, near the top
+of the tree. Half, only, of each tree is given, for the sake of
+clearness: Fig. 44 gives both sides of another example, in which the
+origins of curvature are below the root. As the positions of such points
+may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines is also
+farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing for the most
+part in a spiral order round the tree, and at proportionate distances,
+the systems of curvature which regulate the form of vegetation are quite
+infinite. Infinite is a word easily said, and easily written, and people
+do not always mean it when they say it; in this case I _do_ mean it: the
+number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish anything like a
+representative number of types, I should have to give several hundreds
+of figures such as Fig. 44.[60]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 43.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
+
+211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great
+relations of stem and branches. The forms of the branches themselves are
+regulated by still more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate
+position between the form of the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a
+flat ramification; the tree a completely rounded one; the bough is
+neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between
+the two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in
+shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir
+cone; by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves
+compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general
+resemblance of these branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be
+more accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a
+very broad-headed and flattened boat applied by its keel to the end of a
+main branch,[61] as in Fig. 45, the lines which its ribs will take,
+supposing them outside of its timbers instead of inside, and the general
+contour of it, as seen in different directions, from above and below,
+will give you the closest approximation to the perspectives and
+foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig. 25 above, p. 89, is
+an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young oak; and, if you
+compare it with Fig. 45, you will understand at once the action of the
+lines of leafage; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are
+too nearly parallel to each other at the sides, while the bough sends
+all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may
+accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always
+securing the compliance with the great universal law that the branches
+nearest the root bend most back; and, of course, throwing _some_ always
+back as well as forwards; the appearance of reversed action being much
+increased, and rendered more striking and beautiful, by perspective.
+Fig. 25 shows the perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below;
+Fig. 46 gives rudely the look it would have from above.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 46.]
+
+212. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what
+subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved in the
+drawing of these branch-flakes, as you see them in different directions
+and actions; now raised, now depressed: touched on the edges by the
+wind, or lifted up and bent back so as to show all the white under
+surfaces of the leaves shivering in light, as the bottom of a boat rises
+white with spray at the surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards
+the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down
+under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. Snow time, by the way, is
+one of the best for practice in the placing of tree masses; but you will
+only be able to understand them thoroughly by beginning with a single
+bough and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in Fig. 38, p. 149.
+First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at _a_;
+then with five, as at _b_, and so on; directing your whole attention to
+the expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat-like
+arrangements, which, in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal
+confused, partly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of
+shade, or absolute blackness of mass required in those studies.
+
+213. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out of the
+wood. You see that in every generally representative figure I have
+surrounded the radiating branches with a dotted line: such lines do
+indeed terminate every vegetable form; and you see that they are
+themselves beautiful curves, which, according to their flow, and the
+width or narrowness of the spaces they inclose, characterize the species
+of tree or leaf, and express its free or formal action, its grace of
+youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her
+wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit;
+and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of
+its branches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and
+being bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn
+back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you
+must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well
+to state here, as connected with the unity of the branches in the great
+trees. You must have noticed, I should think, that whenever a leaf is
+compound,--that is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way
+repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,--those leaflets are not
+symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side
+towards the point of the great leaf, so as to express their
+subordination to it, and show, even when they are pulled off, that they
+are not small independent leaves, but members of one large leaf.
+
+214. Fig. 47, which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, without its
+minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the principle clearly. It
+is composed of a central large mass, A, and two lateral ones, of which
+the one on the right only is lettered, B. Each of these masses is again
+composed of three others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe,
+the minor one, _a_ of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the
+minor _b_ 1 of B is larger than its opposite _b_ 2. Again, each of these
+minor masses is divided into three; but while the central mass, A of A,
+is symmetrically divided, the B of B is unsymmetrical, its largest
+side-lobe being lowest. Again, in _b_ 2, the lobe _c_ 1 (its lowest lobe
+in relation to B) is larger than _c_ 2; and so also in _b_ 1. So that
+universally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger than the other,
+and the smaller lobe is that which is nearer the central mass; the lower
+leaf, as it were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power,
+in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf, and always
+expressing, therefore, its own subordination and secondary character.
+This law is carried out even in single leaves. As far as I know, the
+upper half, towards the point of the spray, is always the smaller; and a
+slightly different curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the
+lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf;
+so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every subordinate
+leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its confession of its own
+lowliness and subjection.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
+
+215. And now, if we bring together in one view the principles we have
+ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be summed under four great
+laws; and that all perfect[62] vegetable form is appointed to express
+these four laws in noble balance of authority.
+
+1. Support from one living root.
+
+2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given point, either in
+the root or in some stated connection with it.
+
+3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and happiness
+according to its needs, by irregularities of action both in its play and
+its work, either stretching out to get its required nourishment from
+light and rain, by finding some sufficient breathing-place among the
+other branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for
+any load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress
+of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and thither
+as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided
+states of mind about their future life.
+
+4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits,
+expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in
+its neighborhood; and to work with them according to its power,
+magnitude, and state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of
+the great curve, and circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.
+
+216. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral analogies
+of these laws; you may, perhaps, however, be a little puzzled to see the
+meaning of the second one. It typically expresses that healthy human
+actions should spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart
+motive; the most beautiful systems of action taking place when this
+motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is clearly
+seen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful secondary systems of
+action taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some
+beautiful subordinate connection with the central or life motive.
+
+The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally
+significative; and as you draw trees more and more in their various
+states of health and hardship, you will be every day more struck by the
+beauty of the types they present of the truths most essential for
+mankind to know;[63] and you will see what this vegetation of the earth,
+which is necessary to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and
+then as food, and just as necessary to our joy in all places of the
+earth,--what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we
+contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or
+spoken for us, not in frightful black letters nor in dull sentences, but
+in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed
+brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom,
+and playful morality.
+
+217. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may
+be; but leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day.
+
+This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from,
+or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of
+composition, the most influential in producing the beauty of groups of
+form. Other laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally
+is chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in
+pictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers; but, like the
+law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperativeness, the
+point to which the lines of main curvature are directed being very
+often far away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system of
+curves will be employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the
+value of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough.
+
+218. In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have
+seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined that his system of
+curvature should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram
+Fig. 34, p. 145, compared with Fig. 32, p. 137, will show how this is
+done. One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of
+the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a
+limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a considerable
+part of it with the edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the
+eye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of a
+ledge in the bank; then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be
+missed.
+
+219. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its
+course by the rudder; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of
+the figures, and leads accurately to the tower angle. The gunwales of
+both the boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point;
+and all are centralized by the long reflection which continues the
+vertical lines.
+
+220. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun
+by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the
+rudder; continued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits,
+interrupted forcibly beyond it,[64] but taken up again by the water-line
+leading to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate shadows under the
+arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other
+extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating
+that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old times
+under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is told us by
+a long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down by some
+minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a
+landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of
+which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the
+great tower. A common composer would have put these bales to one side or
+the other, but Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his
+tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns
+a pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throwing
+the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the great
+composers have this same feeling about sustaining their vertical masses:
+you will constantly find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,
+for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the great tower, in
+the sketch of St. Nicholas, at Prague, and the white group of figures
+under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg[65]); and Veronese, Titian,
+and Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of
+pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most prominent
+instance of his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
+from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose Fig. 20, already given to
+illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because, being another instance of
+precisely the same arrangement, it will serve to convince you of its
+being intentional. There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is
+continued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller
+trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of the bushes
+radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's
+head; but their outline curves are carried on and repeated, under the
+law of continuity, by the curves of the dog and boy--by the way, note
+the remarkable instance in these of the use of darkest lines towards the
+light--all more or less guiding the eye up to the right, in order to
+bring it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object of
+the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which
+the boy climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction and
+character, with these greater curves; thus corresponding as nearly as
+possible to the minor tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however,
+introduces us to another law, which we must consider separately.
+
+
+6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.
+
+221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested by
+Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labor; sound to be heard
+clearly, must rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness,
+darkness by light; and so on in all things. Now in art every color has
+an opponent color, which, if brought near it, will relieve it more
+completely than any other; so, also, every form and line may be made
+more striking to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved
+line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so
+on; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any given color
+or form would have uncombined, is given to each by contrast.[66]
+
+In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
+vulgarizes a picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly,
+admit violent contrast. They introduce it by stealth, and with
+intermediate links of tender change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to
+tell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.[67]
+
+222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35, the main current of
+the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped
+at the lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly
+straight across them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great
+curvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines
+below, which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
+get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No
+passage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a good
+artist without _some_ slight counter current of this kind; so much,
+indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will
+even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give
+greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's
+versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior
+because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all
+were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
+if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and
+he purposely introduces the laboring or discordant verse, that the full
+ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his
+chosen rhythm.[68] And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy
+their work by giving too much of all that they think is good, while the
+great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite
+kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of enjoyment: he gives a
+passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought color, then passes away
+into slight, and pale, and simple color; he paints for a minute or two
+with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spectator thinks,
+slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have _taken_ any more
+decision from him just then; you have had as much as is good for you:
+he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded
+and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you
+a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most
+exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow
+point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair of
+Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very little contrast will
+sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms interesting which would
+otherwise have been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque
+material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48, tiles and
+stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would have
+been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be that iron ring on
+the inner wall, which by its vigorous black _circular_ line precisely
+opposes all the square and angular characters of the battlements and
+roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see what a difference it will
+make.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
+
+223. One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
+association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle
+break in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and
+perpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises
+of change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
+design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the
+good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two
+written columns of an early fourteenth century MS., and at the first
+glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of
+a winding tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud.
+Presently, however, we see that, in order to observe the law of
+principality, there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly
+half-way up, which forms a center to the whole rod; and when we begin to
+examine the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A
+stand for scarlet bud, _b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one
+stalk, _s_ for a stalk without a leaf, and R, for the large red leaf.
+Then, counting from the ground, the order begins as follows:
+
+_b_, _b_, A; _b_, _s_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; and we think we
+shall have two _b_'s and an A all the way, when suddenly it becomes _b_,
+A; _b_, R; _b_, A; _b_, A; _b_, A; and we think we are going to have
+_b_, A continued; but no: here it becomes _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, A;
+_b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _c_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; and we think we are
+surely going to have _b_, _s_ continued, but behold it runs away to the
+end with a quick _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, _b_, _b_![69] Very often,
+however, the designer is satisfied with _one_ surprise, but I never saw
+a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
+kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a
+snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with
+the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series:
+the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below
+through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
+otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.
+
+224. If you look back to Fig. 48 you will see, in the arrangement of the
+battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole
+top of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the
+eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left,
+somewhat square and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the
+tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there
+is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant; and the last
+battlement, therefore, is a little higher than the first two,--a little
+lower than the second two,--and different in shape from either. Hide it
+with your finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements
+look.
+
+225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the
+laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the walls' mass being
+square, it is well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not
+only by the element of curvature, in the ring, and lines of the roof
+below, but by that of sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes
+in the projecting point of the roof. Also, because the walls are thick
+and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with weakness;
+therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks
+between them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting
+shadow somewhere; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This
+shade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass,
+necessary to the first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior
+angle with your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the
+law of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in
+the feeling with which you look at the battlements; there is a certain
+pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one side down to the
+left, on the other to the right. Still less would you think the law of
+radiation had anything to do with the matter: but if you take the
+extreme point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow
+first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you
+continue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow the second curve,
+the top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the
+right-hand battlement; then draw a curve from the highest point of the
+angled battlement on the left, through the points of the roof and its
+dark echo; and you will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from
+this lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these main
+ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the
+upper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement; and
+the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more
+extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct expression of
+sympathy, such as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general
+flow of the curves from left to right.
+
+226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are
+indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But, as you study
+longer, you will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by
+the powerful composers in every _touch_: that literally, there is never
+a dash of their pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of
+this kind in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much
+difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of the great
+composers ruling his colors, and a common painter confused by them, as
+there is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old
+lady carried off her feet by a mob.
+
+
+7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.
+
+227. Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which enforces
+the unity of opposite things, by giving to each a portion of the
+character of the other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two
+masses of color, all the way down--suppose blue and white, and put a
+bar, or figure of an animal, partly on one division, partly on the
+other, you will find it pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the
+animal blue which comes upon the white half, and white which comes upon
+the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the sake of perfect
+intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in interchange of
+color, since, in all ornamentation whatever, the practice is continual,
+in the ages of good design.
+
+228. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts; as
+that, after red has been for some time on one side, and blue on the
+other, red shall pass to blue's side and blue to red's. This kind of
+alternation takes place simply in four-quartered shields; in more subtle
+pieces of treatment, a little bit only of each color is carried into the
+other, and they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most
+curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn
+some time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of
+intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind are
+produced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as
+long as it comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely
+at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all
+her masses of shade and color, is so great, that if you only follow her
+closely, every one who looks at your drawing with attention will think
+that you have been inventing the most artificially and unnaturally
+delightful interchanges of shadow that could possibly be devised by
+human wit.
+
+229. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length by
+Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade: it seems of all his principles
+of composition to be the one he is most conscious of; many others he
+obeys by instinct, but this he formally accepts and forcibly declares.
+
+The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us
+how opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each,
+as far as they can, some impress or reflection, or imparted power, from
+the other.
+
+
+8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.
+
+230. It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while contrast
+exhibits the _characters_ of things, it very often neutralizes or
+paralyzes their _power_. A number of white things may be shown to be
+clearly white by opposition of a black thing, but if we want the full
+power of their gathered light, the black thing may be seriously in our
+way. Thus, while contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy
+which employ them, concentrating the power of several into a mass. And,
+not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is
+continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of
+exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change he gives
+them pleasantness, and by consistency value; by change he is refreshed,
+and by perseverance strengthened.
+
+231. Hence many compositions address themselves to the spectator by
+aggregate force of color or line, more than by contrasts of either; many
+noble pictures are painted almost exclusively in various tones of red,
+or gray, or gold, so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of
+flush, or glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only
+by slight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some
+compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and
+graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of contrary
+character. And, in general, such compositions possess higher sublimity
+than those which are more mingled in their elements. They tell a special
+tale, and summon a definite state of feeling, while the grand
+compositions merely please the eye.
+
+232. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most to the
+works of the greatest men; their separate pictures have all separate
+aims. We have not, in each, gray color set against somber, and sharp
+forms against soft, and loud passages against low: but we have the
+bright picture, with its delicate sadness; the somber picture, with its
+single ray of relief; the stern picture, with only one tender group of
+lines; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank;
+and so on. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its
+impressiveness. The principal bearing of this law, however, is on the
+separate masses or divisions of a picture: the character of the whole
+composition may be broken or various, if we please, but there must
+certainly be a tendency to consistent assemblage in its divisions. As an
+army may act on several points at once, but can only act effectually by
+having somewhere formed and regular masses, and not wholly by
+skirmishers; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but must be
+somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good composers are always
+associating their colors in great groups; binding their forms together
+by encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexterities of
+expedient, what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a large
+gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light being gathered to
+light, darkness to darkness, and color to color. If, however, this be
+done by introducing false lights or false colors, it is absurd and
+monstrous; the skill of a painter consists in obtaining breadth by
+rational arrangement of his objects, not by forced or wanton treatment
+of them. It is an easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another
+all black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the
+circumstances which will naturally produce white in one place, and brown
+in another. Generally speaking, however, breadth will result in
+sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature is always broad; and if
+you paint her colors in true relations, you will paint them in majestic
+masses. If you find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all
+probability, not only ill composed, but untrue.
+
+233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of
+light and color, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally
+introduced with exquisite effect by good composers.[70] Still it is
+never the mere scattering, but the order discernible through this
+scattering, which is the real source of pleasure; not the mere
+multitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the
+work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not
+unshepherded, speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad
+painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
+it to be wished they were also of dissolution.
+
+
+9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.
+
+234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition
+as of truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore,
+to be stated in this place.
+
+Good drawing is, as we have seen, an _abstract_ of natural facts; you
+cannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling
+short, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature.
+Now, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the
+depth of color in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler.
+If you paint all the colors proportionately paler, as if an equal
+quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, you still
+obtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible, statement of
+natural fact. But if you take away the colors unequally, and leave some
+tints nearly as deep as they are in Nature, while others are much
+subdued, you have no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the
+observer, "Fancy all those colors a little deeper, and you will have the
+actual fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes away, something
+is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of harmony.
+
+235. It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you have to
+darken the whole system of colors, than to make them paler. You
+remember, in your first studies of color from Nature, you were to leave
+the passages of light which were too bright to be imitated, as white
+paper. But, in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to put color
+into them; and then the other colors must be made darker, in some fixed
+relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately, though the whole
+scene is darker than reality, it is only as if you were looking at the
+reality in a lower light: but if, while you darken some of the tints,
+you leave others undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not
+give the impression of truth.
+
+236. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen _all_ the colors so much as
+to relieve the lights in their natural degree, you would merely sink
+most of your colors, if you tried to do so, into a broad mass of
+blackness: but it is quite possible to lower them harmoniously, and yet
+more in some parts of the picture than in others, so as to allow you to
+show the light you want in a visible relief. In well-harmonized pictures
+this is done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards the
+lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the very dark
+parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of course, to include large
+masses of middle tints. But the principal point to be observed in doing
+this, is to deepen the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring
+them. It is easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over
+with gray or brown; and easy to see the effect of the landscape, when
+its colors are thus universally polluted with black, by using the black
+convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying
+Nature and degrading art which ever was put into an artist's hand.[71]
+For the thing required is not to darken pale yellow by mixing gray with
+it, but to deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing black
+with it, but by making it deeper and richer crimson: and thus the
+required effect could only be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass
+of the color of every object in your landscape, and of every minor hue
+that made up those colors, and then could see the real landscape through
+this deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with
+glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to say, you
+can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in
+the proportion you need; and then you may paint as forcibly as you
+choose, but your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of
+Caravaggio or Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of
+painting.[72]
+
+237. Supposing those scales of color, which I told you to prepare in
+order to show you the relations of color to gray, were quite accurately
+made, and numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order
+to obtain a deeper tone in any given mass of color, than to substitute
+for each of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you
+wanted, that is to say, if you wanted to deepen the whole two degrees,
+substituting for the yellow No. 5 the yellow No. 7, and for the red No.
+9 the red No. 11, and so on: but the hues of any object in Nature are
+far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so
+mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole
+matter clearly by taking a group of colors out of your scale, arranging
+them prettily, and then washing them all over with gray: that represents
+the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group
+of colors, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale; and
+that will represent the treatment of Nature by Titian.
+
+238. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the
+thing by working from Nature.
+
+The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a
+good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in
+it. Paint the clouds in true and tenderly gradated white; then give the
+sky a bold full blue, bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and
+leaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and
+brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to more complicated
+studies, matching the colors carefully first by your old method; then
+deepening each color with its own tint, and being careful, above all
+things, to keep truth of equal change when the colors are connected with
+each other, as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much more
+aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with which you
+observe the relation of colors in dark sides and light sides, and the
+influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy of added depth
+in independent colors.
+
+239. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most
+important of those which the artist has to regard. But there are all
+kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to its mode of production.
+There is even a harmony of touch. If you paint one part of it very
+rapidly and forcibly, and another part slowly and delicately, each
+division of the picture may be right separately, but they will not agree
+together: the whole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony.
+Similarly, if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day,
+and another by a gray light in a cold day, though both may have been
+sunlight, and both may be well toned, and have their relative shadows
+truly cast, neither will look like light; they will destroy each other's
+power, by being out of harmony. These are only broad and definable
+instances of discordance; but there is an extent of harmony in all good
+work much too subtle for definition; depending on the draughtsman's
+carrying everything he draws up to just the balancing and harmonious
+point, in finish, and color, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral
+feeling, and style of touch, all considered at once; and never allowing
+himself to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing
+at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly in
+another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's etchings, you will be
+able, I think, to feel the nature of harmonious treatment in a simple
+kind, by comparing them with any of Richter's illustrations to the
+numerous German story-books lately published at Christmas, with all the
+German stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in
+character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is _perfect_ in
+harmony. The pure and simple effects of daylight which he gets by his
+thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unrivaled, as
+far as I know, by any other work executed with so few touches. His
+vignettes to Grimm's German stories, already recommended, are the most
+remarkable in this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary,
+are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human character,
+with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy; but, as drawings,
+they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in one place
+being continually opposed to trenchant white in another; and, as is
+almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the local color hardly
+felt anywhere. All German work is apt to be out of harmony, in
+consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its
+willful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind of
+excitement, which dwells violently on particular points, and makes all
+the lines of thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a
+cat's fur electrified; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant
+leopard, and as strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+240. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which occur to
+me as capable of being illustrated or defined; but there are multitudes
+of others which, in the present state of my knowledge, I cannot define,
+and others which I never hope to define; and these the most important,
+and connected with the deepest powers of the art. I hope, when I have
+thought of them more, to be able to explain some of the laws which
+relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that ignobleness especially which
+we commonly call "vulgarity" and which, in its essence, is one of the
+most curious subjects of inquiry connected with human feeling. Others I
+never hope to explain, laws of expression, bearing simply on simple
+matters; but, for that very reason, more influential than any others.
+These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are;
+it being just as impossible, I think, to show, finally, why one
+succession of musical notes[73] shall be lofty and pathetic, and such as
+might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why another succession is
+base and ridiculous, and would be fit only for the reasonably good ear
+of Bottom, as to explain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness.
+The best part of every great work is always inexplicable: it is good
+because it is good; and innocently gracious, opening as the green of the
+earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.
+
+241. But though you cannot explain them, you may always render yourself
+more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline
+which you generally give to your character, and this especially with
+regard to the choice of incidents; a kind of composition in some sort
+easier than the artistical arrangements of lines and colors, but in
+every sort nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.
+
+242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last vignette to
+Rogers's Poems, the plow in the foreground has three purposes. The first
+purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it
+brighter by opposition; but any dark object whatever would have done
+this. Its second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of
+the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression of
+repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its third and
+chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the
+vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of
+human labor closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the
+hand leans are brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief
+dark of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of
+man as a punishment: but they make the soft light of the setting sun
+brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never
+occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design; and yet their under
+current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the painter
+meant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace.
+
+243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates I have
+marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which
+falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in
+need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the
+incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull
+at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his
+feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected
+boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of
+the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plow told us of the
+ceased labor of the day.
+
+244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of
+this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the
+whole subject, that the mind of a great composer is known. A single
+incident may be suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto
+might be for the heading of a chapter. But the great composers so
+arrange _all_ their designs that one incident illustrates another, just
+as one color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham," of the Yorkshire
+series, which, as to its locality, may be considered a companion to the
+last drawing we have spoken of, the "Lancaster Sands," presents as
+interesting an example as we could find of Turner's feeling in this
+respect. The subject is a simple north-country village, on the shore of
+Morecambe Bay; not in the common sense a picturesque village; there are
+no pretty bow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the
+rustic doors, or quaint gables; nothing but a single street of thatched
+and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous line,
+the roofs so green with moss that at first we hardly discern the houses
+from the fields and trees. The village street is closed at the end by a
+wooden gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through
+it, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in which a
+right of way lies through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is
+full of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken banks
+of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few inclosures which
+surround the village; they can hardly be called gardens: but a decayed
+fragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line,
+with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is
+stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows; a _very_ small
+haystack and pig-sty being seen at the back of the cottage beyond. An
+empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge
+wooden collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the
+leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about
+country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house,
+with three chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of
+stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt
+the clergyman's: there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from
+any other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney at the
+back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire
+not having been long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's
+house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the cottages
+only by its low two-arched belfry, a little neater than one would expect
+in such a village; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite incumbent:[74]
+and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two fragments of a border
+war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn on its brow deep into
+edges and furrows by the feet of the village children. On the bank of
+moor, which forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's dog
+barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding another, a gentle
+white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of a handful of fresh
+hay, which she has brought for it in her blue apron, fastened up round
+her waist; she stands with her pail on her head, evidently the village
+coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under
+the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, bare-footed,
+stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is thistly and
+not pleasurable to bare feet);--whether boy or girl we are not sure: it
+may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of
+ragged trousers on; probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently
+useful to keep the sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed
+cows among the moorland hollows, and helps us at present to watch
+(holding the bonnet's edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish cow with
+the dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow to proceed without
+any interference. A little to the right the hay is being got in, of
+which the milkmaid has just taken her apronful to the white cow; but the
+hay is very thin, and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks; we
+must glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the
+willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneeling
+against the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart without
+dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky hill, deep set with
+brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone emerging here and there,
+with pleasant turf on their brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds
+against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as golden as the moss,
+stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows
+its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seawards: perhaps one of the
+village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it there,
+that his mother may first see the sails of his ship whenever it runs
+into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the border tower, is the
+blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the sand in long curved lines
+slowly; shadows of cloud, and gleams of shallow water on white sand
+alternating--miles away; but no sail is visible, not one fisher-boat on
+the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon. Beyond all are the
+Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy light on all their
+crags.
+
+245. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of harmony there
+is in this composition; the entire purpose of the painter to give us the
+impression of wild, yet gentle, country life, monotonous as the
+succession of the noiseless waves, patient and enduring as the rocks;
+but peaceful, and full of health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the
+pure mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between
+days of toil and nights of innocence.
+
+246. All noble composition of this kind can be reached only by
+instinct; you cannot set yourself to arrange such a subject; you may see
+it, and seize it, at all times, but never laboriously invent it. And
+your power of discerning what is best in expression, among natural
+subjects, depends wholly on the temper in which you keep your own mind;
+above all, on your living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely
+sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly
+incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty. If you go down
+into Cumberland by the railroad, live in some frequented hotel, and
+explore the hills with merry companions, however much you may enjoy your
+tour or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so much
+as one pictorial subject rightly; you will not see into the depth of
+any. But take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's
+journeys,--ten or twelve miles a day--taking a week from some
+starting-place sixty or seventy miles away: sleep at the pretty little
+wayside inns, or the rough village ones; then take the hills as they
+tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart
+guides, wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything
+which it is the ordinary traveler's duty to see, or pride to do. Never
+force yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humor; but
+never force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of
+anything better; and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world
+will unfold themselves to you in still increasing fullness of passionate
+power; and your difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose
+subjects, but only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious
+thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which will of course
+be noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and
+general power of mind; for it is not so much by the consideration you
+give to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers
+of thought, that the character of your composition will be determined.
+Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty
+of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will
+make you enjoy coarse colors and affected forms. Habits of patient
+comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they
+will make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in
+your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
+the works of your hands.--Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                          J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [41] I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading
+    Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over color in the
+    abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest
+    for rendering color under effects of light; and of these two,
+    Rossetti composes with richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of
+    beauty, Hunt's stern realism leading him continually into harshness.
+    Rossetti's carelessness, to do him justice, is only in water-color,
+    never in oil.
+
+  [42] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the
+    rise of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown
+    trees would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to
+    work in dead color. Any color will do for some people, if it is
+    browned and shining; but fallacy in dead color is detected on the
+    instant. I even believe that whenever a painter begins to _wish_
+    that he could touch any portion of his work with gum, he is going
+    wrong.
+
+    It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish
+    between translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have
+    said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but
+    luster or _shininess_ is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of
+    my best painter-friends (the "best" being understood to attach to
+    both divisions of that awkward compound word,) tried the other day
+    to persuade me that luster was an ignobleness in anything; and it
+    was only the fear of treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain
+    streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from yielding the point
+    to him. One is apt always to generalize too quickly in such matters;
+    but there can be no question that luster is destructive of
+    loveliness in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever
+    may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes
+    shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she
+    would be sorry if her cheeks did; and which of us would wish to
+    polish a rose?
+
+  [43] But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed
+    imperial, or gray paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is
+    best. Coarse, gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and
+    blunderers; no good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner
+    worked much on a thin tough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his
+    sketches in tight bundles that would go deep into his pockets.
+
+  [44] I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I
+    address you as a beginner, or an amateur: a great artist can
+    sometimes get out of a difficulty with credit, or repent without
+    confession. Yet even Titian's alterations usually show as stains on
+    his work.
+
+  [45] It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few
+    colors: it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing,
+    and you may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange
+    them in your color-box in the order I have set them down, you will
+    always easily put your finger on the one you want.
+
+    Cobalt         Smalt                  Antwerb blue     Prussian blue
+    Black          Gamboge                Emerald green    Hooker's green
+    Lemon yellow   Cadmium yellow         Yellow ocher     Roman ocher
+    Raw sienna     Burnt sienna           Light red        Indian red
+    Mars orange    Extract of vermilion   Carmine          Violet carmine
+    Brown madder   Burnt umber            Vandyke brown    Sepia
+
+    Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but
+    you need not care much about permanence in your work as yet, and
+    they are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more
+    fugitive still, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color,
+    put in the box merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and
+    Prussian blue. No. 1 is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a
+    noble color for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into
+    afterwards with other colors.
+
+    If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's
+    "Chromatography" at once; only do not attend to anything it says
+    about principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements
+    of practical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on
+    each other when mixed, etc.
+
+  [46] A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly
+    prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the
+    sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip
+    of cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening,
+    and match each color beside one of the circular openings. You will
+    thus have no occasion to wash any of the colors away. But the first
+    rough method is generally all you want, as, after a little practice,
+    you only need to _look_ at the hue through the opening in order to
+    be able to transfer it to your drawing at once.
+
+  [47] If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should
+    have many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer
+    I would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except
+    black, Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I
+    would leave for students. I don't say this jestingly; I believe such
+    a tax would do more to advance real art than a great many schools of
+    design.
+
+  [48] I say _modern_, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors,
+    which is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any
+    artist. The best color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not
+    quite right.
+
+  [49] See Note 6 in Appendix I.
+
+  [50] The worst general character that color can possibly have is a
+    prevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a
+    decaying heap of vegetables; this color is _accurately_ indicative
+    of decline or paralysis in missal-painting.
+
+  [51] That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The
+    gradations of color in the various shadows belonging to various
+    lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colorist can ever
+    draw _forms_ perfectly (see Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at
+    the end); but all notions of explaining form by superimposed color,
+    as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color adorns form, but
+    does not interpret it. An apple is prettier because it is striped,
+    but it does not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because
+    it is flushed, but you would see the form of the cheek bone better
+    if it were not. Color may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as
+    in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance
+    of projection, and whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or
+    green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just as clearly or
+    just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colors are of equal
+    depth. The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch
+    more than the red one.
+
+  [52] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one
+    more point connected with the management of color, under the head
+    "Law of Harmony."
+
+  [53] See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap.
+    viii. § 6.
+
+  [54] See Note 7 in Appendix I.
+
+  [55] "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are
+    peaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in
+    events; that one day should be like another day, or one history the
+    repetition of another history, being more or less results of
+    quietness, while dissimilarity and non-succession are results of
+    interference and disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually
+    increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of the note or
+    syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence
+    also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a
+    cuckoo."
+
+  [56] This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, the masts being so
+    delicate that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In
+    the original they have orange light upon them, relieved against
+    purple behind.
+
+  [57] The cost of art in getting a bridge level is _always_ lost, for
+    you must get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and
+    you only can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther
+    back, and pretending to have got rid of it when you have not, but
+    have only wasted money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of
+    course, the bridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep,
+    but the necessary slope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge
+    itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and not pushed aside into
+    the approach, as in our Waterloo road; the only rational excuse for
+    doing which is that when the slope must be long it is inconvenient
+    to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any restiveness
+    of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment.
+    To this I answer: first, it is not more dangerous in reality, though
+    it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective
+    parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a
+    useless rail; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on
+    the bridge and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be
+    quite safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss,
+    but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground; and so my
+    picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to
+    see them built again some day instead of the frightful
+    straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the
+    pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind.
+
+  [58] I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in
+    other books; but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the
+    notices of this part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv.
+    chap xvii.; and Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8.
+
+  [59] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without
+    having gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch
+    of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4, p. 17, and examine the
+    curves of its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here
+    stated under the heads A and B.
+
+  [60] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these
+    figures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by
+    compasses.
+
+  [61] I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely
+    facsimiles of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to
+    illustrate my meaning as I write--often sadly scrawled if I want to
+    get on to something else. This one is really a little too careless;
+    but it would take more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of
+    so odd a boat than the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose
+    well enough as it is.
+
+  [62] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature
+    dependent, as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of
+    continual injury without materially losing the power of giving
+    pleasure by its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I
+    have not, of course, space here to explain these minor distinctions,
+    but the laws above stated apply to all the more important trees and
+    shrubs likely to be familiar to the student.
+
+  [63] There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of
+    leaves upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to
+    attract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine
+    them, you will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the
+    leaves, but that, through each interstice, the light falls, at a
+    little distance, in the form of a round or oval spot; that is to
+    say, it produces the image of the sun itself, cast either vertically
+    or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of the
+    ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they
+    fall through any small aperture: but the openings between leaves are
+    the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to
+    attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think
+    what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun; and how it
+    may show us that, even when the opening through which the earth
+    receives light is too small to let us see the Sun Himself, the ray
+    of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear
+    with it His image.
+
+  [64] In the smaller figure (32), it will be seen that this
+    interruption is caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge;
+    and this object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves
+    leading out of the picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as
+    not to be easily represented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the
+    explanation of our point here, it has been omitted in the larger
+    diagram, the direction of the curve it begins being indicated by the
+    dashes only.
+
+  [65] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.
+
+  [66] If you happen to meet with the plate of Dürer's representing a
+    coat-of-arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the
+    concave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage
+    carried round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of
+    the shield in opposing the rich folds of the dress.
+
+  [67] Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light
+    to oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never
+    set behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the
+    mountain's edge.
+
+  [68]       "A prudent chief not always must display
+              His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
+              But with the occasion and the place comply,
+              Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
+              Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
+              Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."
+
+                                                  _Essay on Criticism._
+
+  [69] I am describing from an MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's
+    Decretalia, in my own possession.
+
+  [70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice,
+    is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes
+    of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe
+    great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being
+    marked through this division.
+
+  [71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by
+    considerable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art,
+    must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French
+    landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the
+    dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the
+    veil of its perversion.
+
+  [72] Various other parts of this subject are entered into,
+    especially in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern
+    Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.
+
+  [73] In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned
+    by their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be
+    reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but
+    cannot reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not:
+    and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good
+    taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music.
+
+  [74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
+    but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called
+    ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated
+    condition, forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use
+    this word regretfully, no other existing which will serve for
+    it,--had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long
+    before.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+I.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.
+
+  NOTE 1, p. 42.--"_Principle of the stereoscope._"
+
+247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists, that they can,
+in some degree, imitate in a picture the effect of the stereoscope, by
+confusion of lines. There are indeed one or two artifices by which, as
+stated in the text, an appearance of retirement or projection may be
+obtained, so that they partly supply the place of the stereoscopic
+effect, but they do not imitate that effect. The principle of the human
+sight is simply this:--by means of our two eyes we literally see
+everything from two places at once; and, by calculated combination, in
+the brain, of the facts of form so seen, we arrive at conclusions
+respecting the distance and shape of the object, which we could not
+otherwise have reached. But it is just as vain to hope to paint at once
+the two views of the object as seen from these two places, though only
+an inch and a half distant from each other, as it would be if they were
+a mile and a half distant from each other. With the right eye you see
+one view of a given object, relieved against one part of the distance;
+with the left eye you see another view of it, relieved against another
+part of the distance. You may paint whichever of those views you please;
+you cannot paint both. Hold your finger upright, between you and this
+page of the book, about six inches from your eyes, and three from the
+book; shut the right eye, and hide the words "inches from," in the
+second line above this, with your finger; you will then see "six" on one
+side of it, and "your," on the other. Now shut the left eye and open the
+right without moving your finger, and you will see "inches," but not
+"six." You may paint the finger with "inches" beyond it, or with "six"
+beyond it, but not with both. And this principle holds for any object
+and any distance. You might just as well try to paint St. Paul's at once
+from both ends of London Bridge as to realize any stereoscopic effect in
+a picture.
+
+
+  NOTE 2, p. 59.--"_Dark lines turned to the light._"
+
+248. It ought to have been farther observed, that the inclosure of the
+light by future shadow is by no means the only reason for the dark lines
+which great masters often thus introduce. It constantly happens that a
+local color will show its own darkness most on the light side, by
+projecting into and against masses of light in that direction; and then
+the painter will indicate this future force of the mass by his dark
+touch. Both the monk's head in Fig. 11 and dog in Fig. 20 are dark
+towards the light for this reason.
+
+
+  NOTE 3, p. 98.--"_Softness of reflections._"
+
+249. I have not quite insisted enough on the extreme care which is
+necessary in giving the tender evanescence of the edges of the
+reflections, when the water is in the least agitated; nor on the
+decision with which you may reverse the object, when the water is quite
+calm. Most drawing of reflections is at once confused and hard; but
+Nature's is at once intelligible and tender. Generally, at the edge of
+the water, you ought not to see where reality ceases and reflection
+begins; as the image loses itself you ought to keep all its subtle and
+varied veracities, with the most exquisite softening of its edge.
+Practice as much as you can from the reflections of ships in calm
+water, following out all the reversed rigging, and taking, if anything,
+more pains with the reflection than with the ship.
+
+
+  NOTE 4, p. 100.--"_Where the reflection is darkest, you will see
+     through the water best._"
+
+250. For this reason it often happens that if the water be shallow, and
+you are looking steeply down into it, the reflection of objects on the
+bank will consist simply of pieces of the bottom seen clearly through
+the water, and relieved by flashes of light, which are the reflection of
+the sky. Thus you may have to draw the reflected dark shape of a bush:
+but, inside of that shape, you must not draw the leaves of the bush, but
+the stones under the water; and, outside of this dark reflection, the
+blue or white of the sky, with no stones visible.
+
+
+  NOTE 5, p. 101.--"_Approach streams with reverence._"
+
+251. I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents or waterfalls,
+as I do not consider them subjects for beginners to practice upon; but,
+as many of our younger artists are almost breaking their hearts over
+them, it may be well to state at once that it is physically impossible
+to draw a running torrent quite rightly, the luster of its currents and
+whiteness of its foam being dependent on intensities of light which art
+has not at its command. This also is to be observed, that most young
+painters make their defeat certain by attempting to draw running water,
+which is a lustrous object in rapid motion, without ever trying their
+strength on a lustrous object standing still. Let them break a coarse
+green-glass bottle into a great many bits, and try to paint those, with
+all their undulations and edges of fracture, as they lie still on the
+table; if they cannot, of course they need not try the rushing crystal
+and foaming fracture of the stream. If they can manage the glass bottle,
+let them next buy a fragment or two of yellow fire-opal; it is quite a
+common and cheap mineral, and presents, as closely as anything can, the
+milky bloom and color of a torrent wave: and if they can conquer the
+opal, they may at last have some chance with the stream, as far as the
+stream is in any wise possible. But, as I have just said, the bright
+parts of it are _not_ possible, and ought, as much as may be, to be
+avoided in choosing subjects. A great deal more may, however, be done
+than any artist has done yet, in painting the gradual disappearance and
+lovely coloring of stones seen through clear and calm water.
+
+Students living in towns may make great progress in rock-drawing by
+frequently and faithfully drawing broken edges of common roofing slates,
+of their real size.
+
+
+  NOTE 6, p. 125.--"_Nature's economy of color._"
+
+252. I heard it wisely objected to this statement, the other day, by a
+young lady, that it was not through economy that Nature did not color
+deep down in the flower bells, but because "she had not light enough
+there to see to paint with." This may be true; but it is certainly not
+for want of light that, when she is laying the dark spots on a foxglove,
+she will not use any more purple than she has got already on the bell,
+but takes out the color all round the spot, and concentrates it in the
+middle.
+
+
+  NOTE 7, p. 138.--"_The law of repetition._"
+
+253. The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful picture of
+Vandyck's in the Manchester Exhibition, representing three children in
+court dresses of rich black and red. The law in question was amusingly
+illustrated, in the lower corner of that picture, by the introduction of
+two crows, in a similar color of court dress, having jet black feathers
+and bright red beaks.
+
+254. Since the first edition of this work was published, I have
+ascertained that there are two series of engravings from the Bible
+drawings mentioned in the list at p. 50. One of these is inferior to the
+other, and in many respects false to the drawing; the "Jericho," for
+instance, in the false series, has common bushes instead of palm trees
+in the middle distance. The original plates may be had at almost any
+respectable printseller's; and ordinary impressions, whether of these or
+any other plates mentioned in the list at p. 50, will be quite as useful
+as proofs: but, in buying Liber Studiorum, it is always well to get the
+best impressions that can be had, and if possible impressions of the
+original plates, published by Turner. In case these are not to be had,
+the copies which are in course of publication by Mr. Lupton (4 Keppel
+Street, Russell Square) are good and serviceable; but no others are of
+any use.--[Note of 1857.]
+
+I have placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's College) some
+photographs from the etchings made by Turner for the Liber; the original
+etchings being now unobtainable, except by fortunate accident. I have
+selected the subjects carefully from my own collection of the etchings;
+and though some of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the
+photographs, the student will find these proofs the best lessons in
+pen-drawing accessible to him.--[Note of 1859]
+
+
+II.
+
+THINGS TO BE STUDIED.
+
+255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is
+that of liking things that he should not. It is not so much his
+difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set himself to conquer: and
+although, under the guidance of a master, many works of art may be made
+instructive, which are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of
+them being duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies
+alone, will be in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way,
+so free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously
+mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which he knows
+to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will therefore set
+down, in clear order, the names of the masters whom you may safely
+admire, and a few of the books which you may safely possess. In these
+days of cheap illustration, the danger is always rather of your
+possessing too much than too little. It may admit of some question, how
+far the looking at bad art may set off and illustrate the characters of
+the good; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always on
+quite wholesome food, and that our enjoyment of it will never be made
+more acute by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste
+the ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course the works
+of the great masters can only be serviceable to the student after he has
+made considerable progress himself. It only wastes the time and dulls
+the feelings of young persons, to drag them through picture galleries;
+at least, unless they themselves wish to look at particular pictures.
+Generally, young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there
+is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of it; and
+they had better do that in the garden below. If, however, they have any
+real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the
+principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
+them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the
+least use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones),
+but what interests them; and therefore, though it is of great importance
+to put nothing but good art into their possession, yet, when they are
+passing through great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to
+look precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as art,
+it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in which art can
+interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it
+represents something they like in Nature. If a boy has had his heart
+filled by the life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck
+portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in
+which he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains, and
+dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a likeness to a
+Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which
+he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's mind is filled with
+dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because
+she thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for her
+to begin the study of religious art.
+
+256. When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and
+every picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own
+work, it is of great importance that he should never look, with even
+partial admiration, at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to
+trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In
+which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the
+epistolary address, as being the more convenient.
+
+
+  First, in Galleries of Pictures:
+
+1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
+Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
+authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
+proper authority.
+
+2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however, question of right
+and wrong,[75] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
+Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[76] You had better
+look at no other painters than these, for you run a chance, otherwise,
+of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the
+other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens; and of being,
+besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo, Salvator,
+Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may look, however,
+for examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation, being sure
+that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the Carracci, Bronzino,
+and the figure pieces of Salvator.
+
+Among those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,
+nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds,
+Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting
+especially fond of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you
+must be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to
+like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for
+color; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be getting
+too fond of rigid detail; and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough
+especially, you must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.
+
+257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you
+may be able to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops,
+the works of the following masters are the most desirable, after the
+Turners, Rembrandts, and Dürers, which I have asked you to get first:
+
+
+  1. Samuel Prout.[77]
+
+All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value,
+wholly unrivaled in power of composition, and in love and feeling of
+architectural subject. His somewhat mannered linear execution, though
+not to be imitated in your own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally
+copied, for discipline's sake, with great advantage: it will give you a
+peculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way;
+and there is no fear of your getting into any faultful mannerism as long
+as you carry out the different modes of more delicate study above
+recommended.
+
+If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it your chief
+study, you should draw much from photographs of it; and then from the
+architecture itself, with the same completion of detail and gradation,
+only keeping the shadows of due paleness,--in photographs they are
+always about four times as dark as they ought to be,--and treat
+buildings with as much care and love as artists do their rock
+foregrounds, drawing all the moss, and weeds, and stains upon them. But
+if, without caring to understand architecture, you merely want the
+picturesque character of it, and to be able to sketch it fast, you
+cannot do better than take Prout for your exclusive master; only do not
+think that you are copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at
+the end of them. Get first his "Rhine," and draw the subjects that have
+most hills, and least architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper,
+till you can lay on his broad flat tints, and get his gradations of
+light, which are very wonderful; then take up the architectural subjects
+in the "Rhine," and draw again and again the groups of figures, etc., in
+his "Microcosm," and "Lessons on Light and Shadow." After that, proceed
+to copy the grand subjects in the "Sketches in Flanders and Germany;" or
+"in Switzerland and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the
+Switzerland is very far inferior. Then work from Nature, not trying to
+Proutize Nature, by breaking smooth buildings into rough ones, but only
+drawing _what you see_, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't
+copy his colored works. They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk
+and pencil drawings; and you will become a mere imitator, and a very
+feeble imitator, if you use color at all in Prout's method. I have not
+space to explain why this is so, it would take a long piece of
+reasoning; trust me for the statement.
+
+
+  2. John Lewis.
+
+His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very valuable. Get
+them, if you can, and also some engravings (about eight or ten, I think,
+altogether) of wild beasts, executed by his own hand a long time ago;
+they are very precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is
+rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by himself;
+still it is well worth having.
+
+But let _no_ lithographic work come into the house, if you can help it,
+nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those sketches of Lewis's.
+
+
+  3. George Cruikshank.
+
+If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of "Grimm's German
+Stories," which were illustrated by him long ago, pounce upon them
+instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to
+Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was
+invented. You cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.
+
+All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when they touch on
+the worst vulgarities of modern life; and often much spoiled by a
+curiously mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to the
+mouth and eyes and leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set
+about two thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But his
+manner of work is always right; and his tragic power, though rarely
+developed, and warped by habits of caricature, is, in reality, as great
+as his grotesque power.
+
+There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your principal
+work lies among art of so totally different a character as most of that
+which I Have recommended to you; and you may, therefore, get great good
+by copying almost anything of his that may come in your way; except only
+his illustrations, lately published, to "Cinderella," and "Jack and the
+Bean-stalk," and "Tom Thumb," which are much overlabored, and confused
+in line. You should get them, but do not copy them.
+
+
+  4. Alfred Rethel.
+
+I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance of Death," with
+text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be had now of any London
+bookseller for the sum, I believe, of eighteen pence, and containing six
+plates full of instructive character; the other, of two plates only,
+"Death the Avenger," and "Death the Friend." These two are far superior
+to the "Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will be enough in
+themselves to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you dislike ghastly
+subjects, get "Death the Friend" only.
+
+
+  5. Bewick.
+
+The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly
+thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is worked just as Paul Veronese
+would have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too
+coarse in execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies,
+show, nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and there
+are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which
+have never since been equaled in illustrations of this simple kind; the
+bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which characterizes
+some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.
+
+
+  6. Blake.
+
+The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in
+certain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of
+obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a very useful example
+to you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake
+is greater than Rembrandt.
+
+
+  7. Richter.
+
+I have already told you what to guard against in looking at his works. I
+am a little doubtful whether I have done well in including them in this
+catalogue at all; but the imaginations in them are so lovely and
+numberless, that I must risk, for their sake, the chance of hurting you
+a little in judgment of style. If you want to make presents of
+story-books to children, his are the best you can now get; but his most
+beautiful work, as far as I know, is his series of Illustrations to the
+Lord's Prayer.
+
+
+  8. Rossetti.
+
+An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood-cuts from
+drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite masters. They are
+terribly spoiled in the cutting, and generally the best part, the
+expression of feature, _entirely_ lost;[78] still they are full of
+instruction, and cannot be studied too closely. But observe, respecting
+these wood-cuts, that if you have been in the habit of looking at much
+spurious work, in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or
+artificial, you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work,
+which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely art, such as
+Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances are that
+you will not care about it; but genuine works of feeling, such as "Maud"
+or "Aurora Leigh" in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in
+painting, are sure to offend you: and if you cease to work hard, and
+persist in looking at vicious and false art, they will continue to
+offend you. It will be well, therefore, to have one type of entirely
+false art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman's outlines to
+Dante contain, I think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and
+feebleness which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in
+thought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution. Base or
+degraded choice of subject, such as you will constantly find in Teniers
+and others of the Dutch painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against;
+you will simply turn away from it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble
+drawing, which makes mistakes in every direction at once, cannot teach
+you the particular sort of educated fallacy in question. But, in these
+designs of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling, and fair knowledge
+of anatomy, and firm setting down of lines, all applied in the
+foolishest and worst possible way; you cannot have a more finished
+example of learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with
+a steady hand.[79] Retzsch's outlines have more real material in them
+than Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy and power; in artistic
+principle they are nearly as bad, and in taste, worse. All outlines from
+statuary, as given in works on classical art, will be very hurtful to
+you if you in the least like them; and _nearly_ all finished line
+engravings. Some particular prints I could name which possess
+instructive qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them,
+and the best way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether.[80]
+If you happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them, and if
+you are fond of the large finished prints from Raphael, Correggio, etc.,
+it is wholly impossible that you can make any progress in knowledge of
+real art till you have sold them all,--or burnt them, which would be a
+greater benefit to the world. I hope that, some day, true and noble
+engravings will be made from the few pictures of the great schools,
+which the restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign
+galleries may leave us; but the existing engravings have nothing
+whatever in common with the good in the works they profess to represent,
+and, if you like them, you like in the originals of them hardly anything
+but their errors.
+
+258. Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by your
+taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who have the purest
+taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon
+which puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false
+taste in books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest
+importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake,
+in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of
+literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a spring
+and a lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice
+of your library to you: every several mind needs different books; but
+there are some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read
+Homer,[81] Plato, Æschylus, Herodotus, Dante,[82] Shakspeare, and
+Spenser, as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of
+shelves to right and left of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among
+modern books avoid generally magazine and review literature. Sometimes
+it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism;
+but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead
+you. If you want to understand any subject whatever, read the best book
+upon it you can hear of: not a review of the book. If you don't like the
+first book you try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to understand
+the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that
+class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous
+of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and
+awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers
+coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or
+love something with your whole heart. It is not always easy to
+distinguish the satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of
+the noble and pure ones; but in general you may notice that the
+cold-blooded, Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment;
+and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the more
+you can restrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry,
+history, and natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the
+healthier your mind will become. Of modern poetry, keep to Scott,
+Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings, Thomas Hood,
+Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore, whose "Angel in the House" is
+a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess
+of quiet modern domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
+is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has produced
+in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless;
+and Shelley, as shallow and verbose; Byron, until your taste is fully
+formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from the
+wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself;
+there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world already.
+
+259. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps.
+Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners," because his
+teaching, though to some of us vitally necessary, may to others be
+hurtful. If you understand and like him, read him; if he offends you,
+you are not yet ready for him, and perhaps may never be so; at all
+events, give him up, as you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you,
+till you are stronger. Of fiction, read "Sir Charles Grandison," Scott's
+novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young lady, Madame de
+Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making these, I mean, your constant
+companions. Of course you must, or will, read other books for amusement
+once or twice; but you will find that these have an element of
+perpetuity in them, existing in nothing else of their kind; while their
+peculiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of the greatest
+value in teaching you to feel the same characters in art. Read little at
+a time, trying to feel interest in little things, and reading not so
+much for the sake of the story as to get acquainted with the pleasant
+people into whose company these writers bring you. A common book will
+often give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which will
+give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of less importance to
+you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be clever than
+that they should be right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively
+instructive; but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the
+feelings they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the
+wittiest or the most suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear
+what is already known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature of
+the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a
+tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too
+frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible
+state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It may, indeed, become
+necessary for you, as you advance in life, to set your hand to things
+that need to be altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to
+what must be pitied in it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the
+safest temper is one of reverence, and the safest place one of
+obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your
+teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet virtue, and that
+literature and art are best for you which point out, in common life, and
+in familiar things, the objects for hopeful labor, and for humble love.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [75] I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in
+    saying that this second class of painters have questionable
+    qualities. The greatest men have often many faults, and sometimes
+    their faults are a part of their greatness; but such men are not, of
+    course, to be looked upon by the student with absolute implicitness
+    of faith.
+
+  [76] Including, under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the
+    Old Water-color, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of
+    still life, I believe, that ever existed.
+
+  [77] The order in which I place these masters does not in the least
+    imply superiority or inferiority. I wrote their names down as they
+    occurred to me; putting Rossetti's last because what I had to say of
+    him was connected with other subjects; and one or another will
+    appear to you great, or be found by you useful, according to the
+    kind of subjects you are studying.
+
+  [78] This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first
+    illustration to the "Palace of Art," which would have been the best
+    in the book had it been well engraved. The whole work should be
+    taken up again, and done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly
+    from Pre-Raphaelite designs, with which no other modern work can
+    bear the least comparison.
+
+  [79] The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in
+    the "Seven Lamps," and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from
+    Nature, and simple groups in marble, which were always good and
+    interesting. Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and
+    it is generally to be remembered that, in speaking of artists whose
+    works I cannot be supposed to have specially studied, the errors I
+    fall into will always be on the side of praise. For, of course,
+    praise is most likely to be given when the thing praised is above
+    one's knowledge; and, therefore, as our knowledge increases, such
+    things may be found less praiseworthy than we thought. But blame can
+    only be justly given when the thing blamed is below one's level of
+    sight; and, practically, I never do blame anything until I have got
+    well past it, and am certain that there is demonstrable falsehood in
+    it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly trust-worthy,
+    having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory word
+    that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with
+    respect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far
+    by sudden admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or
+    other deceptive accidents; and this the more, because I never care
+    to check an expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that,
+    even if mistaken, it will do more good than harm; but I weigh every
+    word of blame with scrupulous caution. I have sometimes erased a
+    strong passage of blame from second editions of my books; but this
+    was only when I found it offended the reader without convincing him,
+    never because I repented of it myself.
+
+  [80] Large line engravings, I mean, in which the lines, as such, are
+    conspicuous. Small vignettes in line are often beautiful in figures
+    no less than landscape; as, for instance, those from Stothard's
+    drawings in Rogers's Italy; and, therefore, I have just recommended
+    the vignettes to Tennyson to be done by line engraving.
+
+  [81] Chapman's, if not the original.
+
+  [82] Gary's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which
+    are the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and Æschylus can only
+    be read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like
+    these for "beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for
+    all ages; and an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to
+    enjoy much, even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CORRECTION MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
+
+Page 58: 'Thus, the outline a and the outline d.' 'd' replaced by 'b.'
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING***
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+<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Elements of Drawing, by John Ruskin</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Elements of Drawing</p>
+<p>       In Three Letters to Beginners</p>
+<p>Author: John Ruskin</p>
+<p>Release Date: October 24, 2009  [eBook #30325]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Marius Borror,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #dcdcdc; color: #696969; " summary="Transcriber's note">
+<tr>
+<td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top">
+Transcriber's note:
+</td>
+<td class="norm">
+One typographical error has been corrected. It
+appears in the text <span class="correction" title="explanation will pop up">like this</span>, and the
+explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked
+passage. <br /><br /></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td>
+<td class="norm">
+<a href="#error1">Error #1</a>: Page 58: 'Thus, the outline a and the outline d.' 'd' replaced by 'b.'<br /></td></tr>
+
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="pg" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<table class="allbctr" style="width: 60%; " summary="Front page">
+<tr>  <td class="pd" style="border-bottom: black 1px solid; " colspan="2"><h5>Library Edition</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-top: 3em; " colspan="2"><h3>THE COMPLETE WORKS</h3> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td colspan="2"><h6>OF</h6> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-bottom: 5em; " colspan="2"><h2>JOHN RUSKIN</h2> </td> </tr>
+
+
+<tr>  <td style="padding-bottom: 5em; " colspan="2"><h5>ELEMENTS OF DRAWING AND<br />
+PERSPECTIVE<br />
+THE TWO PATHS<br />
+UNTO THIS LAST<br />
+MUNERA PULVERIS<br />
+SESAME AND LILIES<br />
+ETHICS OF THE DUST</h5> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr>  <td style="border-top: black 1px solid; padding-top: 1.5em; " colspan="2"><h3>NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATION</h3> </td> </tr>
+<tr>  <td><h3 style="text-align: left; padding-left: 3em; ">NEW YORK</h3></td>
+      <td><h3 style="text-align: right; padding-right: 3em; ">CHICAGO</h3></td> </tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+
+
+
+<h3>THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING</h3>
+<h6>IN</h6>
+<h5>THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS.</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>CONTENTS.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="90%" summary="Contents">
+<tr> <td>&nbsp;</td>
+     <td class="rsp"><span class="sc">page</span> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Preface</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#pageix">ix</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">LETTER I. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">On First Practice</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page001">1</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">LETTER II. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Sketching from Nature</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page065">65</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">LETTER III. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">On Color and Composition</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page106">106</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2"><hr class="short" /> </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">APPENDIX I. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Illustrative Notes</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page183">183</a> </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="center" colspan="2">APPENDIX II. </td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><span class="sc">Things to be Studied</span> </td>
+     <td class="rsp"><a href="#page188">188</a> </td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<div style="padding-top: 3em; ">&nbsp;</div>
+<div style="font-size: 0.8em; ">
+<p>["The Elements of Drawing" was written during the winter of 1856.
+The First Edition was published in 1857; the Second followed in the same
+year, with some additions and slight alterations. The Third Edition consisted
+of sixth thousand, 1859; seventh thousand, 1860; and eighth thousand,
+1861.</p>
+
+<p>The work was partly reproduced in "Our Sketching Club," by the
+Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., 1874; with new editions in 1875, 1882,
+and 1886.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ruskin meant, during his tenure of the Slade Professorship at
+Oxford, to recast his teaching, and to write a systematic manual for the
+use of his Drawing School, under the title of "The Laws of Fésole." Of
+this only vol. i. was completed, 1879; second edition, 1882.</p>
+
+<p>As, therefore, "The Elements of Drawing" has never been completely
+superseded, and as many readers of Mr. Ruskin's works have expressed a
+desire to possess the book in its old form, it is now reprinted as it stood
+in 1859.]</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>ADVERTISEMENT</h3>
+
+<h5>TO</h5>
+
+<h3>THE SECOND EDITION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>As one or two questions, asked of me since the publication
+of this work, have indicated points requiring elucidation, I
+have added a few short notes in the first Appendix. It is
+not, I think, desirable otherwise to modify the form or add
+to the matter of a book as it passes through successive editions;
+I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some
+obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains,
+and will remain, in its original form, which I had carefully
+considered. Should the public find the book useful, and
+call for further editions of it, such additional notes as may
+be necessary will be always placed in the first Appendix,
+where they can be at once referred to, in any library, by the
+possessors of the earlier editions; and I will take care they
+shall not be numerous.</p>
+
+<p><i>August 3, 1857.</i></p>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="pageix"></a>ix</span></p>
+
+<h3>PREFACE.</h3>
+
+
+<p>i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual
+of drawing, I ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing
+should be learned; but those reasons appear to me so many
+and so weighty, that I cannot quickly state or enforce them.
+With the reader's permission, as this volume is too large already,
+I will waive all discussion respecting the importance
+of the subject, and touch only on those points which may
+appear questionable in the method of its treatment.</p>
+
+<p>ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use
+of children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not
+think it advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary
+practice of art. If it has talent for drawing, it will
+be continually scrawling on what paper it can get; and should
+be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due praise being
+given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its efforts.
+It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors almost
+as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely
+daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-box may be
+taken away till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting
+red coats on soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should
+have colors at command; and, without restraining its choice
+of subject in that imaginative and historical art, of a military
+tendency, which children delight in, (generally quite
+as valuable, by the way, as any historical art delighted in by
+their elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to try to
+draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can
+see and likes,&mdash;birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.</p>
+
+<p>iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should
+only be granted as a reward, after it has shown care and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagex"></a>x</span>
+progress in its drawings with pencil. A limited number of
+good and amusing prints should always be within a boy's
+reach: in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly possess
+a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in it,
+and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this
+kind; but should be firmly restricted to a <i>few</i> prints and to
+a few books. If a child has many toys, it will get tired of
+them and break them; if a boy has many prints he will merely
+dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the limitation of the
+number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is perfected,
+and his attention concentrated. The parents need
+give themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing
+is concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat
+habits with his colors and paper, showing him the best way
+of holding pencil and rule, and, so far as they take notice of
+his work, pointing out where a line is too short or too long,
+or too crooked, when compared with the copy; <i>accuracy</i> being
+the first and last thing they look for. If the child shows
+talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should
+neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it
+frankly, or show pleasure in what it has done, just as they
+show pleasure in seeing it well, or cheerful; but they must
+not praise it for being clever, any more than they would
+praise it for being stout. They should praise it only for
+what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;
+otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always
+badly. The best books to put into its hands are those
+illustrated by George Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.)
+At about the age of twelve or fourteen, it is quite
+time enough to set youth or girl to serious work; and then
+this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
+hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age
+wishing to know something of the first principles of art.</p>
+
+<p>iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended
+is not brought forward as absolutely the best, but only as the
+best which I can at present devise for an isolated student.
+It is very likely that farther experience in teaching may
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexi"></a>xi</span>
+enable me to modify it with advantage in several important
+respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are sound,
+and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
+without a master's superintendence. The method differs,
+however, so materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters,
+that a word or two of explanation may be needed
+to justify what might otherwise be thought willful
+eccentricity.</p>
+
+<p>v. The manuals at present published on the subject of
+drawing are all directed, as far as I know, to one or other
+of two objects. Either they propose to give the student a
+power of dexterous sketching with pencil or water-color, so
+as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter work of
+our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such accurate
+command of mathematical forms as may afterwards
+enable him to design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures.
+When drawing is taught as an accomplishment, the first is
+the aim usually proposed; while the second is the object kept
+chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in the branch
+Government Schools of Design.</p>
+
+<p>vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those
+schools, to the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet
+possible; only, it seems to me, that we are all too much in
+the habit of confusing art as <i>applied</i> to manufacture, with
+manufacture itself. For instance, the skill by which an inventive
+workman designs and molds a beautiful cup, is skill
+of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
+afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture:
+and the faculties which enable one workman to design
+and elaborate his original piece, are not to be developed by
+the same system of instruction as those which enable another
+to produce a maximum number of approximate copies of it
+in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
+reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with
+the education of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture
+a Raphael; then let Raphael direct your manufacture.
+He will design you a plate, or cup, or a house, or a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexii"></a>xii</span>
+palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most
+convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to
+reach the platter and the cup interfere with your education
+of the Raphael. Obtain first the best work you can, and the
+ablest hands, irrespective of any consideration of economy or
+facility of production. Then leave your trained artist to determine
+how far art can be popularized, or manufacture
+ennobled.</p>
+
+<p>vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual
+temper and character) the excellence of an artist,
+as such, depends wholly on refinement of perception, and that
+it is this, mainly, which a master or a school can teach; so
+that while powers of invention distinguish man from man,
+powers of perception distinguish school from school. All
+great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of
+sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be
+without exception respecting art, is that all great art is
+delicate.</p>
+
+<p>viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following
+system is to obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost
+of the pupil's power, a delicate method of work, such as
+may insure his seeing truly. For I am nearly convinced,
+that when once we see keenly enough, there is very little difficulty
+in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that this
+difficulty be still great, 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. It is
+surely also a more important thing, for young people and unprofessional
+students, to know how to appreciate the art of
+others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the
+modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with
+this power of judgment. No person trained to the superficial
+execution of modern water-color painting, can understand
+the work of Titian or Leonardo; they must forever remain
+blind to the refinement of such men's penciling, and
+the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a degree
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiii"></a>xiii</span>
+of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the
+mode recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for
+it that he cannot go once through the advised exercises without
+beginning to understand what masterly work means; and,
+by the time he has gained some proficiency in them, he will
+have a pleasure in looking at the painting of the great schools,
+and a new perception of the exquisiteness of natural scenery,
+such as would repay him for much more labor than I have
+asked him to undergo.</p>
+
+<p>ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is
+it possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil
+works unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight
+road which admits unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be
+dull as well as smooth; and the hedges need to be close and
+trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the erring
+traveler. The system followed in this work will, therefore,
+at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar
+with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College;
+for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate
+him from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead
+into, is <i>at once</i> set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds
+entertainment in his efforts and interest in his difficulties.
+Of course the simplest object which it is possible to set before
+the eye is a sphere; and, practically, I find a child's toy,
+a white leather ball, better than anything else; as the gradations
+on balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to
+try the strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are
+a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been
+objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the
+most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;<a name="FnAnchor_A" href="#Footnote_A"><span class="sp">[A]</span></a> but I do not
+want it to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to
+teach the pupil, is the way in which shade gives the appearance
+of projection. This he learns most satisfactorily from
+a sphere; because any solid form, terminated by straight lines
+or flat surfaces, owes some of its appearance of projection to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexiv"></a>xiv</span>
+its perspective; but in the sphere, what, without shade, was
+a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade, the image
+of a solid ball; and this fact is just as striking to the learner,
+whether his circular outline be true or false. He is, therefore,
+never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes
+the ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply
+pointed out to him, and he does better next time, and better
+still the next. But his mind is always fixed on the gradation
+of shade, and the outline left to take, in due time, care
+of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of immediate intelligibility,&mdash;strictly
+speaking, it is merely the edge of the
+shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an
+outline, in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him,
+from the first, that Nature relieves one mass, or one tint,
+against another; but outlines none. The outline exercise,
+the second suggested in this letter, is recommended, not to
+enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only means by
+which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and discipline
+his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form
+and extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline,
+and the handling can be gradually corrected in details
+of the work. But the solitary student can only find out his
+own mistakes by help of the traced limit, and can only test
+the firmness of his hand by an exercise in which nothing but
+firmness is required; and during which all other considerations
+(as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely excluded.</p>
+
+<p>x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College,
+and that recommended here, agree, however, in one principle,
+which I consider the most important and special of all that
+are involved in my teaching: namely, the attaching its full
+importance, from the first, to local color. I believe that the
+endeavor to separate, in the course of instruction, the observation
+of light and shade from that of local color, has always
+been, and must always be, destructive of the student's
+power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much
+as it retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's
+time by any discussion of the principle here, but I wish him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexv"></a>xv</span>
+to note it as the only distinctive one in my system, so far as
+it <i>is</i> a system. For the recommendation to the pupil to copy
+faithfully, and without alteration, whatever natural object
+he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other reasons, just
+because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and teaches
+people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle
+or stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my
+pupils to hold their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes,
+never off."</p>
+
+<p>xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always
+been with regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything
+like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted
+student, such formalities are indispensable, and I am
+not without hope that the sense of secure advancement, and
+the pleasure of independent effort, may render the following
+out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible
+to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should
+be otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome,
+I can only desire him to consider whether the acquirement
+of so great a power as that of pictorial expression of thought
+be not worth some toil; or whether it is likely, in the natural
+order of matters in this working world, that so great a gift
+should be attainable by those who will give no price for it.</p>
+
+<p>xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will
+find I have not imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws
+of perspective. It would be worth while to learn them, if
+he could do so easily; but without a master's help, and in the
+way perspective is at present explained in treatises, the difficulty
+is greater than the gain. For perspective is not of the
+slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw
+the rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot
+draw the sweep of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of
+wood by it, but you cannot foreshorten an arm. Its laws are
+too gross and few to be applied to any subtle form; therefore,
+as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by the eye, certainly
+you may draw the simple ones. No great painters
+ever trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvi"></a>xvi</span>
+them know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and,
+naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work
+rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would
+take about a month's labor to draw imperfectly, by laws of
+perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in
+five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round
+a head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among
+the folds of drapery. It is true that when perspective was
+first discovered, everybody amused themselves with it; and
+all the great painters put fine saloons and arcades behind
+their Madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in perspective:
+but even this was generally done by them only to
+catch the public eye, and they disdained the perspective so
+much, that though they took the greatest pains with the circlet
+of a crown, or the rim of a crystal cup, in the heart of their
+picture, they would twist their capitals of columns and towers
+of churches about in the background in the most wanton
+way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only they
+left just perspective enough to please the public.</p>
+
+<p>xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except
+David Roberts, knows so much perspective as would
+enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale at a given angle
+and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective
+to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed,
+and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in
+true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much
+perspective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective,
+and twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever
+shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would recommend
+the student at least to treat perspective with common
+civility, but to pay no court to it. The best way he can
+learn it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in a
+frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance
+at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen.
+Let the eye be placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle
+of the pane of glass, but as high or as low as the student likes;
+then with a brush at the end of a stick, and a little body-color
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexvii"></a>xvii</span>
+that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the landscape may
+be traced on the glass, as you see them through it. When
+so traced they are all in true perspective. If the glass be
+sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true perspective,
+only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane, while
+common perspective always supposes the plane of the picture
+to be vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom
+yourself to inclose your subject, before sketching it, with a
+light frame of wood held upright before you; it will show
+you what you may legitimately take into your picture, and
+what choice there is between a narrow foreground near you,
+and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building
+you can properly take in, etc.<a name="FnAnchor_B" href="#Footnote_B"><span class="sp">[B]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following
+pages, because I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can
+be drawn to any good purpose by an amateur. As accessaries
+in landscape, they are just to be drawn on the same principles
+as anything else.</p>
+
+<p>xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to
+the student should be found obscure by him, or if at any
+stage of the recommended practice he find himself in difficulties
+which I have not enough provided against, he may
+apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under drawing-master
+at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond
+Street), and who will give any required assistance, on the
+lowest terms that can remunerate him for the occupation of
+his time. I have not leisure myself in general to answer
+letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do so; but
+Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to
+me when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="pagexviii"></a>xviii</span>
+that enough guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence
+of any serious embarrassment; and I believe that
+the student who obeys its directions will find, on the whole,
+that the best answerer of questions is perseverance; and the
+best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.</p>
+
+<p>[1857.]</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_A" href="#FnAnchor_A">[A]</a> Or, more accurately, appears to be so, because any one can see an
+error in a circle.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_B" href="#FnAnchor_B">[B]</a> If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of
+perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 49
+Acacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and
+to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and
+rightly. [Mr. Runciman has died since this was written: Mr. Ward's
+present address is Bedford Chambers, 28 Southampton Street, Strand,
+London, W.C.]</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page001"></a>1</span></p>
+
+<h3>THE</h3>
+
+<h2>ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<h3>LETTER I.</h3>
+
+<h5>ON FIRST PRACTICE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>1. <span class="sc">My dear Reader</span>,&mdash;Whether this book is to be of use
+to you or not, depends wholly on your reason for wishing to
+learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment,
+to be able to converse in a fluent manner about
+drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I
+cannot help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that you
+may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such
+things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your
+own memory of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to
+other people; if you wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the
+beauty of the natural world, and to preserve something like
+a true image of beautiful things that pass away, or which
+you must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to understand the
+minds of great painters, and to be able to appreciate their
+work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not
+merely taking up the thoughts of other people about it; then
+I <i>can</i> help you, or, which is better, show you how to help
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>2. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers,
+which indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without
+work. It is much easier to learn to draw well, than it is
+to learn to play well on any musical instrument; but you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page002"></a>2</span>
+know that it takes three or four years of practice, giving three
+or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command over
+the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly
+command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be
+done with it, can be acquired without painstaking, or in a
+<i>very</i> short time. The kind of drawing which is taught, or
+supposed to be taught, in our schools, in a term or two, perhaps
+at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not drawing
+at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not
+always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;
+profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a
+matter of vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If
+any young person, after being taught what is, in polite circles,
+called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece
+of real work&mdash;suppose a lithograph on the titlepage of a new
+opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper
+of the day,&mdash;they will find themselves entirely beaten. And
+yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk,
+much more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an
+accomplished young lady is supposed to have command; and
+that wood-cut was drawn in urgent haste, and half spoiled in
+the cutting afterwards; and both were done by people whom
+nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power; both
+were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than
+any simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.</p>
+
+<p>3. Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing,
+any more than a new language, without some hard and disagreeable
+labor. But do not, on the other hand, if you are
+ready and willing to pay this price, fear that you may be unable
+to get on for want of special talent. It is indeed true
+that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw instinctively,
+and get on almost without teaching; though never
+without toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for
+drawing there are many degrees: it will take one person a
+much longer time than another to attain the same results, and
+the results thus painfully attained are never quite so satisfactory
+as those got with greater ease when the faculties are
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page003"></a>3</span>
+naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in the
+experiments I have made, met with a person who could not
+learn to draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory
+and available power in every one to learn drawing if he
+wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning
+French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree,
+if their lot in life requires them to possess such knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>4. Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain
+amount of pains, and to bear a little irksomeness and a few
+disappointments bravely, I can promise you that an hour's
+practice a day for six months, or an hour's practice every
+other day for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way
+you find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours' practice,
+will give you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever
+you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point,
+of other people's work: of which hours if you have one to
+spare at present, we may as well begin at once.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE I.</p>
+
+<p>5. Everything that you can see in the world around you,
+presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches
+of different colors variously shaded.<a name="FnAnchor_1" href="#Footnote_1"><span class="sp">[1]</span></a> Some of these patches
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page004"></a>4</span>
+of color have an appearance of lines or texture within them,
+as a piece of cloth or silk has of threads, or an animal's skin
+shows texture of hairs: but whether this be the case or not,
+the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch of some
+definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to
+produce extents of smooth color, without texture.</p>
+
+<p>6. This can only be done properly with a brush; but a
+brush, being soft at the point, causes so much uncertainty in
+the touch of an unpracticed hand, that it is hardly possible
+to learn to draw first with it, and it is better to take, in early
+practice, some instrument with a hard and fine point, both
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page005"></a>5</span>
+that we may give some support to the hand, and that by working
+over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention
+may be properly directed to all the most minute parts of it.
+Even the best artists need occasionally to study subjects with
+a pointed instrument, in order thus to discipline their attention:
+and a beginner must be content to do so for a considerable
+period.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_1"><img src="images/img005.jpg" width="400" height="145" alt="Fig. 1." title="Fig. 1." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 1.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>7. Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about
+differences of color, we must be able to lay on <i>one</i> color properly,
+in whatever gradations of depth and whatever shapes we
+want. We will try, therefore, first to lay on tints or patches
+of gray, of whatever depth we want, with a pointed instrument.
+Take any finely pointed steel pen (one of Gillott's
+lithographic crowquills is best), and a piece of quite smooth,
+but not shining, note-paper, cream laid, and get some ink that
+has stood already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite
+black, and as thick as it can be without clogging the pen.
+Take a rule, and draw four straight lines, so as to inclose a
+square, or nearly a square, about as large as <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_1">Fig. 1.</a> I say
+nearly a square, because it does not in the least matter
+whether it is quite square or not, the object being merely to
+get a space inclosed by straight lines.</p>
+
+<p>8. Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines,
+so completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch
+of gray silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as
+at <i>b</i>. Cover it quickly, first with straightish lines, in any
+direction you like, not troubling yourself to draw them much
+closer or neater than those in the square <i>a</i>. Let them quite
+dry before retouching them. (If you draw three or four
+squares side by side, you may always be going on with one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page006"></a>6</span>
+while the others are drying.) Then cover these lines with
+others in a different direction, and let those dry; then in another
+direction still, and let those dry. Always wait long
+enough to run no risk of blotting, and then draw the lines as
+quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on as swiftly as
+the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to reach
+this great speed at first, you will go over the edge of the
+square, which is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to
+do so now and then than to draw the lines very slowly; for
+if you do, the pen leaves a little dot of ink at the end of each
+line, and these dots spoil your work. So draw each line
+quickly, stopping always as nearly as you can at the edge of
+the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge are
+afterwards to be removed with the penknife, but not till you
+have done the whole work, otherwise you roughen the paper,
+and the next line that goes over the edge makes a blot.</p>
+
+<p>9. When you have gone over the whole three or four times,
+you will find some parts of the square look darker than other
+parts. Now try to make the lighter parts as dark as the rest,
+so that the whole may be of equal depth or darkness. You
+will find, on examining the work, that where it looks darkest
+the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines than
+elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little
+scratches and dots, <i>between</i> the lines in the paler parts; and
+where there are any very conspicuous dark lines, scratch
+them out lightly with the penknife, for the eye must not be
+attracted by any line in particular. The more carefully and
+delicately you fill in the little gaps and holes the better; you
+will get on faster by doing two or three squares perfectly
+than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and begins
+to look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as
+hardly to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it
+is too dark, use the edge of your penknife very lightly, and
+for some time, to wear it softly into an even tone. You will
+find that the greatest difficulty consists in getting evenness:
+one bit will always look darker than another bit of your
+square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look over the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page007"></a>7</span>
+whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a
+mess, give it up and begin another square, but do not rest
+satisfied till you have done your best with every square. The
+tint at last ought at least to be as close and even as that in <i>b</i>,
+<a href="#fig_1">Fig. 1.</a> You will find, however, that it is very difficult to
+get a pale tint; because, naturally, the ink lines necessary to
+produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper more than you
+want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by leaving
+the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively
+fine, lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in;
+and, at last, passing the penknife over the whole. By keeping
+several squares in progress at one time, and reserving
+your pen for the light one just when the ink is nearly exhausted,
+you may get on better. The paper ought, at last, to
+look lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines distinctly
+visible.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE II.</p>
+
+<p>10. As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be
+well to vary it by proceeding with another at the same time.
+The power of shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of
+hand and keenness of sight; but there are other qualities required
+in drawing, dependent not merely on lightness, but
+steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect in its power,
+must be made accurate as well as keen, and not only see
+shrewdly, but measure justly.</p>
+
+<p>11. Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on
+botany containing <i>outline</i> plates of leaves and flowers, it does
+not matter whether bad or good: Baxter's British Flowering
+Plants is quite good enough. Copy any of the simplest outlines,
+first with a soft pencil, following it, by the eye, as
+nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,
+rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is
+right: when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper
+on the book; on this paper trace the outline you have been
+copying, and apply it to your own; and having thus ascertained
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page008"></a>8</span>
+the faults, correct them all patiently, till you have got
+it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with a very soft pencil,
+and do not rub out so hard<a name="FnAnchor_2" href="#Footnote_2"><span class="sp">[2]</span></a> as to spoil the surface of
+your paper; never mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not
+roughen it; and let the false outlines alone where they do not
+really interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom
+yourself to hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty
+piece of paper. When you have got it as right as you can,
+take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest your hand on
+a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the pen
+long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your
+pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more
+heavily on one part of the line than on another. In most
+outline drawings of the present day, parts of the curves are
+thickened to give an effect of shade; all such outlines are bad,
+but they will serve well enough for your exercises, provided
+you do not imitate this character: it is better, however, if you
+can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does not in the
+least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but
+it matters greatly that it should be <i>equal</i>, not heavier in one
+place than in another. The power to be obtained is that of
+drawing an even line slowly and in any direction; all dashing
+lines, or approximations to penmanship, are bad. The
+pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the ground, and you
+should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it in any
+other direction, like a well-managed horse.</p>
+
+<p>12. As soon as you can copy every curve <i>slowly</i> and accurately,
+you have made satisfactory progress; but you will
+find the difficulty is in the slowness. It is easy to draw what
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page009"></a>9</span>
+appears to be a good line with a sweep of the hand, or with
+what is called freedom;<a name="FnAnchor_3" href="#Footnote_3"><span class="sp">[3]</span></a> the real difficulty and masterliness
+is in never letting the hand <i>be</i> free, but keeping it under
+entire control at every part of the line.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE III.</p>
+
+<p>13. Meantime, you are always to be going on with your
+shaded squares, and chiefly with these, the outline exercises
+being taken up only for rest.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_2"><img src="images/img009.jpg" width="500" height="58" alt="Fig. 2." title="Fig. 2." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 2.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>As soon as you find you have some command of the pen
+as a shading instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as
+you choose, try to produce gradated spaces like <a href="#fig_2">Fig. 2</a>, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page010"></a>10</span>
+dark tint passing gradually into the lighter ones. Nearly
+all expression of form, in drawing, depends on your power of
+gradating delicately; and the gradation is always most skillful
+which passes from one tint into another very little paler.
+Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work,
+as in <a href="#fig_2">Fig. 2</a>, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white
+to black, passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so
+that every part of the band may have visible change in it.
+The perception of gradation is very deficient in all beginners
+(not to say, in many artists), and you will probably, for some
+time, think your gradation skillful enough, when it is quite
+patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece of gray shaded
+ribbon, and comparing it with your drawing, you may arrive,
+in early stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction
+with it. Widen your band little by little as you get more
+skillful, so as to give the gradation more lateral space, and
+accustom yourself at the same time to look for gradated
+spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest and the most beautiful;
+watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and try to
+consider each pane of glass in the window you look through
+as a piece of paper colored blue, or gray, or purple, as it
+happens to be, and observe how quietly and continuously the
+gradation extends over the space in the window, of one or
+two feet square. Observe the shades on the outside and inside
+of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look
+round and hollow;<a name="FnAnchor_4" href="#Footnote_4"><span class="sp">[4]</span></a> and then on folds of white drapery; and
+thus gradually you will be led to observe the more subtle transitions
+of the light as it increases or declines on flat surfaces.
+At last, when your eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation
+on everything in Nature.</p>
+
+<p>14. But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw
+from any objects in which the gradations are varied and complicated;
+nor will it be a bad omen for your future progress,
+and for the use that art is to be made of by you, if the first
+thing at which you aim should be a little bit of sky. So take
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page011"></a>11</span>
+any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
+between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or
+through the corner of a pane in the window you like best to
+sit at, and try to gradate a little space of white paper as
+evenly as that is gradated&mdash;as <i>tenderly</i> you cannot gradate
+it without color, no, nor with color either; but you may do
+it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your spots and
+lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the sense
+you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
+for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen
+and ink; for all great painters, however delicate their perception
+of color, are fond of the peculiar effect of light which
+may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch, and in a wood-cut, by the
+gleaming of the white paper between the black lines; and if
+you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will never
+gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common
+wood-cuts, in the cheap publications of the day, you may see
+how gradation is given to the sky by leaving the lines farther
+and farther apart; but you must make your lines as fine as
+you can, as well as far apart, towards the light; and do not
+try to make them long or straight, but let them cross irregularly
+in any directions easy to your hand, depending on nothing
+but their gradation for your effect. On this point of
+direction of lines, however, I shall have to tell you more,
+presently; in the meantime, do not trouble yourself about it.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE IV.</p>
+
+<p>15. As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the
+pen, take an H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce
+shade, from the darkest possible to the palest, in exactly the
+same manner as the pen, lightening, however, now with india-rubber
+instead of the penknife. You will find that all
+<i>pale</i> tints of shade are thus easily producible with great precision
+and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark
+power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the
+shade is apt to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page012"></a>12</span>
+or sandy. Persevere, however, in trying to bring it to evenness
+with the fine point, removing any single speck or line
+that may be too black, with the <i>point</i> of the knife: you must
+not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink. If
+you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over
+with india-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively
+fine touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts
+that are too pale to perfect evenness with the darker spots.</p>
+
+<p>You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in
+doing this; work with it as if you were drawing the down on
+a butterfly's wing.</p>
+
+<p>16. At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may
+be assured that some clever friend will come in, and hold up
+his hands in mocking amazement, and ask you who could set
+you to that "niggling;" and if you persevere in it, you will
+have to sustain considerable persecution from your artistical
+acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good drawing
+depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You
+do not hear them tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little
+hand with a crash among the keys, in imitation of the great
+masters: yet they might, as reasonably as they may tell you
+to be bold in the present state of your knowledge. Bold, in
+the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the sense of
+being careless, confident, or exhibitory,&mdash;no,&mdash;no, and a thousand
+times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would
+be bad advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be
+done quickly, but good and beautiful work is generally done
+slowly; you will find no boldness in the way a flower or a
+bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not bold at her work,
+do you think you ought to be at yours? So never mind what
+people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently;
+and if you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell
+you, that though there are all kinds and ways of art,&mdash;large
+work for large places, small work for narrow places, slow
+work for people who can wait, and quick work for people who
+cannot,&mdash;there is one quality, and, I think, only one, in
+which all great and good art agrees;&mdash;it is all delicate art.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page013"></a>13</span>
+Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this
+at present, because you do not know yet how much tender
+thought, and subtle care, the great painters put into touches
+that at first look coarse; but, believe me, it is true, and you
+will find it is so in due time.</p>
+
+<p>17. You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays
+at pencil drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations
+are got in an instant by a chance touch of the india-rubber,
+than by an hour's labor with the point; and you may wonder
+why I tell you to produce tints so painfully, which might, it
+appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two reasons:
+the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able
+to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and
+direction you wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the india-rubber
+does it: and, secondly, that all natural shadows are
+more or less mingled with gleams of light. In the darkness
+of ground there is the light of the little pebbles or dust; in
+the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves; in the darkness
+of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:
+in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot
+be represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing,
+or by an instrument known to artists as the "stump."
+When you can manage the point properly, you will indeed
+be able to do much also with this instrument, or with your
+fingers; but then you will have to retouch the flat tints afterwards,
+so as to put life and light into them, and that can
+only be done with the point. Labor on, therefore, courageously,
+with that only.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page014"></a>14</span></p>
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE V.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_3"><img src="images/img014.jpg" width="400" height="228" alt="Fig. 3." title="Fig. 3." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 3.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>18. When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly
+with the pencil point, get a good large alphabet, and try to
+<i>tint</i> the letters into shape with the pencil point. Do not outline
+them first, but measure their height and extreme breadth
+with the compasses, as <i>a b</i>, <i>a c</i>, <a href="#fig_3">Fig. 3</a>, and then scratch in
+their shapes gradually; the letter A, inclosed within the
+lines, being in what Turner would have called a "state of
+forwardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the shape
+of the letter, draw pen-and-ink lines firmly round the tint, as
+at <i>d</i>, and remove any touches outside the limit, first with the
+india-rubber, and then with the penknife, so that all may
+look clear and right. If you rub out any of the pencil inside
+the outline of the letter, retouch it, closing it up to the inked
+line. The straight lines of the outline are all to be ruled,<a name="FnAnchor_5" href="#Footnote_5"><span class="sp">[5]</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page015"></a>15</span>
+but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand;
+and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting
+the curved letters, such as Bs, Cs, etc., to stand quite straight,
+and come into accurate form.</p>
+
+<p>19. All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not
+to be persisted in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect
+power in any of them. An entire master of the pencil
+or brush ought, indeed, to be able to draw any form at once,
+as Giotto his circle; but such skill as this is only to be expected
+of the consummate master, having pencil in hand all
+his life, and all day long,&mdash;hence the force of Giotto's proof
+of his skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully,
+without attaining even an approximation to such a power; the
+main point being, not that every line should be precisely what
+we intend or wish, but that the line which we intended or
+wished to draw should be right. If we always see rightly
+and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the hand may stagger
+a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it does
+not matter how firm the hand is. Do not therefore torment
+yourself because you cannot do as well as you would like;
+but work patiently, sure that every square and letter will give
+you a certain increase of power; and as soon as you can draw
+your letters pretty well, here is a more amusing exercise
+for you.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE VI.</p>
+
+<p>20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly
+bare of leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or
+against a pale wall, or other light ground: it must not be
+against strong light, or you will find the looking at it hurt
+your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or you will be puzzled
+by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in shade;
+and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or
+rainy day is the best for this practice.</p>
+
+<p>21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark
+against the sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page016"></a>16</span>
+be laid down in a map with absolute accuracy; and, without
+the least thought about the roundness of the stems, map them
+all out in flat shade, scrawling them in with pencil, just as
+you did the limbs of your letters; then correct and alter them,
+rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your
+paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every
+bough is exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring
+it, right in curvature and in thickness. Look at the white
+interstices between them with as much scrupulousness as if
+they were little estates which you had to survey, and draw
+maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy penalties
+if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them,
+or gave the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually
+to fancy the whole tree nothing but a flat ramification
+on a white ground. Do not take any trouble about the little
+twigs, which look like a confused network or mist; leave them
+all out,<a name="FnAnchor_6" href="#Footnote_6"><span class="sp">[6]</span></a> drawing only the main branches as far as you can see
+them distinctly, your object at present being not to draw a
+tree, but to learn how to do so. When you have got the thing
+as nearly right as you can,&mdash;and it is better to make one good
+study, than twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate,&mdash;take your
+pen, and put a fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to
+your letter, taking care, as far as possible, to put the outline
+within the edge of the shade, so as not to make the boughs
+thicker: the main use of the outline is to affirm the whole
+more clearly; to do away with little accidental roughnesses
+and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,
+or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement
+in this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline.
+It may perfectly well happen that in Nature it should
+be less distinct than your outline will make it; but it is better
+in this kind of sketch to mark the facts clearly. The temptation
+is always to be slovenly and careless, and the outline is
+like a bridle, and forces our indolence into attention and precision.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page017"></a>17</span>
+The outline should be about the thickness of that in
+<a href="#fig_4">Fig. 4</a>, which represents the ramification of a small stone
+pine, only I have not endeavored to represent the pencil shading
+within the outline, as I could not easily express it in a
+wood-cut; and you have nothing to do at present with the
+indication of foliage above, of which in another place. You
+may also draw your trees as much larger than this figure as
+you like; only, however large they may be, keep the outline
+as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer
+sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in
+this figure, otherwise you do not get good enough practice out
+of them.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_4"><img src="images/img017.jpg" width="400" height="479" alt="Fig. 4." title="Fig. 4." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 4.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every
+one will give you some new notion about trees. But when you
+are tired of tree boughs, take any forms whatever which are
+drawn in flat color, one upon another; as patterns on any
+kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance), executed in
+two colors only; and practice drawing them of the right shape
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page018"></a>18</span>
+and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the
+depth required.</p>
+
+<p>In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of
+representing depth of color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern
+of ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a
+darker tint of gray than a pattern of yellow.</p>
+
+<p>23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the
+mechanical use of the brush; and necessary for you to do so
+in order to provide yourself with the gradated scale of color
+which you will want. If you can, by any means, get acquainted
+with any ordinary skillful water-color painter, and
+prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a brush,
+by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long
+while yet, to begin to color, but because the brush is often
+more convenient than the pencil for laying on masses or tints
+of shade, and the sooner you know how to manage it as an
+instrument the better. If, however, you have no opportunity
+of seeing how water-color is laid on by a workman of any
+kind, the following directions will help you:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE VII.</p>
+
+<p>24. Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end
+of it in water so as to take up a drop, and rub it in a white
+saucer till you cannot rub much more, and the color gets dark,
+thick, and oily-looking. Put two teaspoonfuls of water to the
+color you have rubbed down, and mix it well up with a
+camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.</p>
+
+<p>25. Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol
+board or pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule,
+into squares as large as those of the very largest chess-board:
+they need not be perfect squares, only as nearly so as you can
+quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard on something sloping as
+much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your brush into
+the color you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid
+as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay
+a pond or runlet of color along the top edge. Lead this pond
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page019"></a>19</span>
+of color gradually downwards, not faster at one place than
+another, but as if you were adding a row of bricks to a building,
+all along (only building down instead of up), dipping
+the brush frequently so as to keep the color as full in that,
+and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only
+that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if
+it should, never mind; go on quietly with your square till
+you have covered it all in. When you get to the bottom,
+the color will lodge there in a great wave. Have ready a
+piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and with the
+dry brush take up the superfluous color as you would with a
+sponge, till it all looks even.</p>
+
+<p>26. In leading the color down, you will find your brush
+continually go over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps
+within it. Do not endeavor to retouch these, nor take much
+care about them; the great thing is to get the color to lie
+smoothly where it reaches, not in alternate blots and pale
+patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the square as fast as
+possible, with such attention to your limit as you are able to
+give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally
+to strike the color up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but
+the first thing is to get it even,&mdash;the power of rightly
+striking the edge comes only by time and practice: even the
+greatest artists rarely can do this quite perfectly.</p>
+
+<p>27. When you have done one square, proceed to do another
+which does not communicate with it. When you have thus
+done all the alternate squares, as on a chess-board, turn the
+pasteboard upside down, begin again with the first, and put
+another coat over it, and so on over all the others. The use of
+turning the paper upside down is to neutralize the increase
+of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would
+otherwise take place from the ponding of the color.</p>
+
+<p>28. Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag,
+instead of your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so,
+once acquired, will save you from much partial poisoning.
+Take care, however, always to draw the brush from root to
+point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe it as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page020"></a>20</span>
+you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing
+harm, provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good
+brush at first, and cherish it; it will serve you longer and
+better than many bad ones.</p>
+
+<p>29. When you have done the squares all over again, do
+them a third time, always trying to keep your edges as neat
+as possible. When your color is exhausted, mix more in the
+same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much as you can
+grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate
+squares three times over, as the paper will be getting very
+damp, and dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and
+bring them up to the same tint in the same way. The amount
+of jagged dark line which then will mark the limits of the
+squares will be the exact measure of your unskillfulness.</p>
+
+<p>30. As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses);
+and then draw straight lines irregularly across circles,
+and fill up the spaces so produced between the straight
+line and the circumference; and then draw any simple shapes
+of leaves, according to the exercise No. II., and fill up those,
+until you can lay on color quite evenly in any shape you want.</p>
+
+<p>31. You will find in the course of this practice, as you
+cannot always put exactly the same quantity of water to the
+color, that the darker the color is, the more difficult it becomes
+to lay it on evenly. Therefore, when you have gained
+some definite degree of power, try to fill in the forms required
+with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of laying
+several coats one over another; always taking care that the
+tint, however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid
+on, so much of it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black
+line at the edge as it dries. A little experience will teach you
+how apt the color is to do this, and how to prevent it; not
+that it needs always to be prevented, for a great master in
+water-colors will sometimes draw a firm outline, when he
+<i>wants</i> one, simply by letting the color dry in this way at the
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>32. When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms
+with the darker color, no rapidity will prevent the tint from
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page021"></a>21</span>
+drying irregularly as it is led on from part to part. You
+will then find the following method useful. Lay in the color
+very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that you can only just
+see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the outlines,
+and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet everywhere.
+Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker color,
+and lay some of it <i>into</i> the middle of the liquid color. It will
+spread gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now
+lead it up to the outlines already determined, and play it
+with the brush till it fills its place well; then let it dry, and
+it will be as flat and pure as a single dash, yet defining all the
+complicated forms accurately.</p>
+
+<p>33. Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably
+flat tint, you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare
+the color with three or four teaspoonfuls of water; then,
+when it is mixed, pour away about two-thirds of it, keeping
+a teaspoonful of pale color. Sloping your paper as before,
+draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space
+between them of the width of a square on your chess-board.
+Begin at the top of your paper, between the lines; and having
+struck on the first brushful of color, and led it down a
+little, dip your brush deep in water, and mix up the color
+on the plate quickly with as much more water as the brush
+takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler color, lead the
+tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the color again,
+and thus lead down the tint, always dipping in water once
+between each replenishing of the brush, and stirring the color
+on the plate well, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the
+color has become so pale that you cannot see it; then wash
+your brush thoroughly in water, and carry the wave down
+a little farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry
+brush, and leave it to dry.</p>
+
+<p>34. If you get to the bottom of your paper before your
+color gets pale, you may either take longer paper, or begin,
+with the tint as it was when you left off, on another sheet;
+but be sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness at last. When all
+is quite dry, recommence at the top with another similar
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page022"></a>22</span>
+mixture of color, and go down in the same way. Then again,
+and then again, and so continually until the color at the top
+of the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and
+passes down into pure white paper at the end of your column,
+with a perfectly smooth gradation from one into the other.</p>
+
+<p>35. You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or
+wavy, instead of evenly gradated; this is because at some
+places you have taken up more water in your brush than at
+others, or not mixed it thoroughly on the plate, or led one
+tint too far before replenishing with the next. Practice only
+will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot always
+get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they
+ever leave them on their pictures without after-touching.</p>
+
+<p>36. As you get more power, and can strike the color more
+quickly down, you will be able to gradate in less compass;<a name="FnAnchor_7" href="#Footnote_7"><span class="sp">[7]</span></a>
+beginning with a small quantity of color, and adding a drop
+of water, instead of a brushful; with finer brushes, also, you
+may gradate to a less scale. But slight skill will enable you
+to test the relations of color to shade as far as is necessary for
+your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>37. Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black,
+of cobalt, and vermilion; and prepare gradated columns
+(exactly as you have done with the Prussian blue) of the lake
+and blue-black.<a name="FnAnchor_8" href="#Footnote_8"><span class="sp">[8]</span></a> Cut a narrow slip, all the way down, of
+each gradated color, and set the three slips side by side;
+fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across all
+the three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number
+the degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, etc. If you
+have gradated them rightly, the darkest part either of the red
+or blue will be nearly equal in power to the darkest part of the
+blue-black, and any degree of the black slip will also, accurately
+enough for our purpose, balance in weight the degree
+similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then, when
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page023"></a>23</span>
+you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue color, if
+you can match their color by any compartment of the crimson
+or blue in your scales, the gray in the compartment of the
+gray scale marked with the same number is the gray which
+must represent that crimson or blue in your light and shade
+drawing.</p>
+
+<p>38. Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion.
+You will find that you cannot darken these beyond
+a certain point;<a name="FnAnchor_9" href="#Footnote_9"><span class="sp">[9]</span></a> for yellow and scarlet, so long as they
+remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach to black; we
+cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark
+scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet,
+half-way down; passing <i>then</i> gradually to white. Afterwards
+use lake to darken the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge;
+and Prussian blue to darken the cobalt. You will thus
+have three more scales, passing from white nearly to black,
+through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and through
+scarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may
+make another with green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another
+with violet; the sepia alone will make a forcible brown one;
+and so on, until you have as many scales as you like, passing
+from black to white through different colors. Then, supposing
+your scales properly gradated and equally divided, the
+compartment or degree No. 1 of the gray will represent in
+chiaroscuro the No. 1 of all the other colors; No. 2 of gray
+the No. 2 of the other colors, and so on.</p>
+
+<p>39. It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you
+should understand the principle; for it would never be possible
+for you to gradate your scales so truly as to make them
+practically accurate and serviceable; and even if you could,
+unless you had about ten thousand scales, and were able to
+change them faster than ever juggler changed cards, you
+could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side
+of a frost-bitten apple. But when once you fully understand
+the principle, and see how all colors contain as it were a certain
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page024"></a>24</span>
+quantity of darkness, or power of dark relief from white&mdash;some
+more, some less; and how this pitch or power of each
+may be represented by equivalent values of gray, you will
+soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approximation by a
+glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at all.</p>
+
+<p>40. You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing
+patterns, and any shapes of shade that you think pretty, as
+veinings in marble or tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells,
+etc., as tenderly as you can, in the darknesses that correspond
+to their colors; and when you find you can do this successfully,
+it is time to begin rounding.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE VIII.</p>
+
+<p>41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up
+the first round or oval stone you can find, not very white,
+nor very dark; and the smoother it is the better, only it must
+not <i>shine</i>. Draw your table near the window, and put the
+stone, which I will suppose is about the size of <i>a</i> in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>
+(it had better not be much larger), on a piece of not very
+white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the
+light may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil
+point interferes with your sight of your work. You must not
+let the <i>sun</i> fall on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore
+choose a window which the sun does not come in at. If you
+can shut the shutters of the other windows in the room it will
+be all the better; but this is not of much consequence.</p>
+
+<p>42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything;
+I mean, anything that is drawable. Many things (sea
+foam, for instance) cannot be drawn at all, only the idea
+of them more or less suggested; but if you can draw the stone
+<i>rightly</i>, everything within reach of art is also within yours.</p>
+
+<p>For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of
+representing <i>Roundness</i>. If you can once do that, all the
+rest is easy and straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing
+else that you may be able to do will be of any use. For
+Nature is all made up of roundnesses; not the roundness of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page025"></a>25</span>
+perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces. Boughs are
+rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are
+rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there
+is no more flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy.
+The world itself is round, and so is all that is in it, more or
+less, except human work, which is often very flat indeed.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_5"><img src="images/img025.jpg" width="700" height="286" alt="Fig. 5." title="Fig. 5." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 5.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round
+stone, and you have won the battle.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page026"></a>26</span></p>
+
+<p>43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You
+will see that the side of it next the window is lighter than
+most of the paper; that the side of it farthest from the window
+is darker than the paper; and that the light passes into
+the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to the right on
+the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of things
+being more or less as in <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, the spots on the stone
+excepted, of which more presently.</p>
+
+<p>44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset,
+that everything you can see in Nature is seen only so far as
+it is lighter or darker than the things about it, or of a different
+color from them. It is either seen as a patch of one color
+on a ground of another; or as a pale thing relieved from a
+dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And if you
+can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the same size,
+shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground,
+you will produce the appearance of the object and its ground.
+The best draughtsman&mdash;Titian and Paul Veronese themselves&mdash;could
+do no more than this; and you will soon be able
+to get some power of doing it in an inferior way, if you once
+understand the exceeding simplicity of what is to be done.
+Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper,
+on a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on
+spaces of red, white, and brown, in the same shape, and
+gradated from dark to light in the same degrees, and your
+drawing is done. If you will not look at what you see, if you
+try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there, if
+you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your
+paper with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact,
+but the plain, unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the
+thing before you, you need not hope to get on. Nature will
+show you nothing if you set yourself up for her master. But
+forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will find
+obedience easier and happier than you think.</p>
+
+<p>45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the
+forms and the evenness of the gradations. You may depend
+upon it, when you are dissatisfied with your work, it is always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page027"></a>27</span>
+too coarse or too uneven. It may not be wrong&mdash;in all probability
+is not wrong, in any (so-called) great point. But its
+edges are not true enough in outline; and its shades are in
+blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it more
+tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.</p>
+
+<p>46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak
+because you have a finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you
+can draw with that, you can draw with nothing; when you
+can draw with that, you can draw with a log of wood
+charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
+gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate
+ease depends on early precision in the commencement; much
+more in singing or drawing.</p>
+
+<p>47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>,
+but to copy the stone before you in the way that my sketch
+is done. To which end, first measure the extreme length of
+the stone with compasses, and mark that length on your
+paper; then, between the points marked, leave something
+like the form of the stone in light, scrawling the paper all
+over, round it; <i>b</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, is a beginning of this kind.
+Rather leave too much room for the high light, than too little;
+and then more cautiously fill in the shade, shutting the light
+gradually up, and putting in the dark slowly on the dark
+side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of shape,
+because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible
+for you to draw the shape of the stone quite truly, and you
+must gradually gain correctness by means of these various
+exercises: what you have mainly to do at present is, to get the
+stone to look solid and round, not much minding what its
+exact contour is&mdash;only draw it as nearly right as you can
+without vexation; and you will get it more right by thus feeling
+your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the
+outline at first. For you can <i>see</i> no outline; what you see is
+only a certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces
+about it; and those pieces of shade you are to imitate as
+nearly as you can, by scrawling the paper over till you get
+them to the right shape, with the same gradations which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page028"></a>28</span>
+they have in Nature. And this is really more likely to be
+done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
+confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced
+outline. For instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin
+at <i>a</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, whose form, though irregular, required more
+care in following than that of a common stone, I was going
+to draw it also under another effect; reflected light bringing
+its dark side out from the background: but when I had laid
+on the first few touches I thought it would be better to stop,
+and let you see how I had begun it, at <i>b</i>. In which beginning
+it will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I
+can more or less modify, and add to or diminish the contour
+as I work on, the lines which suggest the outline being
+blended with the others if I do not want them; and the having
+to fill up the vacancies and conquer the irregularities of such
+a sketch will probably secure a higher completion at last, than
+if half an hour had been spent in getting a true outline before
+beginning.</p>
+
+<p>48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing
+too dark. In order to ascertain what the shades of it really
+are, cut a round hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece
+of white paper the color of that you use to draw on. Hold
+this bit of paper with the hole in it, between you and your
+stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards, so as to
+see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
+through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole
+looks like one of the patches of color you have been accustomed
+to match, only changing in depth as it lets different
+pieces of the stone be seen through it. You will be able thus
+actually to <i>match</i> the color of the stone at any part of it, by
+tinting the paper beside the circular opening. And you will
+find that this opening never looks quite <i>black</i>, but that all the
+roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.<a name="FnAnchor_10" href="#Footnote_10"><span class="sp">[10]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the
+stone, or of the paper it lies on, look luminous through the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page029"></a>29</span>
+opening; so that the little circle then tells as a light spot
+instead of a dark spot. When this is so, you cannot imitate
+it, for you have no means of getting light brighter than white
+paper: but by holding the paper more sloped towards the
+light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which before
+looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and
+if you can place the paper in such a position that every part
+of the stone looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always
+as a spot of shade, and if your drawing is put in the same
+light, you can imitate or match every gradation. You will
+be amazed to find, under these circumstances, how slight the
+differences of tint are, by which, through infinite delicacy
+of gradation, Nature can express form.</p>
+
+<p>If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a
+light through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate.
+Leave it white; you can do no more.</p>
+
+<p>50. When you have done the best you can to get the general
+form, proceed to finish, by imitating the texture and all
+the cracks and stains of the stone as closely as you can; and
+note, in doing this, that cracks or fissures of any kind,
+whether between stones in walls, or in the grain of timber or
+rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they present,
+are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
+shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of
+light and shade, however small its scale. It is in reality a
+little ravine, with a dark or shady side, and light or sunny
+side, and, usually, shadow in the bottom. This is one of the
+instances in which it may be as well to understand the reason
+of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing, for the
+aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot
+in general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some,
+we are sure to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate
+of the importance of those on which the attention
+is fixed causes us to exaggerate them, so that merely scientific
+draughtsmen caricature a third part of Nature, and miss
+two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose eye is so keen as to
+see at once how the thing looks, and who need not therefore
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page030"></a>30</span>
+trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
+people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who
+are destitute of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will
+be a help, especially when a master is not near them. I
+never allow my own pupils to ask the reason of anything,
+because, as I watch their work, I can always show them how
+the thing is, and what appearance they are missing in it; but
+when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
+here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.</p>
+
+<p>51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object&mdash;for
+instance, the stone you are drawing&mdash;has a light side
+turned towards the light, a dark side turned away from the
+light, and a shadow, which is cast on something else (as by
+the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may sometimes
+be placed so as to see only the light side and shadow, sometimes
+only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both
+or either without the shadow; but in most positions solid
+objects will show all the three, as the stone does here.</p>
+
+<p>52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as
+you sit now with your side to the window, so that the flat of
+your hand is turned to the window. You will see one side
+of your hand distinctly lighted, the other distinctly in shade.
+Here are light side and dark side, with no seen shadow; the
+shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on the
+other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.</p>
+
+<p>53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise,
+as you hold your hand, wave it up and down past the side
+of your hand which is turned from the light, the paper being
+of course farther from the window. You will see, as it passes,
+a strong gleam of light strike on your hand, and light it considerably
+on its dark side. This light is <i>reflected</i> light. It is
+thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in
+coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as
+a ball would be if somebody threw it through the window
+at the wall and you caught it at the rebound.</p>
+
+<p>Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece
+of scarlet cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page031"></a>31</span>
+on your hand, as you wave the book, is now reddened. Take
+a blue book, and you will find the gleam is blue. Thus every
+object will cast some of its own color back in the light that
+it reflects.</p>
+
+<p>54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect
+light to your hand: every object in the room on that side of
+it reflects some, but more feebly, and the colors mixing all
+together form a neutral<a name="FnAnchor_11" href="#Footnote_11"><span class="sp">[11]</span></a> light, which lets the color of your
+hand itself be more distinctly seen than that of any object
+which reflects light to it; but if there were no reflected light,
+that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.</p>
+
+<p>55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct
+light, and partly by light reflected from the objects around
+them, or from the atmosphere and clouds. The color of their
+light sides depends much on that of the direct light, and
+that of the dark sides on the colors of the objects near them.
+It is therefore impossible to say beforehand what color an
+object will have at any point of its surface, that color depending
+partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations
+of rays reflected from other things. The only certain
+fact about dark sides is, that their color will be changeful, and
+that a picture which gives them merely darker shades of the
+color of the light sides must assuredly be bad.</p>
+
+<p>56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are
+drawing on. You will see one side of each finger lighted, one
+side dark, and the shadow of your hand on the paper. Here,
+therefore, are the three divisions of shade seen at once. And
+although the paper is white, and your hand of a rosy color
+somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
+all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than
+the flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is,
+that much light is reflected from the paper to the dark side
+of your finger, but very little is reflected from other things
+to the paper itself in that chink under your finger.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page032"></a>32</span></p>
+
+<p>57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate,
+the part of the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the
+dark side of the object. I say in general, because a thousand
+accidents may interfere to prevent its being so. Take a little
+bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the ink-bottle, and play it
+about a little on the side of your hand farthest from the
+window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of
+light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions
+of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the
+shadow altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the
+white paper. Now a stupid painter would represent, for
+instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one of his figures,
+and because he had been taught by rule that "shadow was
+darker than the dark side," he would never think of the
+reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the
+hand, just as if no glass were there. But a great painter
+would be sure to think of the true effect, and paint it; and
+then comes the stupid critic, and wonders why the hand is so
+light on its dark side.</p>
+
+<p>58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a
+<i>rule</i> in matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember
+that, in a general way, a shadow is darker than the dark
+side of the thing that casts it, supposing the colors otherwise
+the same; that is to say, when a white object casts a shadow
+on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark surface: the
+rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow of
+a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so
+dark, usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to
+ascertain the ultimate truth in such matters is to <i>look</i> for it;
+but, in the meantime, you will be helped by noticing that
+the cracks in the stone are little ravines, on one side of which
+the light strikes sharply, while the other is in shade.
+This dark side usually casts a little darker shadow at the
+bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the stone surface
+is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And, therefore,
+if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint,
+more or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page033"></a>33</span>
+spot or streak in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch
+beside this white one, you may turn it, as you choose, into
+either a ridge or an incision, into either a boss or a cavity.
+If you put the dark touch on the side of it nearest the sun,
+or rather, nearest the place that the light comes from, you
+will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
+side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete
+success of the effect depends less on depth of shade than on
+the rightness of the drawing; that is to say, on the evident
+correspondence of the form of the shadow with the form that
+casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or anything irregularly
+shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience in following
+the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
+labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed
+to lay on the stains and spots with great care, quite as much
+as you gave to the forms. Very often, spots or bars of local
+color do more to express form than even the light and shade,
+and they are always interesting as the means by which Nature
+carries light into her shadows, and shade into her lights; an
+art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
+of composition. <i>a</i>, in <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, is a rough sketch of a fossil
+sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black
+flint, coming through a chalky surface. These projections
+form dark spots in the light; and their sides, rising out of
+the shadow, form smaller whiter spots in the dark. You
+may take such scattered lights as these out with the penknife,
+provided you are just as careful to place them rightly as if
+you got them by a more laborious process.</p>
+
+<p>60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in
+which gradation expresses roundness and projection, you
+may try your strength on anything natural or artificial that
+happens to take your fancy, provided it be not too complicated
+in form. I have asked you to draw a stone first, because any
+irregularities and failures in your shading will be less offensive
+to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page034"></a>34</span>
+surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and
+you may as well go on drawing rounded stones of different
+shapes for a little while, till you find you can really shade
+delicately. You may then take up folds of thick white drapery,
+a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on the table is as
+good as anything, and try to express them in the same way;
+only now you will find that your shades must be wrought
+with perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow
+of the folds. Always remember that a little bit perfected
+is worth more than many scrawls; whenever you feel yourself
+inclined to scrawl, give up work resolutely, and do not go
+back to it till next day. Of course your towel or napkin must
+be put on something that may be locked up, so that its folds
+shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
+the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of
+drapery (there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the
+sculpture of the cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres,
+which will at once educate your hand and your taste), and
+copy some piece of that; you will then ascertain what it is
+that is wanting in your studies from Nature, whether more
+gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of the
+folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
+painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in
+its sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty,
+the greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more
+just in measurement of form than delicate in perception of
+tint, a pattern on the folded surface will help you. Try
+whether it does or not: and if the patterned drapery confuses
+you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
+helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and
+simple checkered designs are better at first than flowered
+ones), and even though it should confuse you, begin pretty
+soon to use a pattern occasionally, copying all the distortions
+and perspective modifications of it among the folds with
+scrupulous care.</p>
+
+<p>61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in
+doing this. The greatest masters are always fond of drawing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page035"></a>35</span>
+patterns; and the greater they are, the more pains they take
+to do it truly.<a name="FnAnchor_12" href="#Footnote_12"><span class="sp">[12]</span></a> Nor can there be better practice at any time,
+as introductory to the nobler complication of natural detail.
+For when you can draw the spots which follow the folds of
+a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
+spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he
+leaps; but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly
+you will never be able to draw the creature. So the cloudings
+on a piece of wood, carefully drawn, will be the best introduction
+to the drawing of the clouds of the sky, or the waves
+of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask drapery,
+well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
+living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet bank.</p>
+
+<p>62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings
+of books, or other finely textured substances, do not trouble
+yourself, as yet, much about the wooliness or gauziness of
+the thing; but get it right in shade and fold, and true in
+pattern. We shall see, in the course of after-practice, how
+the penned lines may be made indicative of texture; but at
+present attend only to the light and shade and pattern. You
+will be puzzled at first by <i>lustrous</i> surfaces, but a little attention
+will show you that the expression of these depends merely
+on the right drawing of their light and shade, and reflections.
+Put a small black japanned tray on the table in front of some
+books; and you will see it reflects the objects beyond it as
+in a little black rippled pond; its own color mingling always
+with that of the reflected objects. Draw these reflections of
+the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as you
+will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the
+luster to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished
+objects in general practice; only you should do one or two in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page036"></a>36</span>
+order to understand the aspect of any lustrous portion of
+other things, such as you cannot avoid; the gold, for instance,
+on the edges of books, or the shining of silk and damask, in
+which lies a great part of the expression of their folds.
+Observe also that there are very few things which are totally
+without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles
+you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image
+of another object.</p>
+
+<p>63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure
+me that with the point of the pen or pencil you can lay on
+any form and shade you like, I give you leave to use the
+brush with one color,&mdash;sepia, or blue black, or mixed cobalt
+and blue black, or neutral tint; and this will much facilitate
+your study, and refresh you. But, preliminary, you must
+do one or two more exercises in tinting.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE IX.</p>
+
+<p>64. Prepare your color as directed for Exercise VII.
+Take a brush full of it, and strike it on the paper in any
+irregular shape; as the brush gets dry, sweep the surface of
+the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper very
+lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number
+of more or less minute interstices in the color. The lighter
+and faster every dash the better. Then leave the whole to
+dry; and, as soon as it is dry, with little color in your brush,
+so that you can bring it to a fine point, fill up all the little
+interstices one by one, so as to make the whole as even as you
+can, and fill in the larger gaps with more color, always trying
+to let the edges of the first and of the newly applied color
+exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new
+color dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the
+first. Retouch it therefore, trying to get the whole to look
+quite one piece. A very small bit of color thus filled up with
+your very best care, and brought to look as if it had been
+quite even from the first, will give you better practice and
+more skill than a great deal filled in carelessly; so do it with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page037"></a>37</span>
+your best patience, not leaving the most minute spot of
+white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then go
+to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up
+to a marked limit; then advance a little farther, and so on;
+thus always seeing distinctly what is done and what undone.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">EXERCISE X.</p>
+
+<p>65. Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole
+square of paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four
+fifths of the square, or thereabouts, leaving the edge rather
+irregular than straight, and let it dry. Then another coat
+over three fifths; another over two fifths; and the last over
+one fifth; so that the square may present the appearance of
+gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than
+the one beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in
+the former exercise, when filling up the interstices), try,
+with small touches, like those used in the pen etching, only
+a little broader, to add shade delicately beyond each edge, so
+as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones imperceptibly.
+By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a multitude
+of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,
+you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints,
+outside of each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite
+them tenderly with the next tint. The whole square, when
+done, should look evenly shaded from dark to pale, with no
+bars, only a crossing texture of touches, something like
+chopped straw, over the whole.<a name="FnAnchor_13" href="#Footnote_13"><span class="sp">[13]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>66. Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any
+light and shade you like; outline it very loosely with the
+pencil. Put on a wash of color, prepared <i>very</i> pale, quite
+flat over all of it, except the highest light, leaving the edge
+of your color quite sharp. Then another wash, extending
+only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page038"></a>38</span>
+also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the
+still darker parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each
+edge to dry sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the
+edges, reinforce the darks, and work the whole delicately
+together as you would with the pen, till you have got it to
+the likeness of the true light and shade. You will find that
+the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now
+get effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen
+merely.</p>
+
+<p>67. The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you
+may not trouble or vex the color, but let it lie as it falls
+suddenly on the paper: color looks much more lovely when
+it has been laid on with a dash of the brush, and left to dry
+in its own way, than when it has been dragged about and
+disturbed; so that it is always better to let the edges and
+forms be a little wrong, even if one cannot correct them
+afterwards, than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very
+great masters in water color can lay on the true forms at
+once with a dash, and bad masters in water color lay on
+grossly false forms with a dash, and leave them false; for
+people in general, not knowing false from true, are as much
+pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular blot
+as with the presence of power in the determined one; but <i>we</i>,
+in our beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad
+dash, and then correct with the point, till we are quite right.
+We must take care to be right, at whatever cost of pains;
+and then gradually we shall find we can be right with freedom.</p>
+
+<p>68. I have hitherto limited you to color mixed with two
+or three teaspoonfuls of water; but, in finishing your light
+and shade from the stone, you may, as you efface the edge
+of the palest coat towards the light, use the color for the
+small touches with more and more water, till it is so pale
+as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a perfect
+gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when
+they are very dark, you may use less and less water. If
+you take the color tolerably dark on your brush, only always
+liquid (not pasty), and dash away the superfluous color on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page039"></a>39</span>
+blotting paper, you will find that, touching the paper very
+lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated touches,
+produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth
+to shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of
+hand to do this properly. You will find much of this kind
+of work in the grounds and shadows of William Hunt's
+drawings.<a name="FnAnchor_14" href="#Footnote_14"><span class="sp">[14]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>69. As you get used to the brush and color, you will
+gradually find out their ways for yourself, and get the
+management of them. And you will often save yourself
+much discouragement by remembering what I have so often
+asserted,&mdash;that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to
+be refinement that is wanting, not force; and connection, not
+alteration. If you dislike the state your drawing is in, do
+not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor alter its plan, nor
+rub it desperately out, at the place you think wrong; but
+look if there are no shadows you can gradate more perfectly;
+no little gaps and rents you can fill; no forms you can more
+delicately define: and do not <i>rush</i> at any of the errors or
+incompletions thus discerned, but efface or supply slowly,
+and you will soon find your drawing take another look. A
+very useful expedient in producing some effects, is to wet
+the paper, and then lay the color on it, more or less wet,
+according to the effect you want. You will soon see how
+prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can
+reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it darker.
+Also, while the color is still damp on the paper, by drying
+your brush thoroughly, and touching the color with the brush
+so dried, you may take out soft lights with great tenderness
+and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of this kind,
+noticing how the color behaves; but remembering always
+that your final results must be obtained, and can only be
+obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the pen
+drawing.</p>
+
+<p>70. You will find also, as you deal with more and more
+complicated subjects, that Nature's resources in light and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page040"></a>40</span>
+shade are so much richer than yours, that you cannot possibly
+get all, or anything like all, the gradations of shadow in
+any given group. When this is the case, determine first to
+keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for instance,
+there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a
+black inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper
+as a light mass, the green book as a middle tint mass, the
+black inkstand as a dark mass; and do not shade the folds
+in the paper, or corners of the book, so as to equal in depth
+the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference between
+the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the
+power of the former to draw so delicately as to express form
+in a dark-colored object with little light, and in a light-colored
+object with little darkness; and it is better even to
+leave the forms here and there unsatisfactorily rendered
+than to lose the general relations of the great masses. And
+this, observe, not because masses are grand or desirable
+things in your composition (for with composition at present
+you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact
+that things do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and
+that we see paper, book, and inkstand as three separate
+things, before we see the wrinkles, or chinks, or corners of
+any of the three. Understand, therefore, at once, that no
+detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in
+reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and
+minor markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to
+be in Nature; you are sure otherwise to get them too dark.
+You will in doing this find that you cannot get the projection
+of things sufficiently shown; but never mind that; there is no
+need that they should appear to project, but great need that
+their relations of shade to each other should be preserved.
+All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration
+of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the
+drawing is more or less bad: a thoroughly fine drawing or
+painting will always show a slight tendency towards flatness.</p>
+
+<p>71. Observe, on the other hand, that, however white an
+object may be, there is always some small point of it whiter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page041"></a>41</span>
+than the rest. You must therefore have a slight tone of gray
+over everything in your picture except on the extreme high
+lights; even the piece of white paper, in your subject, must
+be toned slightly down, unless (and there are thousand
+chances against its being so) it should all be turned so as fully
+to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white
+objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese
+or Titian, you will soon understand this.<a name="FnAnchor_15" href="#Footnote_15"><span class="sp">[15]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>72. As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing
+with the brush the undulations of surfaces and the relations of
+masses, you may proceed to draw more complicated and beautiful
+things.<a name="FnAnchor_16" href="#Footnote_16"><span class="sp">[16]</span></a> And first, the boughs of trees, now not in mere
+dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the first bit of branch
+or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut off the ends
+of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only about a
+foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit
+of branch in some place where its position will not be altered,
+and draw it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size;
+striving, above all things, to get an accurate expression of its
+structure at the fork of the branch. When once you have
+mastered the tree at its <i>armpits</i>, you will have little more
+trouble with it.</p>
+
+<p>73. Always draw whatever the background happens to
+be, exactly as you see it. Wherever you have fastened the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page042"></a>42</span>
+bough, you must draw whatever is behind it, ugly or not, else
+you will never know whether the light and shade are right;
+they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of the
+background. And this general law is to be observed in all
+your studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly,
+else you never know if what you have done is right,
+or whether you <i>could</i> have done it rightly had you tried.
+There is nothing <i>visible</i> out of which you may not get useful
+practice.</p>
+
+<p>74. Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a
+small twig with four or five leaves on it, put it into water,
+put a sheet of light-colored or white paper behind it, so that
+all the leaves may be relieved in dark from the white field;
+then sketch in their dark shape carefully with pencil as you
+did the complicated boughs, in order to be sure that all their
+masses and interstices are right in shape before you begin
+shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in
+the manner of <a href="#fig_6">Fig. 6</a>, which is a young shoot of lilac.</p>
+
+<p>75. You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings,
+be at first puzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because
+the look of retirement or projection depends not so
+much on the perspective of the leaves themselves as on the
+double sight of the two eyes. Now there are certain artifices
+by which good painters can partly conquer this difficulty; as
+slight exaggerations of force or color in the nearer parts,
+and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not
+attempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching
+the leaves, shut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background,
+to bring the point of one of the leaves against; and
+so sketch the whole bough as you see it in a fixed position,
+looking with one eye only. Your drawing never can be
+made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with
+<i>both</i> eyes,<a name="FnAnchor_17" href="#Footnote_17"><span class="sp">[17]</span></a> but it can be made perfectly like the object
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page043"></a>43</span>
+seen with one, and you must be content when you have got
+a resemblance on these terms.</p>
+
+<p>76. In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be
+done, take a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards
+you, and as flat as you can, so as to see nothing of it but its
+thinness, as if you wanted to know how thin it was; outline
+it so. Then slope it down gradually towards you, and
+watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held perpendicularly
+down before you. Draw it in three or four different
+positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they
+appear in each position, and you will soon find out how it
+must be.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_6"><img src="images/img043.jpg" width="263" height="600" alt="Fig. 6." title="Fig. 6." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 6.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>77. Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then
+larger clusters; and practice, in this way, more and more
+complicated pieces of bough and leafage, till you find you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page044"></a>44</span>
+can master the most difficult arrangements, not consisting
+of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you
+do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery
+of pictures, that you take a much more lively interest than
+before in the work of the great masters; you will see that
+very often their best backgrounds are composed of little
+more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,
+brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or
+two form the chief interest of their foregrounds. If you
+live in London you may test your progress <i>accurately</i> by the
+degree of admiration you feel for the leaves of vine round the
+head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne.
+All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of
+foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of
+vegetation, that it is only one or two of the nearer clusters
+that you can by any possibility draw in this complete manner.
+The mass is too vast, and too intricate, to be thus
+dealt with.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_7"><img src="images/img044.jpg" width="400" height="231" alt="Fig. 7." title="Fig. 7." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 7.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>78. You must now therefore have recourse to some confused
+mode of execution, capable of expressing the confusion
+of Nature. And, first, you must understand what the
+character of that confusion is. If you look carefully at
+the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards' distance,
+you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at
+first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will
+see, mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct
+lines, which are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page045"></a>45</span>
+some, leaves seen with the edge turned towards you, and
+coming into sight in a broken way; for, supposing the real
+leaf shape to be as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_7">Fig. 7</a>, this, when removed some
+yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at
+<i>b</i>; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk
+and point disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes
+little more than a line; and the result is the condition
+at <i>c</i>, only with this farther subtlety in the look of it,
+inexpressible in the wood-cut, that the stalk and point of the
+leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet some
+influence in <i>checking the light</i> at the places where they
+exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf
+which remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only
+be rendered by two layers of color, one subduing the sky
+tone a little, the next drawing the broken portions of the
+leaf, as at <i>c</i>, and carefully indicating the greater darkness
+of the spot in the middle, where the under side of the
+leaf is.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_8"><img src="images/img045.jpg" width="500" height="397" alt="Fig. 8." title="Fig. 8." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 8.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we
+cannot reach such accuracy; but we shall be able to render
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page046"></a>46</span>
+the general look of the foliage satisfactorily by the following
+mode of practice.</p>
+
+<p>79. Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen
+inches long. Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that
+will support it steadily; put it about eight feet away from
+you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a sheet of not very
+white paper behind it, as usual.  Then draw very carefully,
+first placing them with pencil, and then filling them
+up with ink, every leaf-mass and stalk of it in simple black
+profile, as you see them against the paper: <a href="#fig_8">Fig. 8</a> is a
+bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do not be afraid of running
+the leaves into a black mass when they come together; this
+exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of such
+masses are when seen against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>80. Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of
+every common tree,&mdash;oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in
+fact, if you are good, and industrious, you will make one
+such study carefully at least three times a week, until you
+have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can get
+branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough,
+for this reason,&mdash;all masses of foliage have an upper and
+under surface, and the side view of them, or profile, shows
+a wholly different organization of branches from that seen
+in the view from above.  They are generally seen more or
+less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature
+puts her best composition into the profile arrangement.
+But the view from above or below occurs not unfrequently,
+also, and it is quite necessary you should draw it if you wish
+to understand the anatomy of the tree. The difference between
+the two views is often far greater than you could
+easily conceive. For instance, in <a href="#fig_9">Fig. 9</a>, <i>a</i> is the upper view
+and <i>b</i> the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. <a href="#fig_8">Fig. 8</a> is
+an intermediate view of a larger bough; seen from beneath,
+but at some lateral distance also.</p>
+
+<p>81. When you have done a few branches in this manner,
+take one of the drawings you have made, and put it
+first a yard away from you, then a yard and a half, then two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page047"></a>47</span>
+yards; observe how the thinner stalks and leaves gradually
+disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness where
+they were; and make another study of the effect at each
+distance, taking care to draw nothing more than you really
+see, for in this consists all the difference between what
+would be merely a miniature drawing of the leaves seen
+near, and a full-size drawing of the same leaves at a distance.
+By full size, I mean the size which they would really
+appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass
+held at the same distance from the eye at which you mean
+to hold your drawing. You can always ascertain this full
+size of any object by holding your paper upright before you,
+at the distance from your eye at which you wish your drawing
+to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you have to
+draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the outline
+of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper.
+You will always find it, thus measured, smaller than you
+supposed.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_9"><img src="images/img047.jpg" width="400" height="187" alt="Fig. 9." title="Fig. 9." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 9.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>82. When you have made a few careful experiments of
+this kind on your own drawings, (which are better for practice,
+at first, than the real trees, because the black profile in
+the drawing is quite stable, and does not shake, and is not
+confused by sparkles of luster on the leaves,) you may try
+the extremities of the real trees, only not doing much at a
+time, for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex
+your sight. And this brightness causes, I believe, some
+loss of the outline itself; at least the chemical action of the
+light in a photograph extends much within the edges of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page048"></a>48</span>
+leaves, and, as it were, eats them away, so that no tree extremity,
+stand it ever so still, nor any other form coming
+against bright sky, is truly drawn by a photograph; and if
+you once succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you will
+find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
+photograph can be.</p>
+
+<p>83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering
+merely the dark form of the sprays as they come against
+the sky. Within those sprays, and in the heart of the tree,
+there is a complexity of a much more embarrassing kind;
+for nearly all leaves have some luster, and all are more or less
+translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in any
+given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows
+and foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances
+which alter or hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by
+other leaves,&mdash;often very forcibly. Secondly, light reflected
+from its lustrous surface, sometimes the blue of the
+sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself flashing
+like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen
+as darknesses through the translucent parts of the leaf; a
+most important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected
+by landscape artists in general.</p>
+
+<p>84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and
+then by chance, the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but
+a marvelous and quaint confusion, very definite, indeed, in
+its evidence of direction of growth, and unity of action, but
+wholly indefinable and inextricable, part by part, by any
+amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out in facsimile,
+though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and
+you must therefore try to discover some mode of execution
+which will more or less imitate, by its own variety and
+mystery, the variety and mystery of Nature, without
+absolute delineation of detail.</p>
+
+<p>85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation
+of tree form only, because in that the thing to be proved
+is clearest. But no natural object exists which does not involve
+in some part or parts of it this inimitableness, this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page049"></a>49</span>
+mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of handling and
+trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are intricate,
+so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur
+and hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And
+although methods and dexterities of handling are wholly
+useless if you have not gained first the thorough knowledge
+of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot draw a branch
+perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of mist
+perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single
+grass blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having
+once got this power over decisive form, you may safely&mdash;and
+must, in order to perfection of work&mdash;carry out your knowledge
+by every aid of method and dexterity of hand.</p>
+
+<p>86. But, in order to find out what method can do, you
+must now look at Art as well as at Nature, and see what
+means painters and engravers have actually employed for the
+expression of these subtleties. Whereupon arises the question,
+what opportunity you have to obtain engravings?
+You ought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself
+of a certain number of good examples of Turner's engraved
+works: if this be not in your power, you must just make the
+best use you can of the shop windows, or of any plates of
+which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly, the difficulty of
+getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to better
+use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so,
+possess yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of
+Rogers's Italy or Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen
+of the plates named in the annexed lists. The prefixed letters
+indicate the particular points deserving your study in
+each engraving.<a name="FnAnchor_18" href="#Footnote_18"><span class="sp">[18]</span></a> Be sure, therefore, that your selection
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page050"></a>50</span>
+includes, at all events, one plate marked with each letter.
+Do not get more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the
+twelve at first; for the more engravings you have, the less
+attention you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page051"></a>51</span>
+the enjoyment derivable from art cannot be increased in
+quantity, beyond a certain point, by quantity of possession;
+it is only spread, as it were, over a larger surface, and very
+often dulled by finding ideas repeated in different works.
+Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his attention
+should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his
+enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at
+many, with divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and
+his best way of discovering it is to think long over few
+things, and watch them earnestly. It is one of the worst
+errors of this age to try to know and to see too much: the
+men who seem to know everything, never in reality know
+anything rightly. Beware of <i>handbook</i> knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>87. These engravings are, in general, more for you to look
+at than to copy; and they will be of more use to you when we
+come to talk of composition, than they are at present; still,
+it will do you a great deal of good, sometimes to try how
+far you can get their delicate texture, or gradations of tone:
+as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline too much
+to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the
+texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its
+tiled roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as
+exquisite as work can possibly be; and it will be a great and
+profitable achievement if you can at all approach it. In like
+manner, if you can at all imitate the dark distant country at
+p. 7, or the sky at p. 80, of the same volume, or the foliage at
+pp. 12 and 144, it will be good gain; and if you can once draw
+the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9 of the Italy, or
+the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the moonlight
+at p. 223, you will find that even Nature herself cannot
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page052"></a>52</span>
+afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or
+towers, or moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>88. You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the
+same effect. And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy
+required, and begin to think that engraving is not drawing,
+and that copying it cannot help you to draw, remember that it
+differs from common drawing only by the difficulties it has
+to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless habit
+of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough
+when one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary,
+it is a form of drawing more difficult than common drawing,
+by exactly so much as it is more difficult to cut steel than to
+move the pencil over paper. It is true that there are certain
+mechanical aids and methods which reduce it at certain
+stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a habit
+of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are
+trying to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are
+always etched&mdash;that is, drawn with a fine steel point and
+free hand: only the line made is white instead of black,
+which renders it much more difficult to judge of what you are
+about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good
+for you, because it will awaken you to the real labor and skill
+of the engraver, and make you understand a little how people
+must work, in this world, who have really to <i>do</i> anything in it.</p>
+
+<p>89. Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving
+as a model&mdash;far from it; but it is necessary you should be
+able to do as well<a name="FnAnchor_19" href="#Footnote_19"><span class="sp">[19]</span></a> before you think of doing better, and
+you will find many little helps and hints in the various work
+of it. Only remember that <i>all</i> engravers' foregrounds are
+bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel lines
+of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy;
+nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances, and
+portions of the foliage in the plates marked <i>f</i>, which you
+may copy. The best for this purpose, if you can get it, is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page053"></a>53</span>
+"Chain bridge over the Tees," of the England series; the
+thicket on the right is very beautiful and instructive, and
+very like Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and
+"Powis" is also remarkably good.</p>
+
+<p>90. Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from
+what harm there is in their influence, you are to provide
+yourself, if possible, with a Rembrandt etching, or a photograph
+of one (of figures, not landscape). It does not matter
+of what subject, or whether a sketchy or finished one,
+but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will teach
+you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially
+that Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and
+that they are laid with almost inconceivable precision when
+the object becomes at all interesting. The "Prodigal Son,"
+"Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and Isaac," and such
+others, containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro,
+will be the most instructive. You can buy one;
+copy it well; then exchange it, at little loss, for another; and
+so, gradually, obtain a good knowledge of his system. Whenever
+you have an opportunity of examining his work at
+museums, etc., do so with the greatest care, not looking at
+<i>many</i> things, but a long time at each. You must also provide
+yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert Dürer's.
+This you will not be able to copy; but you must keep it
+beside you, and refer to it as a standard of precision in line.
+If you can get one with a <i>wing</i> in it, it will be best. The
+crest with the cock, that with the skull and satyr, and the
+"Melancholy," are the best you could have, but any will do.
+Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two
+masters, Rembrandt and Dürer. Rembrandt is often too
+loose and vague; and Dürer has little or no effect of mist or
+uncertainty. If you can see anywhere a drawing by Leonardo,
+you will find it balanced between the two characters;
+but there are no engravings which present this perfection,
+and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate
+study of Rembrandt and Dürer. Lean rather to Dürer; it
+is better, for amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page054"></a>54</span>
+that of vagueness: and though, as I have just said, you cannot
+copy a Dürer, yet try every now and then a quarter of an
+inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can come;
+you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the
+"Melancholia" too often.</p>
+
+<p>91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Dürer, you
+may still learn much by carefully studying any of George
+Cruikshank's etchings, or Leech's wood-cuts in Punch, on
+the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and Richter's<a name="FnAnchor_20" href="#Footnote_20"><span class="sp">[20]</span></a> on the
+severe side. But in so doing you will need to notice the
+following points:</p>
+
+<p>92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or
+the time of an artist does not permit him to make a perfect
+drawing,&mdash;that is to say, one in which no lines shall be prominently
+visible,&mdash;and he is reduced to show the black lines,
+either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is better to make
+these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of texture
+and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or
+grass or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by
+Leech with zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and
+you will see that Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly
+express the direction and rounding of surfaces by the direction
+of the lines which shade them. All these various means
+of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can learn
+them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of
+shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way,
+but in the only possible way under the conditions: and provided
+in any after use of such means, you never try to show
+your own dexterity; but only to get as much record of the
+object as you can in a given time; and that you continually
+make efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions
+of the objects rightly.</p>
+
+<p>93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating
+that of surface, observe these few points:</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_10"><img src="images/img055.jpg" width="550" height="296" alt="Fig. 10." title="Fig. 10." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 10.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page055"></a>55</span>
+as they <i>can</i> indicate anything by their direction, they should
+explain rather than oppose the general character of the
+object. Thus, in the piece of wood-cut from Titian, <a href="#fig_10">Fig. 10</a>,
+the lines are serviceable by expressing, not only the shade of
+the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the flow of its
+grain. And Albert Dürer, whose work was chiefly engraving,
+sets himself always thus to make his lines as <i>valuable</i>
+as possible; telling much by them, both of shade and direction
+of surface: and if you were always to be limited to engraving
+on copper (and did not want to express effects of mist or
+darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert Dürer's way of
+work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as
+the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and
+the great painters always conceive their subject as complete,
+even when they are sketching it most rapidly, you will find
+that, when they are not limited in means, they do not much
+trust to direction of line, but will often scratch in the shade
+of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines, that is to
+say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to themselves.
+When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is one
+inclining from the left upwards to the right, or vice versâ,
+from the right downwards to the left; and when done very
+quickly, the line is hooked a little at the end by the effort
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page056"></a>56</span>
+at return to the next. Hence, you will always find the pencil,
+chalk, or pen sketch of a <i>very</i> great master full of these kind
+of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you will find him
+using simple straight lines from left to right, when an inferior
+master would have used curved ones. <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a> is a
+fair facsimile of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits
+these characters very distinctly. Even the careful
+drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded most commonly
+with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a point
+increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page057"></a>57</span>
+master if you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks
+or lips, shaded with straight lines.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_11"><img src="images/img056.jpg" width="325" height="600" alt="Fig. 11." title="Fig. 11." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 11.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be
+for dishonest dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches
+like <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a>, and pass them for the work of great masters;
+and how the power of determining the genuineness of a drawing
+depends entirely on your knowing the facts of the objects
+drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is <i>all</i>
+conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great
+man's work, at its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is
+not by the rapidity, but the <i>economy</i> of the execution that
+you know him to be great. Now to judge of this economy,
+you must know exactly what he meant to do, otherwise you
+cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,
+you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was
+drawing. All judgment of art thus finally founds itself on
+knowledge of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic,
+or impetuous execution is never affectedly impetuous. If
+a great man is not in a hurry, he never pretends to be; if he
+has no eagerness in his heart, he puts none into his hand;
+if he thinks his effect would be better got with <i>two</i> lines,
+he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with one. Be
+assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),
+that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating
+the execution of a great master. Acquire his knowledge
+and share his feelings, and the easy execution will fall
+from your hand as it did from his: but if you merely scrawl
+because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will not
+only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman,
+and every judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you
+for a cheat, and despise you accordingly.</p>
+
+<p>96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:</p>
+
+<p>All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple
+reason, that an artist of any power can always do more, and
+tell more, by quitting his outlines occasionally, and scratching
+in a few lines for shade, than he can by restricting himself
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page058"></a>58</span>
+to outline only. Hence the fact of his so restricting
+himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a
+bad draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power
+economically. This hard law, however, bears only on drawings
+meant to remain in the state in which you see them; not
+on those which were meant to be proceeded with, or for some
+mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure
+outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to
+be filled up afterwards with color, or to be pricked through
+and used as patterns or tracings; but if, with no such ultimate
+object, making the drawing wholly for its own sake,
+and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves it, an artist
+restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and his
+work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good
+artist habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case
+make his drawing more expressive (with any given quantity
+of work) by rapid shade than by contours; so that all good
+work whatever is more or less touched with shade, and more
+or less interrupted as outline.</p>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_12"><img src="images/img058.jpg" width="90" height="114" alt="Fig. 12." title="Fig. 12." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 12.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the
+English imitations of them, and all outline engravings from
+pictures, are bad work, and only serve to corrupt the public
+taste. And of such outlines, the worst are those which are
+darkened in some part of their course by way of expressing
+the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others;
+because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately
+represents the form of the given object with <i>one</i> of its edges.
+Thus, the outline <i>a</i> and the outline <a name="error1"></a><span class="correction" title="Originally was 'd'."><i>b</i></span>, <a href="#fig_12">Fig. 12</a>, are
+both <i>true</i> outlines of a ball; because, however thick
+the line may be, whether we take the interior or
+exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws
+a true circle. But <i>c</i> is a false outline of a ball,
+because either the inner or outer edge of the
+black line must be an untrue circle, else the line could not
+be thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force,"
+as it is called, is gained by falsification of the contours; so
+that no artist whose eye is true and fine could endure to look
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page059"></a>59</span>
+at it. It does indeed often happen that a painter, sketching
+rapidly, and trying again and again for some line which
+he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the first line by
+setting others beside and across it; and then a careless observer
+supposes it has been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes
+also, at a place where shade is afterwards to inclose the
+form, the painter will strike a broad dash of this shade beside
+his outline at once, looking as if he meant to thicken the
+outline; whereas this broad line is only the first installment of
+the future shadow, and the outline is really drawn with its
+inner edge.<a name="FnAnchor_21" href="#Footnote_21"><span class="sp">[21]</span></a> And thus, far from good draughtsmen darkening
+the lines which turn away from the light, the <i>tendency</i>
+with them is rather to darken them towards the light, for it
+is there in general that shade will ultimately inclose them.
+The best example of this treatment that I know is Raphael's
+sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing
+Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the left eye; where
+the dark strong lines which terminate the nose and forehead
+towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones behind
+the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will
+see in <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a> the same principle variously exemplified; the
+principal dark lines, in the head and drapery of the arms,
+being on the side turned to the light.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_13"><img src="images/img060.jpg" width="650" height="387" alt="Fig. 13." title="Fig. 13." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 13.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however,
+do not affect your drawing for the present. You must
+try to make your outlines as <i>equal</i> as possible; and employ
+pure outline only for the two following purposes: either (1.)
+to steady your hand, as in Exercise II., for if you cannot
+draw the line itself, you will never be able to terminate your
+shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is absent;
+or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms,
+when you are pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant
+trees in groups are defined, for the most part, by the light
+edge of the rounded mass of the nearer one being shown
+against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more distant
+one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page060"></a>60</span>
+required to round each tree as to round the stone in <a href="#fig_5">Fig.
+5</a>. Of course you cannot often get time to do this; but if
+you mark the terminal line of each tree as is done by Dürer in
+<a href="#fig_13">Fig. 13</a>, you will get a most useful memorandum of their
+arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only observe
+in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick
+one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying
+that bit of Dürer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate,
+and accurately descriptive as far as it goes. It means a
+bush of such a size and such a shape, definitely observed and
+set down; it contains a true "signalement" of every nut-tree,
+and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round that village.
+If you have not time to draw thus carefully, do not
+draw at all&mdash;you are merely wasting your work and spoiling
+your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice
+you may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate,
+but not yet; except sometimes of light and shade, in a way
+of which I will tell you presently. And this use of outline,
+note farther, is wholly confined to objects which have edges
+or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone, when it rises
+against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page061"></a>61</span>
+drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at
+all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule
+that no good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline
+remains absolute. You see, in that wood-cut of Dürer's, his
+reason for even limiting himself so much to outline as he has,
+in those distant woods and plains, is that he may leave them
+in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky
+and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real and
+sunny only by the addition of these shades.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_14"><img src="images/img061.jpg" width="400" height="328" alt="Fig. 14." title="Fig. 14." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 14.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline,
+we will go back to our question about tree-drawing left
+unanswered at page 48.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_15"><img src="images/img062.jpg" width="310" height="500" alt="Fig. 15." title="Fig. 15." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 15.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among
+the leaves. Now, it is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder,
+to any extent; but the difficulty is to keep organization
+in the midst of mystery. And you will never succeed in
+doing this unless you lean always to the definite side, and
+allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through
+all your early practice. So, after your single groups of
+leaves, your first step must be to conditions like Figs. <a href="#fig_14">14</a> and
+<a href="#fig_15">15</a>, which are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful
+wood-cut of Dürer's, the "Flight into Egypt." Copy
+these carefully,&mdash;never mind how little at a time, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page062"></a>62</span>
+thoroughly; then trace the Dürer, and apply it to your
+drawing, and do not be content till the one fits the other, else
+your eye is not true enough to carry you safely through
+meshes of real leaves. And in the course of doing this, you
+will find that not a line nor dot of Dürer's can be displaced
+without harm; that all add to the effect, and either express
+something, or illumine something, or relieve something.
+If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree
+drawing, of which so many rich examples are given constantly
+in our cheap illustrated periodicals (any of the Christmas
+numbers of last year's <i>Illustrated News</i> or others are
+full of them), you will see that, though good and forcible
+general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by thousands
+without special intention, and might just as well go one way
+as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce
+all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will
+find that a little careless scratching about with your pen will
+bring you very near the same result without an effort; but
+that no scratching of pen, nor any fortunate chance, nor anything
+but downright skill and thought, will imitate so much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page063"></a>63</span>
+as one leaf of Dürer's. Yet there is considerable intricacy
+and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine leaves
+of his, as well as of the grass.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_16"><img src="images/img063.jpg" width="650" height="571" alt="Fig. 16." title="Fig. 16." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 16.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner,
+you may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same
+way; and when you are tired of the intense care required for
+this, you may fall into a little more easy massing of the leaves,
+as in <a href="#fig_10">Fig. 10</a> (<a href="#page055">p. 55</a>). This is facsimilëd from an engraving
+after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner,
+the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough
+model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the
+thing even so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the
+masses, as in <a href="#fig_16">Fig. 16</a>,<a name="FnAnchor_22" href="#Footnote_22"><span class="sp">[22]</span></a> taking care always to have thorough
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page064"></a>64</span>
+command over your hand; that is, not to let the mass take a
+free shape because your hand ran glibly over the paper, but
+because in Nature it has actually a free and noble shape,
+and you have faithfully followed the same.</p>
+
+<p>101. And now that we have come to questions of noble
+shape, as well as true shape, and that we are going to draw
+from Nature at our pleasure, other considerations enter into
+the business, which are by no means confined to first practice,
+but extend to all practice; these (as this letter is long enough,
+I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents)
+I will arrange in a second letter; praying you
+only to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one&mdash;tiresomeness
+inseparable from directions touching the beginning of any
+art,&mdash;and to believe me, even though I am trying to set you
+to dull and hard work,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 3.5em; ">Very faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; "><span class="sc">J. Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_1" href="#FnAnchor_1">[1]</a> (<i>N.B.</i>&mdash;This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or curious
+readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are willing to take
+the statement in the text on trust.)</p>
+
+<p>The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We
+see nothing but flat colors; and it is only by a series of experiments that
+we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates the dark side of a solid
+substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the object in which it appears
+is far away. The whole technical power of painting depends on our
+recovery of what may be called the <i>innocence of the eye</i>; that is to say, of
+a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such,
+without consciousness of what they signify,&mdash;as a blind man would see
+them if suddenly gifted with sight.</p>
+
+<p>For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain directions,
+it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat dusty-looking
+yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly endowed with
+sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the sun, it would
+appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part a dusty yellow (very
+nearly of the color of primroses); and, if there were primroses near, we
+should think that the sunlighted grass was another mass of plants of the
+same sulphur-yellow color. We should try to gather some of them, and
+then find that the color went away from the grass when we stood between
+it and the sun, but not from the primroses; and by a series of experiments
+we should find out that the sun was really the cause of the color in the
+one,&mdash;not in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
+unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions touching
+the signification of certain colors, we always suppose that we <i>see</i> what we
+only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the
+signs we have learned to interpret. Very few people have any idea that
+sunlighted grass is yellow.</p>
+
+<p>Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly
+as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the colors of nature
+exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the sunlighted
+grass the precise relation between the two colors that form its shade and
+light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but bluish green barred
+with gold.</p>
+
+<p>Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact
+about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience and
+touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, variously
+gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by experience you
+know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, variously darkened
+and veined; and so on: and the whole art of Painting consists merely
+in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches of color, and putting
+patches of the same size, depth, and shape on canvas. The only obstacle
+to the success of painting is, that many of the real colors are brighter and
+paler than it is possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to
+represent them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_2" href="#FnAnchor_2">[2]</a> Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate drawing,
+than india-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper less: but it
+crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you waste the
+good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a long while
+be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very lightly; or, if heavily,
+pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what pencil
+marks will not come away so, without minding them. In a finished drawing
+the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable, helping the general tone,
+and enabling you to take out little bright lights.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_3" href="#FnAnchor_3">[3]</a> What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is
+the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose hand is
+so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can let it fly as
+it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master at
+real <i>work</i> is <i>never</i> free: its swiftest dash is under perfect government.
+Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hair's breadth of any
+appointed mark, in their fastest touches; and follow, within a hair's
+breadth, the previously intended curve. You must never, therefore, aim
+at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it should be free, but
+that it should be right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and
+then your work will be free in the best sense; but there is no merit in
+doing wrong easily.</p>
+
+<p>These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,
+which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible. The
+reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it is at the
+ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other lines, and concealed
+by them; the object in perfect shading being to conceal the lines as much
+as possible.</p>
+
+<p>And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of hand
+than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in Nature, and
+the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he draws them at all.
+Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find mistakes continue to occur
+in your outlines; be content at present if you find your hand gaining command
+over the curves.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_4" href="#FnAnchor_4">[4]</a> If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed, they
+will be useful models.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_5" href="#FnAnchor_5">[5]</a> Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this permission.
+My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that the pupil's eye
+should be trained to accurate perception of the relations of curve and
+right lines, by having the latter absolutely true, than that he should
+practice drawing straight lines. But also, I believe, though I am not
+quite sure of this, that he never <i>ought</i> to be able to draw a straight line.
+I do not believe a perfectly trained hand ever can draw a line without
+some curvature in it, or some variety of direction. Prout could draw a
+straight line, but I do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great
+draughtsman can, as far as I have observed, draw every line <i>but</i> a straight
+one.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_6" href="#FnAnchor_6">[6]</a> Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused quick
+touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of twigs round
+the main branches; but do not take much trouble about them.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_7" href="#FnAnchor_7">[7]</a> It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow gradation than
+an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as with the pen, to make
+the gradation go <i>far</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_8" href="#FnAnchor_8">[8]</a> Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_9" href="#FnAnchor_9">[9]</a> The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is always
+indicated by the color of the solid cake in the box.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_10" href="#FnAnchor_10">[10]</a> The figure <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_5">Fig. 5</a>, is very dark, but this is to give an example of
+all kinds of depths of tint, without repeated figures.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_11" href="#FnAnchor_11">[11]</a> Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite different
+tones in its neutrality, according to the colors of the various reflected rays
+that compose it.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_12" href="#FnAnchor_12">[12]</a> If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might perhaps be
+able to show you some metaphysical ones for the enjoyment, by truly
+artistical minds, of the changes wrought by light and shade and perspective
+in patterned surfaces; but this is at present not to the point;
+and all that you need to know is that the drawing of such things is good
+exercise, and moreover a kind of exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret,
+Giorgione, and Turner, all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_13" href="#FnAnchor_13">[13]</a> The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be able,
+when you begin to color, to let one hue be seen in minute portions, gleaming
+between the touches of another.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_14" href="#FnAnchor_14">[14]</a> William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_15" href="#FnAnchor_15">[15]</a> At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal examples
+of Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most neglected was
+that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of his most wonderful
+works, though unfinished. If you examine the larger white fishing-boat
+sail, you will find it has a little spark of pure white in its right-hand upper
+corner, about as large as a minute pin's head, and that all the surface of
+the sail is gradated to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice,
+and you will begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of
+the Cupid in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focused
+to two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on the
+white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing child-faun, in
+Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same thing.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_16" href="#FnAnchor_16">[16]</a> I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as they
+are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not by difference
+of method.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_17" href="#FnAnchor_17">[17]</a> If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will know
+why; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the statement,
+as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and much loss of time.
+See, however, <a href="#note1">Note 1</a>, in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_18" href="#FnAnchor_18">[18]</a> The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See note at
+the end of Appendix I. The letters mean as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>a</i> </td><td class="lsp">stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns, cottages, etc.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>c</i> </td><td class="lsp">clouds, including mist and aërial effects.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>f</i> </td><td class="lsp">foliage.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>g</i> </td><td class="lsp">ground, including low hills, when not rocky.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>l</i> </td><td class="lsp">effects of light.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>m</i> </td><td class="lsp">mountains, or bold rocky ground.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>p</i> </td><td class="lsp">power of general arrangement and effect.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>q</i> </td><td class="lsp">quiet water.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="lsp"><i>r</i> </td><td class="lsp">running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their line of flow
+    is beautifully marked.</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the England Series.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a c f r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Arundel. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a f p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Lancaster. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ashby de la Zouche. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c l m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Lancaster Sands.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l q r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Barnard Castle.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a g f.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Launceston.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Bolton Abbey. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c f l r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Leicester Abbey. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f g r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Buckfastleigh.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ludlow. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Caernarvon. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Margate. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>c l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Castle Upnor. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Orford. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Colchester. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Plymouth. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Cowes. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Powis Castle. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>c f p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Dartmouth Cove.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>l m q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Prudhoe Castle. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>c l q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Flint Castle.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f l m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Chain Bridge over Tees.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f g l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Knaresborough.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>m q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ulleswater. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>m r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">High Force of Tees.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Valle Crucis. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a f q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Trematon. </td>
+<td class="rsp1">&nbsp;</td><td class="lsp">&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the Keepsake.</i></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>m p q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Arona. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">St. Germain en Laye. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>l m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Drachenfels.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>l p q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Florence. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Marly.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>l m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Ballyburgh Ness.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the Bible Series.</i></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Mount Lebanon. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c l p q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Solomon's Pools.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rock of Moses at Sinai. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Santa Saba. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Jericho. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a l.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Pool of Bethesda. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a c g.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Joppa. </td>
+<td class="rsp1">&nbsp;</td><td class="lsp">&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From Scott's Works.</i></td></tr>
+
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>p r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Melrose.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Glencoe. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>f r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Dryburgh.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c m.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Loch Coriskin.* </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>a l.</i> Caerlaverock.</td></tr>
+<tr> <td class="cen" colspan="4"><i>From the Rivers of France.</i></td></tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a q.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Château of Amboise, with large bridge on right. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Pont de l'Arche. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>l p r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rouen, looking down the river, poplars on right.* </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>f l p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">View on the Seine, with avenue. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a l p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rouen, with cathedral and rainbow, avenue on left. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>a c p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Bridge of Meulan. </td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp"><i>a p.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Rouen Cathedral. </td>
+<td class="rsp1"><i>c g p r.</i> </td><td class="lsp">Caudebec.* </td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_19" href="#FnAnchor_19">[19]</a> As <i>well</i>;&mdash;not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on the steel
+than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be able to get
+tones as even, and touches as firm.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_20" href="#FnAnchor_20">[20]</a> See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be
+studied."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_21" href="#FnAnchor_21">[21]</a> See <a href="#note2">Note 2</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_22" href="#FnAnchor_22">[22]</a> This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like
+it. You will find it explained presently.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page065"></a>65</span></p>
+
+<h3>LETTER II.</h3>
+
+<h5>SKETCHING FROM NATURE.</h5>
+
+
+<p>102. <span class="sc">My dear Reader</span>,&mdash;The work we have already gone
+through together has, I hope, enabled you to draw with fair
+success either rounded and simple masses, like stones, or
+complicated arrangements of form, like those of leaves; provided
+only these masses or complexities will stay quiet for
+you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to
+baffle your patience. But if we are now to go out to the
+fields, and to draw anything like a complete landscape,
+neither of these conditions will any more be observed for us.
+The clouds will not wait while we copy their heaps or clefts;
+the shadows will escape from us as we try to shape them,
+each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light where
+its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving
+in eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence;
+and instead of the small clusters of leaves which we
+could reckon point by point, embarrassing enough even
+though numerable, we have now leaves as little to be counted
+as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its foam.</p>
+
+<p>103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation
+becomes more or less impossible. It is always to be
+aimed at so far as it <i>is</i> possible; and when you have time
+and opportunity, some portions of a landscape may, as you
+gain greater skill, be rendered with an approximation almost
+to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you may
+reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and
+of speed to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive;
+and you must give more and more effort daily to the observance
+of characteristic points, and the attainment of concise
+methods.</p>
+
+<p>104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for
+two reasons. First, that it is always accessible as a study;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page066"></a>66</span>
+and secondly, that its modes of growth present simple examples
+of the importance of leading or governing lines.
+It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot seize all,
+that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and
+grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every
+natural form. I call it vital truth, because these chief lines
+are always expressive of the past history and present action
+of the thing. They show in a mountain, first, how it was
+built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is now being worn
+away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it.
+In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure
+from its childhood: how troublesome trees have come in its
+way, and pushed it aside, and tried to strangle or starve it;
+where and when kind trees have sheltered it, and grown up
+lovingly together with it, bending as it bent; what winds torment
+it most; what boughs of it behave best, and bear most
+fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines
+show the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of
+change which the water or vapor is at any moment enduring
+in its form, as it meets shore, or counter-wave, or melting sunshine.
+Now remember, nothing distinguishes great men
+from inferior men more than their always, whether in life or
+in art, <i>knowing the way things are going</i>. Your dunce
+thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your
+wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws
+them so,&mdash;the animal in its motion, the tree in its growth,
+the cloud in its course, the mountain in its wearing away.
+Try always, whenever you look at a form, to see the lines in
+it which have had power over its past fate and will have
+power over its futurity. Those are its <i>awful</i> lines; see that
+you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage
+in <a href="#fig_16">Fig. 16</a> (<a href="#page063">p. 63</a>) grew round the root of a stone pine,
+on the brow of a crag at Sestri near Genoa, and all the
+sprays of it are thrust away in their first budding by the
+great rude root, and spring out in every direction round it,
+as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it.
+Then, when they have got clear of the root, they begin to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page067"></a>67</span>
+bend up again; some of them, being little stone pines themselves,
+have a great notion of growing upright, if they can;
+and this struggle of theirs to recover their straight road
+towards the sky, after being obliged to grow sideways in
+their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence their
+future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed,
+forky pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts
+nourish them, with bared red lightning of angry arms
+towards the sea; or if they are to be goodly and solemn
+pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and the purple
+burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy
+green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give
+that spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven:
+depend upon it, their chief beauty is in these.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_17"><img src="images/img067.jpg" width="400" height="188" alt="Fig. 17." title="Fig. 17." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 17.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small,
+you will notice that, though the boughs spring irregularly and
+at various angles, there is a tendency in all to stoop less and
+less as they near the top of the tree. This structure, typified
+in the simplest possible terms at <i>c</i>, <a href="#fig_17">Fig. 17</a>, is common to
+all trees that I know of, and it gives them a certain plumy
+character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their branches
+which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not
+merely send off a wild branch here and there to take its own
+way, but all the branches share in one great fountain-like impulse;
+each has a curve and a path to take, which fills a definite
+place, and each terminates all its minor branches at its
+outer extremity, so as to form a greater outer curve, whose
+character and proportion are peculiar for each species. That
+is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_17">Fig.
+17</a>, but as <i>b</i>, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page068"></a>68</span>
+minor divisions right out to the bounding curve; not but
+that smaller branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart
+of the tree, but the idea and main purpose in every branch
+are to carry all its child branches well out to the air and light,
+and let each of them, however small, take its part in filling
+the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the type of
+each separate bough is again not <i>a</i>, but <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_18">Fig. 18</a>; approximating,
+that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of
+broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to
+a rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless
+habit of drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the
+pen or brush, one hanging to the other, as in <a href="#fig_19">Fig. 19</a>. If
+you look at the tree-boughs in any painting of Wilson's you
+will see this structure, and nearly every other that is to be
+avoided, in their intensest types. You will also notice that
+Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if
+it had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing
+pines seem to fancy, in the same way, that the boughs come
+out only on two sides of the trunk, instead of all round it:
+always, therefore, take more pains in trying to draw the
+boughs of trees that grow <i>towards</i> you than those that go
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page069"></a>69</span>
+off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the foreshortened
+ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing
+them to observe that in most trees the ramification of each
+branch, though not of the tree itself, is more or less flattened,
+and approximates, in its position, to the look of a hand held
+out to receive something, or shelter something. If you
+take a looking-glass, and hold your hand before it slightly
+hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers open, as if
+you were going to support the base of some great bowl, larger
+than you could easily hold; and sketch your hand as you see
+it in the glass with the points of the fingers towards you;
+it will materially help you in understanding the way trees
+generally hold out their hands: and if then you will turn
+yours with its palm downwards, as if you were going to try
+to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will
+get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and
+such other spreading trees.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_18"><img src="images/img068a.jpg" width="400" height="161" alt="Fig. 18." title="Fig. 18." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 18.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_19"><img src="images/img068b.jpg" width="400" height="186" alt="Fig. 19." title="Fig. 19." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 19.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>106. <a href="#fig_20">Fig. 20</a> will give you a good idea of the simplest way
+in which these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed;
+if you copy it carefully, you will be surprised to find how the
+touches all group together, in expressing the plumy toss of
+the tree branches, and the springing of the bushes out of the
+bank, and the undulation of the ground: note the careful
+drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers of the little
+mound on the left.<a name="FnAnchor_23" href="#Footnote_23"><span class="sp">[23]</span></a> It is facsimilëd from an etching of
+Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the
+use of pure and firm lines; it will also show you how the
+particular action in foliage, or anything else to which you
+wish to direct attention, may be intensified by the adjuncts.
+The tall and upright trees are made to look more tall and
+upright still, because their line is continued below by the
+figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes
+on the bank are made to look more rounded because their
+line is continued in one broad sweep by the black dog and
+the boy climbing the wall. These figures are placed entirely
+with this object, as we shall see more fully hereafter when we
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page070"></a>70</span>
+come to talk about composition; but, if you please, we will not
+talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
+about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing
+to do with composition, but only with fact, and the brief and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page071"></a>71</span>
+expressive representation of fact. But there will be no harm
+in your looking forward, if you like to do so, to the account,
+in Letter III. of the "Law of Radiation," and reading what
+is said there about tree growth: indeed it would in some respects
+have been better to have said it here than there, only
+it would have broken up the account of the principles of
+composition somewhat awkwardly.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_20"><img src="images/img070.jpg" width="528" height="700" alt="Fig. 20." title="Fig. 20." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 20.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not
+always quite so manifest in other things as in trees, a little
+attention will soon enable you to see that there are such lines
+in everything. In an old house roof, a bad observer and bad
+draughtsman will only see and draw the spotty irregularity
+of tiles or slates all over; but a good draughtsman will see all
+the bends of the under timbers, where they are weakest and
+the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the run
+of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and
+where it lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful,
+however few slates he draws, to mark the way they bend
+together towards those hollows (which have the future fate
+of the roof in them), and crowd gradually together at the
+top of the gable, partly diminishing in perspective, partly,
+perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most English
+old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always
+the direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which
+rounds the earth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in
+any bank or height worth drawing, a trace of bedded or
+other internal structure besides. <a href="#fig_20">Figure 20</a> will give you
+some idea of the way in which such facts may be expressed
+by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground
+all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people
+always turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little,
+and then how the water runs down in that other hollow
+towards the valley, behind the roots of the trees?</p>
+
+<p>108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature
+to aim exclusively at understanding and representing these
+vital facts of form; using the pen&mdash;not now the steel, but
+the quill&mdash;firmly and steadily, never scrawling with it, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page072"></a>72</span>
+saying to yourself before you lay on a single touch,&mdash;"<i>that</i>
+leaf is the main one, <i>that</i> bough is the guiding one, and this
+touch, <i>so</i> long, <i>so</i> broad, means that part of it,"&mdash;point or
+side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you
+look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it,
+and never let your hand run away with you, or get into any
+habit or method of touch. If you want a continuous line,
+your hand should pass calmly from one end of it to the other
+without a tremor; if you want a shaking and broken line,
+your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a musician's
+finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that
+there is no general way of doing <i>any</i> thing; no recipe can be
+given you for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass.
+The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing;
+sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid; fresh or
+dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to draw it as it is,
+and don't think how somebody "told you to <i>do</i> grass." So
+a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked
+all over like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as
+the breast of Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as
+powdery as a field puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's
+hawser, or kneaded like hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus
+saber, or fused like a glass bottle, or crystallized like
+hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf: look at it, and don't
+try to remember how anybody told you to "do a stone."</p>
+
+<p>109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you
+thoroughly, and that you can render any form with a firmness
+and truth approaching that of Turner's or Dürer's work,<a name="FnAnchor_24" href="#Footnote_24"><span class="sp">[24]</span></a>
+you must add a simple but equally careful light and shade to
+your pen drawing, so as to make each study as complete as
+possible; for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get,
+if you have the means, a good impression of one plate of
+Turner's Liber Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page073"></a>73</span>
+named in the note below.<a name="FnAnchor_25" href="#Footnote_25"><span class="sp">[25]</span></a> If you cannot obtain, or even
+borrow for a little while, any of these engravings, you must
+use a photograph instead (how, I will tell you presently);
+but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You will
+see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page074"></a>74</span>
+shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched
+part of it accurately; to which end put the print against the
+window, and trace slowly with the greatest care every black
+line; retrace this on smooth drawing-paper; and, finally, go
+over the whole with your pen, looking at the original plate
+always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the right side,
+not making a line which is too curved or too straight already
+in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over
+it. And in doing this, never work after you are tired, nor
+to "get the thing done," for if it is badly done, it will be of
+no use to you. The true zeal and patience of a quarter of an
+hour are better than the sulky and inattentive labor of a
+whole day. If you have not made the touches right at the
+first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with
+little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they
+need: you cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then
+keep this etched outline by you in order to study at your
+ease the way in which Turner uses his line as preparatory for
+the subsequent shadow;<a name="FnAnchor_26" href="#Footnote_26"><span class="sp">[26]</span></a> it is only in getting the two separate
+that you will be able to reason on this. Next, copy once
+more, though for the fourth time, any part of this etching
+which you like, and put on the light and shade with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page075"></a>75</span>
+brush, and any brown color that matches that of the plate;<a name="FnAnchor_27" href="#Footnote_27"><span class="sp">[27]</span></a>
+working it with the point of the brush as delicately as if you
+were drawing with pencil, and dotting and cross-hatching
+as lightly as you can touch the paper, till you get the gradations
+of Turner's engraving.</p>
+
+<p>110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of
+an inch worked to close resemblance of the copy is worth
+more than the whole subject carelessly done. Not that in
+drawing afterwards from Nature you are to be obliged to
+finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having
+fully accomplished the drawing <i>something</i> rightly, you will
+thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you
+could otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you,
+and bring out quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with
+a submissiveness which it would have wholly refused if you
+had not put it to severest work. Nothing is more strange in
+art than the way that chance and materials seem to favor you,
+when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make
+yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite
+of it, and from that day forward all things will somehow fall
+as you would have them. Show the camel's hair, and the
+color in it, that no bending nor blotting is of any use to
+escape your will; that the touch and the shade <i>shall</i> finally
+be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that hour of
+corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to
+all your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its
+appointed border. If you cannot obtain a print from the
+Liber Studiorum, get a photograph<a name="FnAnchor_28" href="#Footnote_28"><span class="sp">[28]</span></a> of some general landscape
+subject, with high hills and a village or picturesque
+town, in the middle distance, and some calm water of varied
+character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
+any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working,
+as I have just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal
+with the point of the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page076"></a>76</span>
+here, however; first, there are portions in every
+photograph too delicately done for you at present to be at
+all able to copy; and, secondly, there are portions always
+more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene,
+and involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as
+yet, to decipher. Both these characters will be advantageous
+to you for future study, after you have gained experience,
+but they are a little against you in early attempts at tinting;
+still you must fight through the difficulty, and get the power
+of producing delicate gradations with brown or gray, like
+those of the photograph.</p>
+
+<p>111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted
+shadow, like photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated
+darkness; and as long as your effect depends in anywise
+on visible lines, your art is not perfect, though it may
+be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete results in tints
+merely, requires both long time and consummate skill; and
+you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed
+over or under them, get more expression of facts than you
+could reach in any other way, by the same expenditure of
+time. The use of the Liber Studiorum print to you is
+chiefly as an example of the simplest shorthand of this kind,
+a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with the most
+subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the expression
+of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
+ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express
+the most tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light,
+mist, or cloud. Most of the best drawings by the old masters
+are executed on this principle, the touches of the pen being
+useful also to give a look of transparency to shadows, which
+could not otherwise be attained but by great finish of tinting;
+and if you have access to any ordinarily good public gallery,
+or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios either
+of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at
+a loss to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting.
+Multitudes of photographs also are now taken from the best
+drawings by the old masters, and I hope that our Mechanics'
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page077"></a>77</span>
+Institutes and other societies organized with a view to public
+instruction, will not fail to possess themselves of examples of
+these, and to make them accessible to students of drawing in
+the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
+the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
+photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing
+in the Louvre, to show the unity of the soft tinting of
+the stump with chalk, would be all that is necessary, and
+would, I believe, be in many cases more serviceable than a
+larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate
+prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
+because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately,
+or chalk separately, or color separately, may be seen by the
+poorest student in any cheap illustrated book, or in shop
+windows. But this unity of tinting with line he cannot
+generally see but by some special inquiry, and in some out
+of the way places he could not find a single example of it.
+Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that
+you cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make
+the matter out alone, thus:</p>
+
+<p>112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself
+half an hour to express its subjects with the pen only, using
+some permanent liquid color instead of ink, outlining its
+buildings or trees firmly, and laying in the deeper shadows,
+as you have been accustomed to do in your bolder pen drawings;
+then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or gray,
+and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the photograph;
+and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife
+or blotting paper. You will soon find what can be done in
+this way; and by a series of experiments you may ascertain
+for yourself how far the pen may be made serviceable to
+reinforce shadows, mark characters of texture, outline unintelligible
+masses, and so on. The more time you have, the
+more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it
+with the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must
+keep the two. Practice in this way from one photograph,
+allowing yourself sometimes only a quarter of an hour for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page078"></a>78</span>
+the whole thing, sometimes an hour, sometimes two or three
+hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in full depth
+of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the parts
+as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe,
+you will do well to repeat frequently, whether you can get
+prints and drawings as well as photographs, or not.</p>
+
+<p>113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber
+Studiorum, or its photographic substitute, faithfully, you
+have the complete means in your power of working from
+Nature on all subjects that interest you, which you should do
+in four different ways.</p>
+
+<p>First. When you have full time, and your subject is one
+that will stay quiet for you, make perfect light and shade
+studies, or as nearly perfect as you can, with gray or brown
+color of any kind, reinforced and defined with the pen.</p>
+
+<p>114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject
+is so rich in detail that you feel you cannot complete it
+intelligibly in light and shade, make a hasty study of the
+effect, and give the rest of the time to a Düreresque expression
+of the details. If the subject seems to you interesting, and
+there are points about it which you cannot understand, try
+to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
+memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of
+this nearer sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus
+perfect your experience of the aspect of things, and know
+that such and such a look of a tower or cottage at five hundred
+yards off means <i>that</i> sort of tower or cottage near; while, also,
+this nearer sketch will be useful to prevent any future misinterpretation
+of your own work. If you have time, however
+far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
+carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also
+your Düreresque and your near memoranda; for if your
+light and shade drawing be good, much of the interesting
+detail must be lost in it, or disguised.</p>
+
+<p>115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily
+and quickly with a soft pencil, dashed over when done with
+one tolerably deep tone of gray, which will fix the pencil.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page079"></a>79</span>
+While this fixing color is wet, take out the higher lights with
+the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out the
+highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully
+applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper
+is to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well;
+for you can get more gradation by the taking off your wet
+tint, and laying it on cunningly a little darker here and there,
+than you can with body-color white, unless you are consummately
+skillful. There is no objection to your making
+your Düreresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
+touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend
+much on your white touches, nor make the sketch for their
+sake.</p>
+
+<p>116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful
+study nor for Düreresque detail, sketch the outline with
+pencil, then dash in the shadows with the brush boldly, trying
+to do as much as you possibly can at once, and to get a habit
+of expedition and decision; laying more color again and
+again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
+which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out
+your chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material,
+taking the color off here with the dry brush, scratching out
+lights in it there with the wooden handle of the brush, rubbing
+it in with your fingers, drying it off with your sponge,
+etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and mark the
+outline characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber
+Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying
+away pieces of effect which depend not so much on
+refinement as on complexity, strange shapes of involved
+shadows, sudden effects of sky, etc.; and it is most useful
+as a safeguard against any too servile or slow habits which
+the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
+endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and
+dash for display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable;
+there are a velocity and a dash which not only are compatible
+with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which cannot
+be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to study
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page080"></a>80</span>
+occasionally for speed and decision, while your continual
+course of practice is such as to insure your retaining an
+accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
+circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you
+will find yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration
+than negligence.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_21"><img src="images/img080.jpg" width="500" height="302" alt="Fig. 21." title="Fig. 21." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 21.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever
+kind of landscape scenery you are passing through, to get
+into the habit of making memoranda of the shapes of shadows.
+You will find that many objects of no essential interest in
+themselves, and neither deserving a finished study, nor a
+Düreresque one, may yet become of singular value in consequence
+of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it
+happens often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much
+a more important element than the substance. Thus, in the
+Alpine bridge, <a href="#fig_21">Fig. 21</a>, seen within a few yards of it, as
+in the figure, the arrangement of timbers to which the
+shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's distance,
+in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
+painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large
+spot, and the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without
+indication of their cause, as in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. 22</a> <i>a</i>; and if we saw
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page081"></a>81</span>
+it at still greater distances, it would appear, as in <a href="#fig_22">Fig. 22</a> <i>b</i>
+and <i>c</i>, diminishing at last to a strange, unintelligible, spider-like
+spot of gray on the light hill-side. A perfectly great
+painter, throughout his distances, continually reduces his
+objects to these shadow abstracts; and the singular, and to
+many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused touches
+in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
+accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_22"><img src="images/img081.jpg" width="261" height="500" alt="Fig. 22." title="Fig. 22." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 22.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are
+in haste, with an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness
+of the point to insure your drawing delicately enough
+when the forms of the shadows are very subtle; they are sure
+to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The
+pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are
+master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used,
+is both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one
+and the gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory
+to see the sharp touches, on which the best of the detail
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page082"></a>82</span>
+depends, getting gradually deadened by time, or to find the
+places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a fire-grate,
+that I should recommend rather the steady use of the
+pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it; keeping
+only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
+well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities:
+but never being without this.</p>
+
+<p>119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which
+you are at first to draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be
+serviceable to you, if I also note one or two points respecting
+your choice of subjects for study, and the best special methods
+of treating some of them; for one of by no means the least
+difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a peculiar
+instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
+to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given
+scene. There are many things in every landscape which
+can be drawn, if at all, only by the most accomplished artists;
+and I have noticed that it is nearly always these which a
+beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it will be something
+which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for a picture,
+and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
+pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius
+of beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:</p>
+
+<p>120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account
+of their associations; or at least do not draw them because
+you love them; but merely when you cannot get anything else
+to draw. If you try to draw places that you love, you are
+sure to be always entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron
+railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges;
+besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor
+to make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be
+fatal to your progress. You need never hope to get on, if you
+are the least anxious that the drawing you are actually at
+work upon should look nice when it is done. All you have to
+care about is to make it <i>right</i>, and to learn as much in doing
+it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in your
+friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page083"></a>83</span>
+you may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the
+fire-irons or the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it <i>is</i> for
+practice, and not because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly
+poker and tongs, nor because you wish to please your friend
+by drawing her room.</p>
+
+<p>121. Also, never make presents of your drawings.  Of
+course I am addressing you as a beginner&mdash;a time may
+come when your work will be precious to everybody; but be
+resolute not to give it away till you know that it is worth
+something (as soon as it is worth anything you will know
+that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing,
+send them a couple of cakes of color and a piece of Bristol
+board: those materials are, for the present, of more value
+in that form than if you had spread the one over the other.</p>
+
+<p>The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance
+will much protect you from the great danger of trying
+to make your drawings pretty.</p>
+
+<p>122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished;
+especially if complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and
+curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A
+shining knob of a piece of furniture does not matter if it
+comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not look
+right, and choose only things that do not shine.</p>
+
+<p>(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly
+difficult to draw, and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough,
+worn, and clumsy-looking things as much as possible; for
+instance, you cannot have a more difficult or profitless study
+than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study than
+an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general,
+everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to
+draw.</p>
+
+<p>(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one
+thing is seen through another. You will constantly find a
+thin tree standing before your chosen cottage, or between you
+and the turn of the river; its near branches all entangled
+with the distance. It is intensely difficult to represent this;
+and though, when the tree <i>is</i> there, you must not imaginarily
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page084"></a>84</span>
+cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look for
+subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that
+is, rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for
+one with a thin tree in front of it, rather for a mass of wood,
+soft, blue, and rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion
+of intricate stems.</p>
+
+<p>(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges.
+Perhaps nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so
+utterly unpicturesque and unmanageable as the ordinary
+English patchwork of field and hedge, with trees dotted over
+it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle line.</p>
+
+<p>Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill,
+and that the subject overmasters you. It is much better that
+it should, than that you should think you had entirely
+mastered <i>it</i>. But at first, and even for some time, you must
+be prepared for very discomfortable failure; which, nevertheless,
+will not be without some wholesome result.</p>
+
+<p>123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely
+to avoid, I may, perhaps, help you a little by saying what to
+seek. In general, all banks are beautiful things, and will
+reward work better than large landscapes. If you live in
+a lowland country, you must look for places where the ground
+is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots
+of trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things
+within your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy
+mill-dams, etc. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk
+country will present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides;
+better in form and color than high chalk cliffs. In woods,
+one or two trunks, with the flowery ground below, are at
+once the richest and easiest kind of study: a not very thick
+trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running
+up it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are
+always beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are
+not modern rows of pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and
+Doric porticoes. Any old English village, or cluster of farmhouses,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page085"></a>85</span>
+drawn with all its ins and outs, and haystacks, and
+palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a French one.
+French landscape is generally as much superior to English
+as Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French
+is incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine,
+which I have recommended you to buy the engraving of,
+admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful rusticity
+and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component lines.</p>
+
+<p>In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens;
+a rustic garden is in every way beautiful. If you have time,
+draw all the rows of cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken
+fences, and wandering eglantines, and bossy roses; you cannot
+have better practice, nor be kept by anything in purer
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood,
+and study them ripple by ripple.</p>
+
+<p>Village churches in England are not often good subjects;
+there is a peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness
+of line. Old manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are
+usually, with us, too prim, and cathedrals too orderly. I
+do not think there is a single cathedral in England from
+which it is possible to obtain <i>one</i> subject for an impressive
+drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or
+jarring vergerism about them.</p>
+
+<p>125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only
+danger is redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first
+place, to draw a piece of rounded rock, with its variegated
+lichens, quite rightly, getting its complete roundings, and
+all the patterns of the lichen in true local color. Till you can
+do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching among
+hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
+hills will be comparatively easy.</p>
+
+<p>126. When you have practiced for a little time from such
+of these subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly
+find difficulties arising which will make you wish
+more than ever for a master's help: these difficulties will
+vary according to the character of your own mind (one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page086"></a>86</span>
+question occurring to one person, and one to another), so that
+it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would make
+this too large a book if I answered all that I <i>can</i> anticipate;
+you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature
+will, in her own time, interpret to you much for herself;
+that farther experience on your own part will make some
+difficulties disappear; and that others will be removed by
+the occasional observation of such artists' work as may come
+in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
+a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after
+you are somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks
+may, I think, be conveniently arranged under three heads,
+having reference to the drawing of vegetation, water, and
+skies.</p>
+
+<p>127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps,
+we have said enough about trees already; yet if you have
+done as you were bid, and tried to draw them frequently
+enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by this time
+to hear a little more of them. You will also recollect that
+we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing
+intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I
+left it so because I wanted you to learn the real structure of
+leaves, by drawing them for yourself, before I troubled you
+with the most subtle considerations as to method in drawing
+them. And by this time, I imagine, you must have found
+out two principal things, universal facts, about leaves;
+namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their
+lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according
+to the law of radiation, already referred to;<a name="FnAnchor_29" href="#Footnote_29"><span class="sp">[29]</span></a> and the second,
+that this divergence is never formal, but carried out with
+endless variety of individual line. I must now press both
+these facts on your attention a little farther.</p>
+
+<p>128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have
+not yet spoken of the works of J. D. Harding, especially if
+you happen to have met with the passages referring to them
+in Modern Painters, in which they are highly praised. They
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page087"></a>87</span>
+are deservedly praised, for they are the only works by a
+modern<a name="FnAnchor_30" href="#Footnote_30"><span class="sp">[30]</span></a> draughtsman which express in any wise the energy
+of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking.
+There are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of
+general character, obtained with little cost of time, at all
+rival Harding's. Calame, Robert, and the other lithographic
+landscape sketchers are altogether inferior in power, though
+sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you must not
+take even Harding for a model, though you may use his
+works for occasional reference; and if you can afford to
+buy his Lessons on Trees,<a name="FnAnchor_31" href="#Footnote_31"><span class="sp">[31]</span></a> it will be serviceable to you in
+various ways, and will at present help me to explain the point
+under consideration. And it is well that I should illustrate
+this point by reference to Harding's works, because their
+great influence on young students renders it desirable that
+their real character should be thoroughly understood.</p>
+
+<p>129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on
+Trees, a pretty wood-cut, in which the tree stems are drawn
+with great truth, and in a very interesting arrangement of
+lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy of Mr. Harding, tending
+too much to make his pupil, at starting, think everything
+depends on black dots; still, the main lines are good, and
+very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we
+come to the point at issue. The first examples in that plate
+are given to the pupil that he may practice from them till
+his hand gets into the habit of arranging lines freely in a
+similar manner; and they are stated by Mr. Harding to be
+universal in application; "all outlines expressive of foliage,"
+he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
+groups of lines, more or less resembling our <a href="#fig_23">Fig. 23</a> below;
+and the characters especially insisted upon are, that they
+"tend at their inner ends to a common center;" that "their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page088"></a>88</span>
+ends terminate in [are inclosed by] ovoid curves;" and
+that "the outer ends are most emphatic."</p>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_23"><img src="images/img088.jpg" width="150" height="79" alt="Fig. 23." title="Fig. 23." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 23.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>130. Now, as thus expressive of
+the great laws of radiation and inclosure,
+the main principle of this
+method of execution confirms, in a
+very interesting way, our conclusions
+respecting foliage composition. The
+reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to
+be most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the
+line at one end of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than
+the line at the other: but ultimately, in Harding's method,
+this darker part of the touch stands more or less for the shade
+at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and, as Harding
+uses these touches, they express as much of tree character
+as any mere habit of touch <i>can</i> express. But, unfortunately,
+there is another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law
+of radiation, which this and all other conventional modes
+of execution wholly lose sight of. This second law is, that
+the radiating tendency shall be carried out only as a ruling
+spirit in reconcilement with perpetual individual caprice
+on the part of the separate leaves. So that the moment a
+touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of
+the leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its
+unity of growth with its companions in the radiating group.</p>
+
+<p>131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical
+the cluster may be, nor how large or vague. You
+can hardly have a more formal one than <i>b</i> in <a href="#fig_9">Fig. 9</a>, <a href="#page047">p. 47</a>,
+nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish chestnut,
+shedding its leaves, <a href="#fig_24">Fig. 24</a>; but in either of them, even the
+general reader, unpracticed in any of the previously recommended
+exercises, must see that there are wandering lines
+mixed with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the
+wild ones: and if he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of
+these examples, he will find that neither play of hand to
+left nor to right, neither a free touch nor a firm touch, nor
+any learnable or describable touch whatsoever, will enable
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page089"></a>89</span>
+him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it; but that he
+must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
+the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and
+putting it close to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage
+against the sky, you may draw the entire outline of the
+leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it, and is ever so little
+a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point of a leaf
+here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
+by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
+through this confusion for the edges or dark stems
+which you really <i>can</i> see and put only those down, the result
+will be neither like <a href="#fig_9">Fig. 9</a> nor <a href="#fig_24">Fig. 24</a>, but such an interrupted
+and puzzling piece of work as <a href="#fig_25">Fig. 25</a>.<a name="FnAnchor_32" href="#Footnote_32"><span class="sp">[32]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page090"></a>90</span></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_24"><img src="images/img089a.jpg" width="400" height="331" alt="Fig. 24." title="Fig. 24." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 24.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_25"><img src="images/img089b.jpg" width="400" height="180" alt="Fig. 25." title="Fig. 25." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 25.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and
+expression of these <i>three</i> laws that all good drawing of landscape
+consists. There is, first, the organic unity; the law,
+whether of radiation, or parallelism, or concurrent action,
+which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of rocks, and clouds,
+and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the members
+subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery
+under which the separate character of each is more or less
+concealed.</p>
+
+<p>I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic
+law. This is the first distinction between good artists and
+bad artists. Your common sketcher or bad painter puts
+his leaves on the trees as if they were moss tied to sticks; he
+cannot see the lines of action or growth; he scatters the shapeless
+clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps of associated
+curves which the real clouds are following as they
+fly; and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments,
+wholly unconscious of the lines of force with which the real
+rocks have risen, or of the lines of couch in which they
+repose. On the contrary, it is the main delight of the great
+draughtsman to trace these laws of government; and his
+tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of their
+authority rather than in its denial.</p>
+
+<p>133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual
+character and liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks.
+And herein the great masters separate themselves finally
+from the inferior ones; for if the men of inferior genius
+ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice of individuality.
+Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep of
+foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single
+leaflet or mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough,
+in his landscape, has great feeling for masses of form and
+harmony of color; but in the detail gives nothing but meaningless
+touches; not even so much as the species of tree,
+much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible.
+Now, although both these expressions of government and
+individuality are essential to masterly work, the individuality
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page091"></a>91</span>
+is the <i>more</i> essential, and the more difficult of attainment;
+and, therefore, that attainment separates the great masters
+<i>finally</i> from the inferior ones. It is the more essential,
+because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in visible
+things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is
+a lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men
+subject to no government, actuated by no ruling principle,
+and associated by no common affection: but it would be a
+more lamentable thing still, were it possible, to see a number
+of men so oppressed into assimilation as to have no more any
+individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
+dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a
+society in which no man could help another, since none would
+be feebler than himself; no man admire another, since
+none would be stronger than himself; no man be grateful to
+another, since by none he could be relieved; no man reverence
+another, since by none he could be instructed; a society in
+which every soul would be as the syllable of a stammerer
+instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
+walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in
+everlasting multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in
+a speechless darkness. Therefore it is that perpetual difference,
+play, and change in groups of form are more
+essential to them even than their being subdued by some
+great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their
+perfection and their power, but the difference is needful to
+them for their life.</p>
+
+<p>134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you
+enjoy the pursuit of analogies and types, and have any
+ingenuity of judgment in discerning them, you may always
+accurately ascertain what are the noble characters in a piece
+of painting by merely considering what are the noble characters
+of man in his association with his fellows. What grace
+of manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of
+line and refinement of form are in the association of visible
+objects. What advantage or harm there may be in sharpness,
+ruggedness, or quaintness in the dealings or conversations of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page092"></a>92</span>
+men; precisely that relative degree of advantage or harm
+there is in them as elements of pictorial composition. What
+power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or relieve
+human souls; that power precisely in the same relative degree,
+play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the
+expression of a picture. And what goodness or greatness we
+can conceive to arise in companies of men, from chastity of
+thought, regularity of life, simplicity of custom, and balance
+of authority; precisely that kind of goodness and greatness
+may be given to a picture by the purity of its color, the
+severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.</p>
+
+<p>135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these
+analogies too far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are
+so precise and complete, that the farther you pursue them,
+the clearer, the more certain, the more useful you will find
+them. They will not fail you in one particular, or in any
+direction of inquiry.  There is no moral vice, no moral
+virtue, which has not its <i>precise</i> prototype in the art of
+painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral
+habit by the art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection
+and discord, fretfulness, and quietness, feebleness and firmness,
+luxury and purity, pride and modesty, and all other
+such habits, and every conceivable modification and mingling
+of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness,
+by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable
+vices and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of
+human character and passion, from the righteous or unrighteous
+majesty of the king to the innocent or faultful simplicity
+of the shepherd boy.</p>
+
+<p>136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however,
+to the investigation of the higher branches of composition,
+matters which it would be quite useless to treat of in this
+book; and I only allude to them here, in order that you may
+understand how the utmost noblenesses of art are concerned
+in this minute work, to which I have set you in your beginning
+of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the
+most noble execution, that it is possible to express these
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page093"></a>93</span>
+varieties of individual character, on which all excellence of
+portraiture depends, whether of masses of mankind, or of
+groups of leaves.</p>
+
+<p>137. Now you will be able to understand, among other
+matters, wherein consists the excellence, and wherein the
+shortcoming, of the tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent
+in so far as it fondly observes, with more truth than any
+other work of the kind, the great laws of growth and action
+in trees: it fails,&mdash;and observe, not in a minor, but in the
+principal point,&mdash;because it cannot rightly render any one
+individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails,
+not from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity;
+the true drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to
+a hand which has contracted a <i>habit</i> of execution. The noble
+draughtsman draws a leaf, and stops, and says calmly,&mdash;That
+leaf is of such and such a character; I will give him
+a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers what
+his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his
+friend. This process may be as quick as lightning when
+the master is great&mdash;one of the sons of the giants; or it may
+be slow and timid: but the process is always gone through;
+no touch or form is ever added to another by a good painter
+without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
+the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf
+No. 2; you cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit
+in its teeth; or rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing
+out leaves to order and pattern, all alike. You must stop
+that hand of yours, however painfully; make it understand
+that it is not to have its own way any more, that it shall
+never more slip from one touch to another without orders;
+otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers.
+You may therefore study Harding's drawing, and take
+pleasure in it;<a name="FnAnchor_33" href="#Footnote_33"><span class="sp">[33]</span></a> and you may properly admire the dexterity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page094"></a>94</span>
+which applies the habit of the hand so well, and produces
+results on the whole so satisfactory: but you must never copy
+it; otherwise your progress will be at once arrested. The
+utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's
+manner, but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given
+his life's toil to gain his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have
+other things to work at besides drawing. You would also
+incapacitate yourself from ever understanding what truly
+great work was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and
+complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand
+the one and love the other more and more, whether you
+can draw well yourself or not.</p>
+
+<p>138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third
+law above stated, that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing
+is ever seen perfectly, but only by fragments, and under
+various conditions of obscurity.<a name="FnAnchor_34" href="#Footnote_34"><span class="sp">[34]</span></a> This last fact renders the
+visible objects of Nature complete as a type of the human
+nature. We have, observe, first, Subordination; secondly,
+Individuality; lastly, and this not the least essential character,
+Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every serrated
+point and shining vein which escapes or deceives our
+sight among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to
+discern clearly, or judge justly, the rents and veins of the
+human heart; how much of all that is round us, in men's
+actions or spirits, which we at first think we understand,
+a closer and more loving watchfulness would show to be full
+of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_26"><img src="images/img095.jpg" width="436" height="500" alt="Fig. 26." title="Fig. 26." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 26.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>139. The expression of this final character in landscape
+has never been completely reached by any except Turner;
+nor can you hope to reach it at all until you have given much
+time to the practice of art. Only try always when you are
+sketching any object with a view to completion in light and
+shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
+definitely; preparing for the after development of the forms
+by chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page095"></a>95</span>
+a future arrangement of superimposed light and shade which
+renders the etchings of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as
+examples, and so peculiar. The character exists more or less
+in them exactly in proportion to the pains that Turner has
+taken. Thus the Æsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with
+the greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the
+near tree is etched as in <a href="#fig_26">Fig. 26</a>. The work looks at first
+like a scholar's instead of a master's; but when the light
+and shade are added, every touch falls into its place, and a
+perfect expression of grace and complexity results. Nay,
+even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be
+able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially
+where the expression is given of the way the stem loses itself
+in the leaves, are more true than the monotonous though
+graceful leaf-drawing which, before Turner's time, had been
+employed, even by the best masters, in their distant masses.
+<a href="#fig_27">Fig. 27</a> is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of the
+old wood-cuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are
+too much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page096"></a>96</span>
+too completely seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery
+in aspect, owing to the want of angles in their outline. By
+great men like Titian, this somewhat conventional structure
+was only given in haste to distant masses; and their exquisite
+delineation of the foreground, kept their conventionalism from
+degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and other
+derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere,
+and sinks gradually into scrawled work, like <a href="#fig_28">Fig. 28</a>, about
+the worst which it is possible to get into the habit of using,
+though an ignorant person might perhaps suppose it more
+"free," and therefore better than <a href="#fig_26">Fig. 26</a>. Note also, that
+in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a bough is
+wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally somewhere,
+as in <a href="#fig_26">Fig. 26</a>, just above the foliage. Very often
+the muscular action which is to be expressed by the line runs
+into the middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the
+branch at that place may be dimly seen, or not at all; and
+it is then only by the future shade that its actual shape, or
+the cause of its disappearance, will be indicated.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_27"><img src="images/img096.jpg" width="300" height="216" alt="Fig. 27." title="Fig. 27." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 27.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>140. One point more remains to be noted about trees,
+and I have done. In the minds of our ordinary water-color
+artists a distant tree seems only to be conceived as a flat
+green blot, grouping pleasantly with other masses, and giving
+cool color to the landscape, but differing no wise, in texture,
+from the blots of other shapes which these painters use to
+express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have
+drawn trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed,
+and impressed more strongly the better you draw them, with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page097"></a>97</span>
+the idea of their <i>softness</i> of surface. A distant tree is not a
+flat and even piece of color, but a more or less globular mass
+of a downy or bloomy texture, partly passing into a misty
+vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely softness of far-away
+trees the most difficult of all characters to reach, because
+it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the surface,
+but is always associated with such delicate expressions of
+form and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing.
+The penknife passed lightly <i>over</i> this careful drawing
+will do a good deal; but you must accustom yourself, from
+the beginning, to aim much at this softness in the lines of
+the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and more or
+less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,
+according to the character of tree, various modes of execution
+adapted to express its texture; but always keep this character
+of softness in your mind, and in your scope of aim; for in
+most landscapes it is the intention of Nature that the tenderness
+and transparent infinitude of her foliage should be felt,
+even at the far distance, in the most distinct opposition to
+the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or buildings.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page098"></a>98</span></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_28"><img src="images/img097.jpg" width="300" height="384" alt="Fig. 28." title="Fig. 28." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 28.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little
+the modes of representing water, of which important feature
+of landscape I have hardly said anything yet.</p>
+
+<p>Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional
+lines, whose horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of
+its surface. In paintings, white dashes or bars of light are
+used for the same purpose.</p>
+
+<p>But these and all other such expedients are vain and
+absurd. A piece of calm water always contains a picture in
+itself, an exquisite reflection of the objects above it. If
+you give the time necessary to draw these reflections, disturbing
+them here and there as you see the breeze or current
+disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you
+have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will
+give you a true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly
+as much delicate drawing as the picture above the pool;
+except only that if there be the least motion on the water,
+the horizontal lines of the images will be diffused and broken,
+while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and the oblique
+ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.</p>
+
+<p>142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only
+thing you need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of
+disturbance on the surface, as when a bird swims across it,
+or a fish rises, or the current plays round a stone, reed, or
+other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to get the <i>curves</i> of
+these lines true; the whole value of your careful drawing
+of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single
+false curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as
+in other subjects) if you are dissatisfied with your result,
+always try for more unity and delicacy: if your reflections
+are only soft and gradated enough, they are nearly sure to
+give you a pleasant effect.<a name="FnAnchor_35" href="#Footnote_35"><span class="sp">[35]</span></a> When you are taking pains,
+work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by
+motion in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as
+may be; but when you are in a hurry, indicate the place and
+play of the images with vertical lines. The actual construction
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page099"></a>99</span>
+of a calm elongated reflection is with horizontal lines:
+but it is often impossible to draw the descending shades
+delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best
+always when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you
+are not, to use the vertical touch. When the ripples are
+large, the reflections become shaken, and must be drawn with
+bold undulatory descending lines.</p>
+
+<p>143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the
+greatest possible importance to draw the curves of the shore
+rightly. Their perspective is, if not more subtle, at least
+more stringent than that of any other lines in Nature. It
+will not be detected by the general observer, if you miss the
+curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or the perspective
+of a building;<a name="FnAnchor_36" href="#Footnote_36"><span class="sp">[36]</span></a> but every intelligent spectator will feel the
+difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or shingle,
+and a false one. <i>Absolutely</i> right, in difficult river perspectives
+seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever
+has been yet; and observe, there is NO rule for them. To
+develop the curve mathematically would require a knowledge
+of the exact quantity of water in the river, the shape of its
+bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even with
+these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician
+could solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye
+can do it; nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled
+by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected
+image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to
+know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the
+objects above the water <i>actually</i> reversed (not in appearance,
+but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in
+form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,
+whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand,
+of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100"></a>100</span>
+in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid
+objects so reversed.</p>
+
+<p>If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water,
+take a mirror, lay it horizontally on the table, put some books
+and papers upon it, and draw them and their reflections;
+moving them about, and watching how their reflections alter,
+and chiefly how their reflected colors and shades differ from
+their own colors and shades, by being brought into other
+oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
+character in water-painting than mere difference in form.</p>
+
+<p>145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water,
+you will see shadows on the bottom, or on the surface, continually
+modifying the reflections; and in a clear mountain
+stream, the most wonderful complications of effect resulting
+from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it, mingling
+with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
+water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on
+the other hand, do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it
+well, making out everything that you see, and distinguishing
+each component part of the effect. There will be, first, the
+stones seen through the water, distorted always by refraction,
+so that, if the general structure of the stone shows
+straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they
+will be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the
+part of the stone above the water crosses and interferes with
+the part that is seen through it, so that you can hardly tell
+which is which; and wherever the reflection is darkest, you
+will see through the water best,<a name="FnAnchor_37" href="#Footnote_37"><span class="sp">[37]</span></a> and <i>vice versâ</i>. Then the
+real shadow of the stone crosses both these images, and where
+that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective, and
+where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of
+the water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it:
+but whether you are to see, at the same spot, most of the
+bottom of the water, or of the reflection of the objects above,
+depends on the position of the eye. The more you look down
+into the water, the better you see objects through it; the more
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page101"></a>101</span>
+you look along it, the eye being low, the more you see the
+reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given
+space of surface in a stream will entirely change while you
+stand still in the same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your
+head; and thus the colors with which water is painted are
+an indication of the position of the spectator, and connected
+inseparably with the perspective of the shores. The most
+beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is
+when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are
+rich reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an
+angle which exactly divides the visible colors between those
+of the stones and that of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full
+blue. The resulting purple, obtained by the blending of the
+blue and the orange-red, broken by the play of innumerable
+gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.</p>
+
+<p>146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if
+there be a strong color in the clear water itself, as of green
+or blue in the Swiss lakes, all these phenomena are doubly
+involved; for the darker reflections now become of the color
+of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for instance,
+at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther,
+the color of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on
+the surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where
+the waves let light through them, at their edges; and the
+third, shown as a change of color on the objects seen through
+the water. Thus, the same wave that makes a white object
+look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will take a red or
+violet-colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure
+emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges.
+With all this, however, you are not much concerned at present,
+but I tell it you partly as a preparation for what we
+have afterwards to say about color, and partly that you may
+approach lakes and streams with reverence,<a name="FnAnchor_38" href="#Footnote_38"><span class="sp">[38]</span></a> and study them
+as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
+few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.<a name="FnAnchor_39" href="#Footnote_39"><span class="sp">[39]</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102"></a>102</span>
+Not but that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you
+know precisely what you mean by them, as you will see by
+many of the Turner sketches, which are now framed at the
+National Gallery; but you must have painted water many
+and many a day&mdash;yes, and all day long&mdash;before you can hope
+to do anything like those.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before
+passing to the clouds, I say nothing special about <i>ground</i>.<a name="FnAnchor_40" href="#Footnote_40"><span class="sp">[40]</span></a>
+But there is too much to be said about that to admit of my
+saying it here.  You will find the principal laws of its
+structure examined at length in the fourth volume of Modern
+Painters; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
+Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with great pains,
+it will give you as much help as you need in the linear
+expression of ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement
+and succession of masses in irregular ground: much may be
+done in this way by careful watching of the perspective diminutions
+of its herbage, as well as by contour; and much
+also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree
+trunks on any undulating ground with entire carefulness,
+you will be surprised to find how much they explain of the
+form and distance of the earth on which they fall.</p>
+
+<p>148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great
+peculiarity about sky subject, as distinguished from earth
+subject;&mdash;that the clouds, not being much liable to man's
+interference, are always beautifully arranged. You cannot
+be sure of this in any other features of landscape. The rock
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103"></a>103</span>
+on which the effect of a mountain scene especially depends is
+always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts or the landlord
+quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with
+a special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with
+her most delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer
+plows or builds upon. But the clouds, though we can hide
+them with smoke, and mix them with poison, cannot be
+quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore gloriously
+arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable
+powers of memory you need not hope to approach the effect
+of any sky that interests you. For both its grace and its
+glow depend upon the united influence of every cloud within
+its compass: they all move and burn together in a marvelous
+harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its appointed place,
+or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not able to
+recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is impossible
+you should) precisely the form and position of all the
+clouds at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all;
+for the clouds will not fit if you draw one part of them three
+or four minutes before another.</p>
+
+<p>149. You must try therefore to help what memory you
+have, by sketching at the utmost possible speed the whole
+range of the clouds; marking, by any shorthand or symbolic
+work you can hit upon, the peculiar character of each, as
+transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving afterwards
+such completion to the parts as your recollection will
+enable you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting
+from its general aspect; at other times, do not try to
+draw all the sky, but a single cloud: sometimes a round
+cumulus will stay five or six minutes quite steady enough to
+let you mark out his principal masses; and one or two white
+or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay without
+serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier
+in drawing them, practice occasionally drawing lumps of
+cotton, which will teach you better than any other stable
+thing the kind of softness there is in clouds. For you will
+find when you have made a few genuine studies of sky, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104"></a>104</span>
+then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
+artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in
+rounding the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged
+as a heap of stones tied up in a sack, or they represent them
+not as rounded at all, but as vague wreaths of mist or flat
+lights in the sky; and think they have done enough in leaving
+a little white paper between dashes of blue, or in taking an
+irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
+solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither
+spongy nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms
+of sculptured mist; sculptured is a perfectly accurate word;
+they are not more <i>drifted</i> into form than they are <i>carved</i> into
+form, the warm air around them cutting them into shape by
+absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain limits; hence
+their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
+swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand,
+as from that of flat films or shapeless mists on the other.
+And the worst of all is, that while these forms are difficult
+enough to draw on any terms, especially considering that
+they never stay quiet, they must be drawn also at greater
+disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the force
+of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that
+if we put shade enough to express their form as positively
+as it is expressed in reality, we must make them painfully
+too dark on the dark sides. Nevertheless, they are so beautiful,
+if you in the least succeed with them, that you will hardly,
+I think, lose courage.</p>
+
+<p>150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch
+them here and there; one of the chief uses of doing this will
+be, not so much the memorandum so obtained, as the lesson
+you will get respecting the softness of the cloud-outlines.
+You will always find yourself at a loss to see where the
+outline really is; and when drawn it will always look hard
+and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square,
+however often you alter it, merely passing from the one
+fault to the other and back again, the real cloud striking an
+inexpressible mean between roundness and squareness in all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105"></a>105</span>
+its coils or battlements. I speak at present, of course, only
+of the cumulus cloud: the lighter wreaths and flakes of the
+upper sky cannot be outlined;&mdash;they can only be sketched,
+like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly developed
+bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy
+enough, and may be drawn with decision. When you have
+thus accustomed yourself a little to the placing and action of
+clouds, try to work out their light and shade, just as carefully
+as you do that of other things, looking exclusively for examples
+of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy and Poems,
+and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some
+examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet
+drew the sky: even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional.
+The clouds in the "Ben Arthur," "Source of
+Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among the best of Turner's
+storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes to
+Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.</p>
+
+<p>151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky,
+so, for the present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be
+in any haste to master the contents of my next letter. If
+you have any real talent for drawing, you will take delight
+in the discoveries of natural loveliness, which the studies I
+have already proposed will lead you into, among the fields
+and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and single-heartedly
+you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
+whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have
+discussed the subjects of the following letter at greater length,
+and in a separate work addressed to more advanced students;
+but as there are one or two things to be said on composition
+which may set the young artist's mind somewhat more at
+rest, or furnish him with defense from the urgency of ill-advisers,
+I will glance over the main heads of the matter
+here; trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my
+dear reader, from your serious work, or lead you to think me,
+in occupying part of this book with talk not altogether
+relevant to it, less entirely or</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 5em; ">Faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; "><span class="sc">J. Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_23" href="#FnAnchor_23">[23]</a> It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_24" href="#FnAnchor_24">[24]</a> I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Dürer in their strength,
+that is to say, in their imagination or power of design. But you may
+approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_25" href="#FnAnchor_25">[25]</a> The following are the most desirable plates:&mdash;</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Grande Chartreuse.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Calais Pier.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Æsacus and Hesperie.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Pembury Mill.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Cephalus and Procris.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Little Devil's Bridge.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Source of Arveron.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">River Wye (<i>not</i> Wye and Severn).</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Ben Arthur.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Holy Island.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Watermill.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Clyde.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Hindhead Hill.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Lauffenburg.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Hedging and Ditching.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Blair Athol.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Dumblane Abbey.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Alps from Grenoble.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Morpeth.</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook, trees, and castle on the right.)</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p>If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be serviceable,
+except only the twelve following, which are quite useless:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="rsp">1. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">2. </td> <td class="lsp">Interior of church.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">3. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing a pipe.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">4. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene with figure playing on tambourine.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">5. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church seen through them.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">6. </td> <td class="lsp">Fifth Plague of Egypt.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">7. </td> <td class="lsp">Tenth Plague of Egypt.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">8. </td> <td class="lsp">Rivaulx Abbey.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">9. </td> <td class="lsp">Wye and Severn.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">10. </td> <td class="lsp">Scene with castle in center, cows under trees on the left.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">11. </td> <td class="lsp">Martello Towers.</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td class="rsp">12. </td> <td class="lsp">Calm.</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p>It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original etchings;
+if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself alone, for it is
+not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by Turner, but to a very
+careful one; only observe, the Source of Arveron, Raglan, and Dumblane
+were not etched by Turner; and the etchings of those three are not good
+for separate study, though it is deeply interesting to see how Turner,
+apparently provoked at the failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and
+Raglan, took the plates up himself, and either conquered or brought into
+use the bad etching by his marvelous engraving. The Dumblane was,
+however, well etched by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully engraved by him.
+The finest Turner etching is of an aqueduct with a stork standing in a
+mountain stream, not in the published series; and next to it, are the
+unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to
+have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouching and finishing
+them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via Mala is
+certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest of the whole
+series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that of the aqueduct. <a href="#fig_20">Figure
+20</a>, above, is part of another fine unpublished etching, "Windsor, from
+Salt Hill." Of the published etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur,
+Æsacus, Cephalus, and Stone Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern;
+the three latter are the more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis,
+Jason, and Morpeth, are also very desirable.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_26" href="#FnAnchor_26">[26]</a> You will find more notice of this point in the account of Harding's
+tree-drawing, a little farther on.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_27" href="#FnAnchor_27">[27]</a> The impressions vary so much in color that no brown can be specified.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_28" href="#FnAnchor_28">[28]</a> You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a Liber
+print as well.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_29" href="#FnAnchor_29">[29]</a> See the closing letter in this volume.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_30" href="#FnAnchor_30">[30]</a> [In 1857.]</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_31" href="#FnAnchor_31">[31]</a> If you are not acquainted with Harding's works, (an unlikely supposition,
+considering their popularity,) and cannot meet with the one in
+question, the diagrams given here will enable you to understand all that
+is needful for our purposes.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_32" href="#FnAnchor_32">[32]</a> I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it being
+impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant foliage in a
+wood-cut.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_33" href="#FnAnchor_33">[33]</a> His lithographic sketches, those for instance in the Park and the
+Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater merit than the
+more ambitious engravings in his Principles and Practice of Art. There
+are many useful remarks, however, dispersed through this latter work.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_34" href="#FnAnchor_34">[34]</a> On this law you do well, if you can get access to it, to look at the
+fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_35" href="#FnAnchor_35">[35]</a> See <a href="#note3">Note 3</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_36" href="#FnAnchor_36">[36]</a> The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of buildings
+is of little consequence; but he will find it so ultimately. See the
+remarks on this point in the Preface.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_37" href="#FnAnchor_37">[37]</a> See <a href="#note4">Note 4</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_38" href="#FnAnchor_38">[38]</a> See <a href="#note5">Note 5</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_39" href="#FnAnchor_39">[39]</a> It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in water,
+so as to make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white basin with the
+solution, and put anything you like to float on it, or lie in it; walnut
+shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc. Then study the effects of the
+reflections, and of the stems of the flowers or submerged portions of the
+floating objects, as they appear through the blue liquid; noting especially
+how, as you lower your head and look along the surface, you see the reflections
+clearly; and how, as you raise your head, you lose the reflections,
+and see the submerged stems clearly.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_40" href="#FnAnchor_40">[40]</a> Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works of
+Prout in the Appendix.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page106"></a>106</span></p>
+
+<h3>LETTER III.</h3>
+
+<h5>ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION.</h5>
+
+
+<p>152. <span class="sc">My dear Reader</span>,&mdash;If you have been obedient, and
+have hitherto done all that I have told you, I trust it has
+not been without much subdued remonstrance, and some
+serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when you were
+led by the course of your study to observe closely such things
+as are beautiful in color, you had not longed to paint them,
+and felt considerable difficulty in complying with your
+restriction to the use of black, or blue, or gray. You <i>ought</i>
+to love color, 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 color because you think painting
+a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may
+color well. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce
+anything more than pleasant helps to memory, or useful
+and suggestive sketches in color, unless you mean to be
+wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other vocations
+leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and
+masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well,
+requires your life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty
+of doing right is increased&mdash;not twofold nor threefold, but
+a thousandfold, and more&mdash;by the addition of color to your
+work. For the chances are more than a thousand to one
+against your being right both in form and color with a given
+touch: it is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend
+to that only; but when you have to attend, at the same
+moment, to a much more subtle thing than the form, the
+difficulty is strangely increased,&mdash;and multiplied almost to
+infinity by this great fact, that, while form is absolute, so
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107"></a>107</span>
+that you can say at the moment you draw any line that it
+is either right or wrong, color is wholly <i>relative</i>. Every hue
+throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add
+in other places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes
+cold when you have put a hotter color in another place, and
+what was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant
+as you set other colors beside it; so that every touch must
+be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but with a
+view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is
+afterwards to be done being previously considered. You
+may easily understand that, this being so, nothing but the
+devotion of life, and great genius besides, can make a colorist.</p>
+
+<p>153. But though you cannot produce finished colored drawings
+of any value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and
+be of great use to other people, by occasionally sketching
+with a view to color only; and preserving distinct statements
+of certain color facts&mdash;as that the harvest moon at rising was
+of such and such a red, and surrounded by clouds of such
+and such a rosy gray; that the mountains at evening were in
+truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's side were
+indeed of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you
+have an eye for color; but you may presume that you have
+this, if you enjoy color.</p>
+
+<p>154. And, though of course you should always give as
+much form to your subject as your attention to its color will
+admit of, remember that the whole value of what you are
+about depends, in a colored sketch, on the color merely.
+If the color is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if you
+are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how
+true the words are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly;
+and if you color at all, you must color rightly. Give up all
+the form, rather than the slightest part of the color: just as,
+if you felt yourself in danger of a false note, you would give
+up the word, and sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that
+so you could save the note. Never mind though your houses
+are all tumbling down,&mdash;though your clouds are mere blots,
+and your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108"></a>108</span>
+crooked sixpences,&mdash;so only that trees, clouds, houses, and
+sun or moon, are of the right colors. Of course, the discipline
+you have gone through will enable you to hint something of
+form, even in the fastest sweep of the brush; but do not let
+the thought of form hamper you in the least, when you begin
+to make colored memoranda. If you want the form of the
+subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its color,
+take its color, and be sure you <i>have</i> it, and not a spurious,
+treacherous, half-measured piece of mutual concession, with
+the colors all wrong, and the forms still anything but right.
+It is best to get into the habit of considering the colored work
+merely as supplementary to your other studies; making your
+careful drawings of the subject first, and then a colored
+memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful
+in hue, and entirely minding its own business. This
+principle, however, bears chiefly on large and distant subjects:
+in foregrounds and near studies, the color cannot be had
+without a good deal of definition of form. For if you do not
+map the mosses on the stones accurately, you will not have
+the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pattern, and
+then none of the colors will look right; but it always simplifies
+the work much if you are clear as to your point of aim,
+and satisfied, when necessary, to fail of all but that.</p>
+
+<p>155. Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting
+coloring, which is the beginning and end of a painter's
+craft, I should need to make this a work in three volumes
+instead of three letters, and to illustrate it in the costliest
+way. I only hope, at present, to set you pleasantly and
+profitably to work, leaving you, within the tethering of certain
+leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from the
+works of art of which every year brings a greater number
+within your reach;&mdash;and from the instruction which, every
+year, our rising artists will be more ready to give kindly,
+and better able to give wisely.</p>
+
+<p>156. And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colors, not
+moist colors: grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette
+every morning, keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109"></a>109</span>
+colors to be used in broad washes, and wash both plate and
+palette every evening, so as to be able always to get good and
+pure color when you need it; and force yourself into cleanly
+and orderly habits about your colors. The two best colorists
+of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,<a name="FnAnchor_41" href="#Footnote_41"><span class="sp">[41]</span></a> afford us, I am sorry
+to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice.
+Turner was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures
+as men can well be; but the result of this was, with Turner,
+that the colors have altered in all his pictures, and in many
+of his drawings; and the result of it with Rossetti is, that
+though his colors are safe, he has sometimes to throw aside
+work that was half done, and begin over again. William
+Hunt, of the Old Water-color, is very neat in his practice;
+so, I believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the
+leading Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there
+can be no doubt about the goodness of the advice, if it were
+only for this reason, that the more particular you are about
+your colors the more you will get into a deliberate and methodical
+habit in using them, and all true speed in coloring comes
+of this deliberation.</p>
+
+<p>157. Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your
+colors in order to pale them, instead of a quantity of water.
+You will thus be able to shape your masses more quietly,
+and play the colors about with more ease; they will not damp
+your paper so much, and you will be able to go on continually,
+and lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or delicately
+shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time.</p>
+
+<p>158. This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to
+render them opaque, constitutes body-color drawing as
+opposed to transparent-color drawing, and you will, perhaps,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110"></a>110</span>
+have it often said to you that this body-color is "illegitimate."
+It is just as legitimate as oil-painting, being, so far as handling
+is concerned, the same process, only without its uncleanliness,
+its unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience; for oil will
+not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects
+of atmosphere without tenfold labor. And if you hear it said
+that the body-color looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very
+likely, think so yourself, be yet assured of this, that though
+certain effects of glow and transparencies of gloom are not
+to be reached without transparent color, those glows and
+glooms are <i>not</i> the noblest aim of art. After many years'
+study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in Italy,
+and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am
+now entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to
+be done in art must be done in dead color. The habit of
+depending on varnish or on lucid tints for transparency,
+makes the painter comparatively lose sight of the nobler
+translucence which is obtained by breaking various colors
+amidst each other: and even when, as by Correggio, exquisite
+play of hue is joined with exquisite transparency, the delight
+in the depth almost always leads the painter into mean and
+false chiaroscuro; it leads him to like dark backgrounds
+instead of luminous ones,<a name="FnAnchor_42" href="#Footnote_42"><span class="sp">[42]</span></a> and to enjoy, in general, quality
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page111"></a>111</span>
+of color more than grandeur of composition, and confined
+light rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest
+thoughts of the greatest men have always, so far as I remember,
+been reached in dead color, and the noblest oil pictures of
+Tintoret and Veronese are those which are likest frescoes.</p>
+
+<p>159. Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a
+little chalky and coarse-looking body-color is, in a sketch,
+infinitely liker Nature than transparent color: the bloom and
+mist of distance are accurately and instantly represented by
+the film of opaque blue (<i>quite</i> accurately, I think, by nothing
+else); and for ground, rocks, and buildings, the earthy
+and solid surface is, of course, always truer than the most
+finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints
+can ever be.</p>
+
+<p>160. Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution
+you. All kinds of color are equally illegitimate, if you think
+they will allow you to alter at your pleasure, or blunder at
+your ease. There is <i>no</i> vehicle or method of color which
+admits of alteration or repentance; you must be right at once,
+or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle bullet in
+your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong,
+as to recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good color
+in oil, water, or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence
+spoken to me by Mulready: "Know what you have to do."
+The process may be a long one, perhaps: you may have to
+ground with one color; to touch it with fragments of a second;
+to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth into the
+interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and
+to re-enforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have
+one, or ten, or twenty processes to go through, you must go
+<i>straight</i> through them knowingly and foreseeingly all the
+way; and if you get the thing once wrong, there is no hope
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112"></a>112</span>
+for you but in washing or scraping boldly down to the white
+ground, and beginning again.</p>
+
+<p>161. The drawing in body-color will tend to teach you all
+this, more than any other method, and above all it will prevent
+you from falling into the pestilent habit of sponging to get
+texture; a trick which has nearly ruined our modern water-color
+school of art. There are sometimes places in which a
+skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get certain
+conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could otherwise;
+and sometimes a skillfully rased piece of paper will,
+in the midst of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose
+of chalky body-color in representing the surfaces of rocks or
+building. But artifices of this kind are always treacherous
+in a tyro's hands, tempting him to trust in them: and you
+had better always work on white or gray paper as smooth as
+silk;<a name="FnAnchor_43" href="#Footnote_43"><span class="sp">[43]</span></a> and never disturb the surface of your color or paper,
+except finally to scratch out the very highest lights if you are
+using transparent colors.</p>
+
+<p>162. I have said above that body-color drawing will teach
+you the use of color better than working with merely transparent
+tints; but this is not because the process is an easier
+one, but because it is a more complete one, and also because
+it involves some working with transparent tints in the best
+way. You are not to think that because you use body-color
+you may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get
+out of it. But you are to avail yourself of the characters of
+your material, which enable you most nearly to imitate the
+processes of Nature. Thus, suppose you have a red rocky
+cliff to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You paint
+your cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such
+a tint (and here is a great part of the skill needed) that when
+it is laid over the red, in the thickness required for the effect
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"></a>113</span>
+of the mist, the warm rock-color showing through the blue
+cloud-color, may bring it to exactly the hue you want (your
+upper tint, therefore, must be mixed colder than you want
+it); then you lay it on, varying it as you strike it, getting
+the forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done,
+with exquisite quality of color, from the warm tint's showing
+through and between the particles of the other. When it is
+dry, you may add a little color to retouch the edges where
+they want shape, or heighten the lights where they want
+roundness, or put another tone over the whole: but you can
+take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by
+any untoward accident mix the under and upper colors
+together, all is lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from
+the ground again if you like, or throw it into the fire if you
+like. But do not waste time in trying to mend it.<a name="FnAnchor_44" href="#Footnote_44"><span class="sp">[44]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>163. This discussion of the relative merits of transparent
+and opaque color has, however, led us a little beyond the point
+where we should have begun; we must go back to our palette,
+if you please. Get a cake of each of the hard colors named
+in the note below<a name="FnAnchor_45" href="#Footnote_45"><span class="sp">[45]</span></a> and try experiments on their simple combinations,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114"></a>114</span>
+by mixing each color with every other. If you like
+to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared piece
+of pasteboard, and put the pure colors in columns at the top
+and side; the mixed tints being given at the intersections,
+thus (the letters standing for colors):</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="70%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;b</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;c</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;d</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;e</td>
+<td class="lsp">&nbsp;f</td>
+<td class="lsp">etc.</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">a a b</td>  <td class="lsp">a c</td>  <td class="lsp">a d</td>  <td class="lsp">a e</td>  <td class="lsp">a f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">b &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">b c</td>  <td class="lsp">b d</td>  <td class="lsp">b e</td>  <td class="lsp">b f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">c &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">c d</td>  <td class="lsp">c e</td>  <td class="lsp">c f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">d &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">d e</td>  <td class="lsp">d f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">e &mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">&mdash;</td>  <td class="lsp">e f</td> <td>&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">etc.</td> <td colspan="5">&nbsp;</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+<p>This will give you some general notion of the characters
+of mixed tints of two colors only, and it is better in practice
+to confine yourself as much as possible to these, and to get
+more complicated colors, either by putting the third <i>over</i> the
+first blended tint, or by putting the third into its interstices.
+Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the effects that
+colors have on each other when thus put over, or beside, each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>164. When you have got a little used to the principal
+combinations, place yourself at a window which the sun
+does not shine in at, commanding some simple piece of landscape:
+outline this landscape roughly; then take a piece of
+white cardboard, cut out a hole in it about the size of a large
+pea; and supposing <span class="sc">R</span> is the room, <i>a d</i> the window, and you
+are sitting at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_29">Fig. 29</a>, hold this cardboard a little outside of
+the window, upright, and in the direction <i>b d</i>, parallel to
+the side of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch more
+light, as at <i>a d</i>, never turned as at <i>c d</i>, or the paper will be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115"></a>115</span>
+dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the
+circular hole. Match the colors of each important bit as
+nearly as you can, mixing your tints with white, beside the
+aperture. When matched, put a touch of the same tint at
+the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark tree color,"
+"hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash
+the tint away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will
+be ready to match another piece of the landscape.<a name="FnAnchor_46" href="#Footnote_46"><span class="sp">[46]</span></a> When
+you have got the colors of the principal masses thus indicated,
+lay on a piece of each in your sketch in its right place, and
+then proceed to complete the sketch in harmony with them,
+by your eye.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_29"><img src="images/img115.jpg" width="250" height="257" alt="Fig. 29." title="Fig. 29." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 29.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>165. In the course of your early experiments, you will be
+much struck by two things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy
+of light in sky and in sunlighted things; and the second,
+that among the tints which you can imitate, those which you
+thought the darkest will continually turn out to be in reality
+the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us, under
+ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116"></a>116</span>
+sight; thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be
+thought of darker green than an elm or oak near us; because
+we know by experience that the peculiar color they exhibit,
+at that distance, is the <i>sign</i> of darkness of foliage. But when
+we try them through the cardboard, the near oak will be
+found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar,
+perhaps, pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and gray
+in Nature is, by the way, another somewhat surprising
+subject of discovery.</p>
+
+<p>166. Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints,
+you may proceed to fill up your sketch; in doing which
+observe these following particulars:</p>
+
+<p>(1.) Many portions of your subject appeared through the
+aperture in the paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted
+grass, etc. Leave these portions, for the present,
+white; and proceed with the parts of which you can match
+the tints.</p>
+
+<p>(2.) As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you
+must have observed how many changes of hue took place over
+small spaces. In filling up your work, try to educate your
+eye to perceive these differences of hue without the help of
+the cardboard, and lay them deliberately, like a mosaic-worker,
+as separate colors, preparing each carefully on your
+palette, and laying it as if it were a patch of colored cloth, cut
+out, to be fitted neatly by its edge to the next patch; so that
+the <i>fault</i> of your work may be, not a slurred or misty look,
+but a patched bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out
+with scissors. For instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch
+tree, there will be probably white high lights, then a pale
+rosy gray round them on the light side, then a (probably
+greenish) deeper gray on the dark side, varied by reflected
+colors, and, over all, rich black strips of bark and brown
+spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray, leaving white for the
+high lights <i>and for the spots of moss</i>, and not touching the
+dark side. Then lay the gray for the dark side, fitting it
+well up to the rosy gray of the light, leaving also in this
+darker gray the white paper in the places for the black and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117"></a>117</span>
+brown moss; then prepare the moss colors separately for each
+spot, and lay each in the white place left for it. Not one
+grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights,
+must be visible when the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass,
+so cunningly must you fit the edges to each
+other. Finally, take your background colors, and put them
+on each side of the tree trunk, fitting them carefully to its
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>167. Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you,
+if you had not learned to draw first, and could not now draw
+a good outline for the stem, much less terminate a color
+mass in the outline you wanted?</p>
+
+<p>Your work will look very odd for some time, when you
+first begin to paint in this way, and before you can modify it,
+as I shall tell you presently how; but never mind; it is of
+the greatest possible importance that you should practice this
+separate laying on of the hues, for all good coloring finally
+depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and sometimes
+desirable, to lay one color and form boldly over another: thus,
+in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large
+pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through
+the interstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians constantly
+lay their blue ground first, and then, having let it
+dry, strike the golden brown over it in the form of the leaf,
+leaving the under blue to shine through the gold, and subdue
+it to the olive-green they want. But in the most precious and
+perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round
+it; and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your
+result, it is equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in
+your laying the color. Either your ground must be laid
+firmly first, and then your upper color struck upon it in perfect
+form, forever, thenceforward, unalterable; or else the two
+colors must be individually put in their places, and led up
+to each other till they meet at their appointed border, equally,
+thenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves
+absolute decision. If you once begin to slur, or change,
+or sketch, or try this way and that with your color, it is all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page118"></a>118</span>
+over with it and with you. You will continually see bad
+copyists trying to imitate the Venetians, by daubing their
+colors about, and retouching, and finishing, and softening:
+when every touch and every added hue only lead them farther
+into chaos. There is a dog between two children in a Veronese
+in the Louvre, which gives the copyists much employment.
+He has a dark ground behind him, which Veronese
+has painted first, and then when it was dry, or nearly so,
+struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with some
+half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and
+forever. Had one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would
+have been wrong forever; no retouching could have mended
+it. The poor copyists daub in first some background, and
+then some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then
+the hair; work for hours at it, expecting it always to come
+right to-morrow&mdash;"when it is finished." They <i>may</i> work
+for centuries at it, and they will never do it. If they can
+do it with Veronese's allowance of work, half a dozen sweeps
+of the hand over the dark background, well; if not, they may
+ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right, and get
+true answer from him&mdash;on Launce's conditions: "If he say
+'ay,' it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and
+say nothing, it will."</p>
+
+<p>168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure
+that however large it may be, or however small, it shall be
+gradated. No color exists in Nature under ordinary circumstances
+without gradation. If you do not see this, it is the
+fault of your inexperience: you will see it in due time, if
+you practice enough. But in general you may see it at once.
+In the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray <i>must</i> be gradated
+by the roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded
+side; similarly the shaded side is gradated by reflected light.
+Accordingly, whether by adding water, or white paint, or
+by unequal force of touch (this you will do at pleasure,
+according to the texture you wish to produce), you must, in
+every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than
+another, and get an even gradation between the two depths.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119"></a>119</span>
+This is very like laying down a formal law or recipe for you;
+but you will find it is merely the assertion of a natural fact.
+It is not indeed physically impossible to meet with an
+ungradated piece of color, but it is so supremely improbable,
+that you had better get into the habit of asking yourself
+invariably, when you are going to copy a tint&mdash;not "Is that
+gradated?" but "Which way is that gradated?" and at least
+in ninety-nine out of a hundred instances, you will be able
+to answer decisively after a careful glance, though the gradation
+may have been so subtle that you did not see it at first.
+And it does not matter how small the touch of color may
+be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one
+part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for
+it is not merely because the natural fact is so, that your color
+should be gradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the
+color itself depends more on this than on any other of its
+qualities, for gradation is to colors just what curvature is to
+lines, both being felt to be beautiful by the pure instinct of
+every human mind, and both, considered as types, expressing
+the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul
+itself. What the difference is in mere beauty between a
+gradated and ungradated color, may be seen easily by laying
+an even tint of rose-color on paper, and putting a rose leaf
+beside it. The victorious beauty of the rose as compared
+with other flowers, depends wholly on the delicacy and
+quantity of its color gradations, all other flowers being either
+less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or
+less tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.</p>
+
+<p>169. (4.) But observe, it is not enough in general that
+color should be gradated by being made merely paler or darker
+at one place than another. Generally color changes as it
+diminishes, and is not merely darker at one spot, but also
+purer at one spot than anywhere else. It does not in the least
+follow that the darkest spots should be the purest; still less
+so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often the two
+gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one
+direction from paleness to darkness, another in another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120"></a>120</span>
+direction from purity to dullness, but there will almost
+always be both of them, however reconciled; and you must
+never be satisfied with a piece of color until you have got
+both: that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on must
+be <i>quite</i> blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot;
+and must be gradated from that into less pure blue,&mdash;grayish
+blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue,&mdash;over all the rest
+of the space it occupies. And this you must do in one of
+three ways: either, while the color is wet, mix with it the
+color which is to subdue it, adding gradually a little more
+and a little more; or else, when the color is quite dry, strike
+a gradated touch of another color over it, leaving only a
+point of the first tint visible; or else, lay the subduing tints
+on in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board.
+Of each of these methods I have something to tell
+you separately; but that is distinct from the subject of
+gradation, which I must not quit without once more pressing
+upon you the preëminent necessity of introducing it everywhere.
+I have profound dislike of anything like habit of
+hand, and yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted
+to encourage you to get into a habit of never touching paper
+with color, without securing a gradation. You will not, in
+Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six or seven feet long
+by four or five high, find one spot of color as large as a
+grain of wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice,
+that brilliancy of hue, and vigor of light, and even the aspect
+of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this
+character alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting
+far more from <i>equality</i> of color than from nature of color.
+Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ocher out of a
+gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and I will
+paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate
+my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red
+of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and
+amber for the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture,
+if you keep the masses of those colors unbroken in purity,
+and unvarying in depth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page121"></a>121</span></p>
+
+<p>170. (5.) Next, note the three processes by which gradation
+and other characters are to be obtained:</p>
+
+<p>A. Mixing while the color is wet.</p>
+
+<p>You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the
+hues in separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues
+together as you lay them on: but the separate masses are to
+be laid, when colors distinctly oppose each other at a given
+limit; the hues to be mixed, when they palpitate one through
+the other, or fade one into the other. It is better to err a
+little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint the dark
+and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in
+reality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from
+the light, gradually one into the other; and, after being laid
+separately on, will need some farther touching to harmonize
+them: but they do so in a very narrow space, marked distinctly
+all the way up the trunk, and it is easier and safer, therefore,
+to keep them separate at first. Whereas it often happens
+that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one
+being continued well through the other, and playing in the
+midst of it: blue and green often do so in water; blue and
+gray, or purple and scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such
+instances the most beautiful and truthful results may be
+obtained by laying one color into the other while wet; judging
+wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with the
+brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color;
+only observe, never mix in this way two <i>mixtures</i>; let the
+color you lay into the other be always a simple, not a
+compound tint.</p>
+
+<p>171. B. Laying one color over another.</p>
+
+<p>If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and after it is
+quite dry, strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it,
+you will obtain a much more brilliant red than by mixing the
+carmine and vermilion. Similarly, if you lay a dark color
+first, and strike a little blue or white body-color lightly
+over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by mixing
+the color and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
+artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122"></a>122</span>
+have you trust much to them: they are apt to make you think
+too much of quality of color. I should like you to depend
+on little more than the dead colors, simply laid on, only
+observe always this, that the <i>less</i> color you do the work with,
+the better it will always be:<a name="FnAnchor_47" href="#Footnote_47"><span class="sp">[47]</span></a> so that if you had laid a red
+color, and you want a purple one above, do not mix the purple
+on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red,
+but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly
+over the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus
+produce the required purple; and if you want a green hue
+over a blue one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue,
+but a <i>little</i> yellow, and so on, always bringing the under
+color into service as far as you possibly can. If, however,
+the color beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have to lay
+on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must
+either remove the required parts of the under color daintily
+first with your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white
+over it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the
+white with the upper color. This is better, in general, than
+laying the upper color itself so thick as to conquer the ground,
+which, in fact, if it be a transparent color, you cannot do.
+Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of trees
+over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places
+left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first
+in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ocher, than to
+mix the sienna and white; though, of course, the process is
+longer and more troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms
+of touches required are very delicate, the after glazing is
+impossible. You must then mix the warm color thick at once,
+and so use it: and this is often necessary for delicate grasses,
+and such other fine threads of light in foreground work.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page123"></a>123</span></p>
+
+<p>172. C. Breaking one color in small points through or over
+another.</p>
+
+<p>This is the most important of all processes in good modern<a name="FnAnchor_48" href="#Footnote_48"><span class="sp">[48]</span></a>
+oil and water-color painting, but you need not hope to attain
+very great skill in it. To do it well is very laborious, and
+requires such skill and delicacy of hand as can only be
+acquired by unceasing practice. But you will find advantage
+in noting the following points:</p>
+
+<p>173. (<i>a.</i>) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or
+rippled water, or broken clouds, much may be done by
+touches or crumbling dashes of rather dry color, with other
+colors afterwards put cunningly into the interstices.  The
+more you practice this, when the subject evidently calls for
+it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of color.
+The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of
+separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms
+of color in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note,
+in filling up minute interstices of this kind, that if you
+want the color you fill them with to show brightly, it is better
+to put a rather positive point of it, with a little white left
+beside or round it in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of
+the color over the whole interstice. Yellow or orange will
+hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show brightly
+in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.</p>
+
+<p>174. (<i>b.</i>) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed
+portions of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the
+uppermost color in rather vigorous small touches, like finely
+chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint,
+for two reasons: the first, that the play of the two colors
+together is pleasant to the eye; the second, that much expression
+of form may be got by wise administration of the upper
+dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines
+of, or broken crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you
+choose; in clouds they may indicate the direction of the rain,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page124"></a>124</span>
+the roll and outline of the cloud masses; and in water, the
+minor waves. All noble effects of dark atmosphere are got
+in good water-color drawing by these two expedients, interlacing
+the colors, or retouching the lower one with fine darker
+drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark
+atmospheric effect is barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though
+it is often useful for passages of delicate atmospheric light.</p>
+
+<p>175. (<i>c.</i>) When you have time, practice the production
+of mixed tints by interlaced touches of the pure colors out
+of which they are formed, and use the process at the parts
+of your sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious
+effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old
+Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make
+frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting
+the flower completely, but laying the ground color of one
+petal, and painting the spots on it with studious precision:
+a series of single petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc.,
+numbered with proper reference to their position in the
+flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides
+those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of
+the spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and
+the like; and work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots
+themselves with minute grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise
+you will never get their richness or bloom. You will
+be surprised to find as you do this, first, the universality of
+the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon; secondly,
+that Nature is just as economical of <i>her</i> fine colors as I
+have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way
+she paints, that her colors cost her something enormous; she
+will only give you a single pure touch, just where the petal
+turns into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and
+under the petal all is subdued, even in the showiest flower.
+What you thought was bright blue is, when you look close,
+only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the
+world at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in
+the center of it. And so with all her colors. Sometimes I
+have really thought her miserliness intolerable: in a gentian,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125"></a>125</span>
+for instance, the way she economizes her ultramarine down
+in the bell is a little too bad.<a name="FnAnchor_49" href="#Footnote_49"><span class="sp">[49]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now,
+that, for the sake of students, my tax should not be laid on
+black or on white pigments; but if you mean to be a colorist,
+you must lay a tax on them yourself when you begin to use
+true color; that is to say, you must use them little, and make
+of them much. There is no better test of your color tones
+being good, than your having made the white in your picture
+precious, and the black conspicuous.</p>
+
+<p>177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean
+merely glittering or brilliant: it is easy to scratch white seagulls
+out of black clouds, and dot clumsy foliage with chalky
+dew; but when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely
+delicious,&mdash;tender as well as bright,&mdash;like inlaid mother
+of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to
+seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as
+a space of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing
+of the colors. This effect you can only reach by general
+depth of middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any
+white to exist except where you need it, and by keeping the
+white itself subdued by gray, except at a few points of chief
+luster.</p>
+
+<p>178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous.
+However small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the
+eye, otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All
+the ordinary shadows should be of some <i>color</i>,&mdash;never black,
+nor approaching black, they should be evidently and always
+of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange
+among them; never occurring except in a black object, or in
+small points indicative of intense shade in the very center
+of masses of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative gray,
+however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold;
+but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes
+spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator
+should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126"></a>126</span>
+enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold color
+and the white which it relieves. Of all the great colorists
+Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His
+black is more precious than most other people's crimson.</p>
+
+<p>179. It is not, however, only white and black which you
+must make valuable; you must give rare worth to every
+color you use; but the white and black ought to separate themselves
+quaintly from the rest, while the other colors should be
+continually passing one into the other, being all evidently
+companions in the same gay world; while the white, black,
+and neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof in the midst
+of them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your
+purple into blue, and your blue into green, but you must
+not melt any of them into black. You should, however,
+try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and
+this especially by never using a grain more than will just do
+the work, and giving each hue the highest value by opposition.
+All fine coloring, like fine drawing, is delicate; and so
+delicate that if, at last, you <i>see</i> the color you are putting on,
+you are putting on too much. You ought to feel a change
+wrought in the general tone, by touches of color which
+individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom
+of any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it,
+that atom hurts it.</p>
+
+<p>180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are
+<i>odd</i> colors. You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work
+ten minutes before you know what to call it. You thought
+it was brown, presently you feel that it is red; next that there
+is, somehow, yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is
+blue in it. If you try to copy it you will always find your
+color too warm or too cold&mdash;no color in the box will seem to
+have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it
+were laid at a single touch with a single color.</p>
+
+<p>181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general,
+if you cannot choose and harmonize them by instinct, you
+will never do it at all. If you need examples of utterly
+harsh and horrible color, you may find plenty given in treatises
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127"></a>127</span>
+upon coloring, to illustrate the laws of harmony; and
+if you want to color beautifully, color as best pleases yourself
+at <i>quiet times</i>, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as if
+it were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the
+color may be pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful.
+Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much
+at simple flowers&mdash;dog-roses, wood-hyacinths, violets, poppies,
+thistles, heather, and such like,&mdash;as Nature arranges them in
+the woods and fields. If ever any scientific person tells you
+that two colors are "discordant," make a note of the two
+colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have
+actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant;
+the two colors which Nature seems to intend never to be
+separated, and never to be felt, either of them, in its full
+beauty without the other!&mdash;a peacock's neck, or a blue sky
+through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights
+through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds
+at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good
+eye for colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature
+puts purple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and
+blue, yellow and neutral gray, and the like; and how she
+strikes these color-concords for general tones, and then works
+into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and you will
+gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and
+beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you
+enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a certain
+point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are
+certain to paint them wrong. If color does not give you
+intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it, you are only
+tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color,
+whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.</p>
+
+<p>182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend
+much on your state of health and right balance of mind;
+when you are fatigued or ill you will not see colors well,
+and when you are ill-tempered you will not choose them well:
+thus, though not infallibly a test of character in individuals,
+color power is a great sign of mental health in nations;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page128"></a>128</span>
+when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring
+always gets dull.<a name="FnAnchor_50" href="#Footnote_50"><span class="sp">[50]</span></a> You must also take great care not to be
+misled by affected talk about colors from people who have
+not the gift of it: numbers are eager and voluble about it
+who probably never in all their lives received one genuine
+color-sensation. The modern religionists of the school of
+Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and chalk,
+and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
+strawberries and plums.</p>
+
+<p>183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea
+that color can help or display <i>form</i>; color<a name="FnAnchor_51" href="#Footnote_51"><span class="sp">[51]</span></a> always disguises
+form, and is meant to do so.</p>
+
+<p>184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on
+color that "warm colors" (reds and yellows) "approach,"
+or express nearness, and "cold colors" (blue and gray)
+"retire," or express distance.  So far is this from being
+the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so great
+as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colors, as
+such, are <span class="sc">ABSOLUTELY</span> inexpressive respecting distance. It
+is their quality (as depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses
+distance, not their tint. A blue bandbox set on the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129"></a>129</span>
+shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch farther off,
+but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always
+appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in
+reality. It is quite true that in certain objects, blue is a <i>sign</i>
+of distance; but that is not because blue is a retiring color,
+but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any
+warm color which has not strength of light enough to pierce
+the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue is no more,
+on this account, a "retiring color," than brown is a retiring
+color, because, when stones are seen through brown water,
+the deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow
+is a retiring color, because, when objects are seen through a
+London fog, the farther off they are the yellower they look.
+Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red, can have, as such, the
+smallest power of expressing either nearness or distance: they
+express them only under the peculiar circumstances which
+render them at the moment, or in that place, <i>signs</i> of nearness
+or distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of
+nearness, for if you put the orange a great way off, its color
+will not look so bright; but vivid orange in sky is a sign of
+distance, because you cannot get the color of orange in a cloud
+near you. So purple in a violet or a hyacinth is a sign of
+nearness, because the closer you look at them the more purple
+you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance,
+because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or
+gray. It may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender
+or pale color will more or less express distance, and a powerful
+or dark color nearness; but even this is not always so.
+Heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple
+near, and an intense and dark purple far away; the rose
+color of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet,
+deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green
+of a Swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but
+intense as an emerald in the sunstreak six miles from shore.
+And in any case, when the foreground is in strong light, with
+much water about it, or white surface, casting intense reflections,
+all its colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130"></a>130</span>
+faint; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve
+the whole foreground with intense darks of purple, blue
+green, or ultramarine blue. So that, on the whole, it is
+quite hopeless and absurd to expect any help from laws of
+"aërial perspective." Look for the natural effects, and set
+them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and <i>never</i>
+alter a color because it won't look in its right place. Put
+the color strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it
+be faint, though close to you. Why should you suppose that
+Nature always means you to know exactly how far one thing
+is from another? She certainly intends you always to enjoy
+her coloring, but she does not wish you always to measure
+her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you
+painted the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000
+miles of distance in "aërial perspective."</p>
+
+<p>185. There is, however, I think, one law about distance,
+which has some claims to be considered a constant one:
+namely, that dullness and heaviness of color are more or less
+indicative of nearness. All distant color is <i>pure</i> color: it
+may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor
+soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any
+earthy or imperfect color, purify or harmonize it; hence a
+bad colorist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance.
+I do not of course mean that you are to use bad colors in
+your foreground by way of making it come forward; but
+only that a failure in color, there, will not put it out of its
+place; while a failure in color in the distance will at once
+do away with its remoteness; your dull-colored foreground
+will still be a foreground, though ill-painted; but your ill-painted
+distance will not be merely a dull distance,&mdash;it will
+be no distance at all.</p>
+
+<p>186. I have only one thing more to advise you, namely,
+never to color petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed,
+be able, if you attend properly to your coloring, to get anything
+like the quantity of form you could in a chiaroscuro
+sketch; nevertheless, if you do not dash or rush at your work,
+nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be satisfactory.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131"></a>131</span>
+An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness
+over the course of the whole study, may just make the
+difference between a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly
+and obscure one. If you determine well beforehand what
+outline each piece of color is to have, and, when it is on the
+paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as you can, into
+the form required; and then, after it is dry, consider
+thoroughly what touches are needed to complete it, before
+laying one of them on; you will be surprised to find how
+masterly the work will soon look, as compared with a hurried
+or ill-considered sketch. In no process that I know of&mdash;least
+of all in sketching&mdash;can time be really gained by
+precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in
+all sorts of ways; for not only truth of form, but force of
+light, is always added by an intelligent and shapely laying
+of the shadow colors. You may often make a simple flat tint,
+rightly gradated and edged, express a complicated piece of
+subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss cottages,
+for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows,
+and general character of shingly eaves, are expressed in <a href="#fig_30">Fig.
+30</a> with one tint of gray, and a few dispersed spots and lines
+of it; all of which you ought to be able to lay on without
+more than thrice dipping your brush, and without a single
+touch after the tint is dry.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_30"><img src="images/img131.jpg" width="400" height="271" alt="Fig. 30." title="Fig. 30." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 30.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>187. Here, then, for I cannot without colored illustrations
+tell you more, I must leave you to follow out the subject
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132"></a>132</span>
+for yourself, with such help as you may receive from the
+water-color drawings accessible to you; or from any of the
+little treatises on their art which have been published lately
+by our water-color painters.<a name="FnAnchor_52" href="#Footnote_52"><span class="sp">[52]</span></a> But do not trust much to
+works of this kind. You may get valuable hints from them
+as to mixture of colors; and here and there you will find a
+useful artifice or process explained; but nearly all such books
+are written only to help idle amateurs to a meretricious skill,
+and they are full of precepts and principles which may,
+for the most part, be interpreted by their <i>precise</i> negatives,
+and then acted upon with advantage. Most of them praise
+boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is
+caution;&mdash;advise velocity, when the first condition of success
+is deliberation;&mdash;and plead for generalization, when all the
+foundations of power must be laid in knowledge of speciality.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>188. And now, in the last place, I have a few things to
+tell you respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate
+art,&mdash;<span class="sc">Composition</span>. For though it is quite unnecessary for
+you yet awhile to attempt it, and it <i>may</i> be inexpedient for
+you to attempt it at all, you ought to know what it means,
+and to look for and enjoy it in the art of others.</p>
+
+<p>Composition means, literally and simply, putting several
+things together, so as to make <i>one</i> thing out of them; the
+nature and goodness of which they all have a share in producing.
+Thus a musician composes an air, by putting notes
+together in certain relations; a poet composes a poem, by
+putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter
+a picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colors in pleasant
+order.</p>
+
+<p>In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the
+result of composition. A pavior cannot be said to compose
+the heap of stones which he empties from his cart, nor the
+sower the handful of seed which he scatters from his hand.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133"></a>133</span>
+It is the essence of composition that everything should be in
+a determined place, perform an intended part, and act, in
+that part, advantageously for everything that is connected
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>189. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the
+type, in the arts of mankind, of the Providential government
+of the world.<a name="FnAnchor_53" href="#Footnote_53"><span class="sp">[53]</span></a> It is an exhibition, in the order given to notes,
+or colors, or forms, of the advantage of perfect fellowship,
+discipline, and contentment.  In a well-composed air, no
+note, however short or low, can be spared, but the least is
+as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is
+tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its
+duration: no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others
+prepare for, and are benefited by, its exaltation: no note,
+however low, is overpowered; the others prepare for, and
+sympathize with, its humility: and the result is, that each
+and every note has a value in the position assigned to it,
+which, by itself, it never possessed, and of which, by separation
+from the others, it would instantly be deprived.</p>
+
+<p>190. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought
+enhances the value of those which precede and follow it;
+and every syllable has a loveliness which depends not so
+much on its abstract sound as on its position. Look at the
+same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly recognize it.</p>
+
+<p>Much more in a great picture; every line and color is so
+arranged as to advantage the rest. None are inessential,
+however slight; and none are independent, however forcible.
+It is not enough that they truly represent natural objects;
+but they must fit into certain places, and gather into certain
+harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red chimney
+of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but
+that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the
+pieces of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we
+ought to see that the work is masterly, merely by the positions
+and quantities of these patches of green, red, and blue, even
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134"></a>134</span>
+at a distance which renders it perfectly impossible to determine
+what the colors represent: or to see whether the red is a
+chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the blue is
+smoke, sky, or water.</p>
+
+<p>191. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in
+all we do, of the great laws of Divine government and human
+polity, that composition in the arts should strongly affect
+every order of mind, however unlearned or thoughtless.
+Hence the popular delight in rhythm and meter, and in simple
+musical melodies. But it is also appointed that <i>power</i> of
+composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute
+of great intellect. All men can more or less copy what they
+see, and, more or less, remember it: powers of reflection and
+investigation are also common to us all, so that the decision
+of inferiority in these rests only on questions of <i>degree</i>. A.
+has a better memory than B., and C. reflects more profoundly
+than D. But the gift of composition is not given <i>at all</i> to
+more than one man in a thousand; in its highest range, it
+does not occur above three or four times in a century.</p>
+
+<p>192. It follows, from these general truths, that it is
+impossible to give rules which will enable you to compose.
+You might much more easily receive rules to enable you to be
+witty. If it were possible to be witty by rule, wit would
+cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were possible
+to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not
+have been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by
+rule, Titian and Veronese would be ordinary men.  The
+essence of composition lies precisely in the fact of its being
+unteachable, in its being the operation of an individual mind
+of range and power exalted above others.</p>
+
+<p>But though no one can <i>invent</i> by rule, there are some
+simple laws of arrangement which it is well for you to know,
+because, though they will not enable you to produce a good
+picture, they will often assist you to set forth what goodness
+may be in your work in a more telling way than you could
+have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of
+good composers, you may better understand the grasp of their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135"></a>135</span>
+imagination, and the power it possesses over their materials.
+I shall briefly state the chief of these laws.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.</p>
+
+<p>193. The great object of composition being always to
+secure unity; that is, to make out of many things one whole;
+the first mode in which this can be effected is, by determining
+that <i>one</i> feature shall be more important than all the
+rest, and that the others shall group with it in subordinate
+positions.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_31"><img src="images/img135.jpg" width="400" height="163" alt="Fig. 31." title="Fig. 31." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 31.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus
+the group of two leaves, <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_31">Fig. 31</a>, is unsatisfactory, because
+it has no leading leaf; but that at <i>b</i> <i>is</i> prettier, because it has
+a head or master leaf; and <i>c</i> more satisfactory still, because
+the subordination of the other members to this head leaf is
+made more manifest by their gradual loss of size as they
+fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we have in the
+Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.</p>
+
+<p>194. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light
+larger and brighter than the other lights, or one figure more
+prominent than the other figures, or one mass of color
+dominant over all the other masses; and in general you will
+find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that there shall
+be one light on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the sky,
+which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom,
+above all others. But the observance of the rule is often so
+cunningly concealed by the great composers, that its force
+is hardly at first traceable; and you will generally find they
+are vulgar pictures in which the law is strikingly manifest.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page136"></a>136</span></p>
+
+<p>195. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody:
+for instance, in such phrases as this&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1" style="padding-bottom: 1.5em; ">
+    <a name="fig_mn1"><img src="images/img136a.jpg" width="600" height="123" alt="Musical notes 1." title="Musical notes 1." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p class="noind">one note (here the upper <span class="sc">G</span>) rules the whole passage, and
+has the full energy of it concentrated in itself. Such
+passages, corresponding to completely subordinated compositions
+in painting, are apt to be wearisome if often repeated.
+But, in such a phrase as this&mdash;</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1" style="padding-bottom: 1.5em; ">
+    <a name="fig_mn2"><img src="images/img136b.jpg" width="600" height="222" alt="Musical notes 2." title="Musical notes 2." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p class="noind">it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The
+A in the last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very
+equal current of power running through the whole; and such
+passages rarely weary. And this principle holds through
+vast scales of arrangement; so that in the grandest compositions,
+such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or
+Raphaels Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal
+figure; and very commonly the figure which is really chief
+does not catch the eye at first, but is gradually felt to be
+more and more conspicuous as we gaze. Thus in Titian's
+grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the figure meant
+to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose portrait
+it was evidently the painter's object to make as interesting
+as possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a
+drifting banner, and many figures more, occupy the center
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137"></a>137</span>
+of the picture, and first catch the eye; little by little we are
+led away from them to a gleam of pearly light in the lower
+corner, and find that, from the head which it shines upon,
+we can turn our eyes no more.</p>
+
+<p>196. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design
+are more or less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an
+easier way of explaining them to analyze one composition
+thoroughly, than to give instances from various works. I
+shall therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which will
+allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate
+each law by it as we proceed.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_32"><img src="images/img137.jpg" width="550" height="365" alt="Fig. 32." title="Fig. 32." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 32.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a> is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole
+subject; the old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the
+town of Coblentz on the right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left.
+The leading or master feature is, of course, the tower on
+the bridge. It is kept from being <i>too</i> principal by an
+important group on each side of it; the boats, on the right,
+and Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass,
+and more forcible in color, but they are broken into small
+divisions, while the tower is simple, and therefore it still
+leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its mass, but so reduced
+by aërial perspective of color that it cannot contend with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138"></a>138</span>
+tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the key
+of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects
+which seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are
+made, occultly, to increase its preëminence.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.</p>
+
+<p>197. Another important means of expressing unity is
+to mark some kind of sympathy among the different objects,
+and perhaps the pleasantest, because most surprising, kind of
+sympathy, is when one group imitates or repeats another;
+not in the way of balance or symmetry, but subordinately,
+like a far-away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted
+much on this law in all his writings on composition; and I
+think it is even more authoritatively present in the minds
+of most great composers than the law of principality.<a name="FnAnchor_54" href="#Footnote_54"><span class="sp">[54]</span></a> It
+is quite curious to see the pains that Turner sometimes takes
+to echo an important passage of color; in the Pembroke
+Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with a
+red, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on
+the beach, are two fish in precisely the same relative positions;
+one red and one white. It is observable that he uses the
+artifice chiefly in pictures where he wishes to obtain an
+expression of repose: in my notice of the plate of Scarborough,
+in the series of the Harbors of England, I have already had
+occasion to dwell on this point; and I extract in the note<a name="FnAnchor_55" href="#Footnote_55"><span class="sp">[55]</span></a>
+one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the
+composition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139"></a>139</span>
+is employed to a singular extent. The tower, or
+leading feature, is first repeated by the low echo of it to the
+left; put your finger over this lower tower, and see how the
+picture is spoiled. Then the spires of Coblentz are all
+arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality does
+not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must
+play the towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if
+they were chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement
+of these towers would have been too easily seen, were it
+not for the little one which pretends to make a triad of the
+last group on the right, but is so faint as hardly to be discernible:
+it just takes off the attention from the artifice,
+helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which,
+however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.<a name="FnAnchor_56" href="#Footnote_56"><span class="sp">[56]</span></a>
+Then there is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it.
+That echo is divided into two again, and each of those two
+smaller boats has two figures in it; while two figures are also
+sitting together on the great rudder that lies half in the
+water, and half aground. Then, finally, the great mass of
+Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no answering
+form, has almost its <i>facsimile</i> in the bank on which the girl
+is sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion
+of the picture as any object in the whole series. All
+this is done to deepen the effect of repose.</p>
+
+<p>198. Symmetry, or the balance of parts or masses in
+nearly equal opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment
+under the law of Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical
+object, is of like things reflecting each other: it is
+not the balance of contrary natures (like that of day and
+night), but of like natures or like forms; one side of a leaf
+being set like the reflection of the other in water.</p>
+
+<p>Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate.
+She takes the greatest care to secure some difference
+between the corresponding things or parts of things; and an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140"></a>140</span>
+approximation to accurate symmetry is only permitted in
+animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference
+between the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold
+your arms in precisely the same position at each side, your
+head upright, your body straight; divide your hair exactly in
+the middle and get it as nearly as you can into exactly the
+same shape over each ear; and you will see the effect of accurate
+symmetry: you will see, no less, how all grace and power
+in the human form result from the interference of motion
+and life with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its
+balance with its changefulness. Your position, as seen in
+the mirror, is the highest type of symmetry as understood
+by modern architects.</p>
+
+<p>199. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the
+balance of harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest
+sources of their power: almost any works of the early painters,
+Angelico, Perugino, Giotto, etc., will furnish you with notable
+instances of it. The Madonna of Perugino in the National
+Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and Raphael on
+the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have.</p>
+
+<p>In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less
+carried out, in proportion to the wish of the painter to express
+disciplined calmness. In bad compositions, as in bad architecture,
+it is formal, a tree on one side answering a tree on
+the other; but in good compositions, as in graceful statues,
+it is always easy and sometimes hardly traceable. In the
+Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing
+how the boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the
+other are set in nearly equal balance; the tower, as a central
+mass, uniting both.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.</p>
+
+<p>200. Another important and pleasurable way of expressing
+unity, is by giving some orderly succession to a number
+of objects more or less similar. And this succession is most
+interesting when it is connected with some gradual change
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page141"></a>141</span>
+in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus the succession
+of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting
+when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more
+obscure in distance: so the succession of mountain promontories
+one behind another, on the flanks of a valley; so
+the succession of clouds, fading farther and farther towards
+the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of different
+shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and
+appointed order. If there be no change at all in the shape
+or size of the objects, there is no continuity; there is only
+repetition&mdash;monotony. It is the change in shape which
+suggests the idea of their being individually free, and able
+to escape, if they like, from the law that rules them, and yet
+submitting to it.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_33"><img src="images/img141.jpg" width="550" height="395" alt="Fig. 33." title="Fig. 33." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 33.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a
+moment to take up another, still more expressive of this law.
+It is one of Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais
+Sands at sunset; so delicate in the expression of wave and
+cloud, that it is of no use for me to try to reach it with any
+kind of outline in a wood-cut; but the rough sketch, <a href="#fig_33">Fig. 33</a>,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142"></a>142</span>
+is enough to give an idea of its arrangement. The aim of
+the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
+repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous
+motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in
+innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting towards that point
+in the horizon where he has set; and the tidal waves gain in
+winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in
+which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just
+folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of
+ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and
+clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent
+hurry, drawing pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges
+intersect in parting. But all this would not have been enough
+expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black
+with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves, and now
+seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts
+escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.</p>
+
+<p>202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration
+of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for
+our general illustration. It was simply that gradual succession
+of the retiring arches of the bridge which induced
+Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same
+principle which led him always to seize on subjects including
+long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially,
+observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side
+rather than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective
+of general laws of composition, and connected with the
+nature of rivers, which I may as well stop a minute to tell
+you about, and let you rest from the study of composition.</p>
+
+<p>203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they
+like to lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have
+their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they
+can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get
+cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may
+be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and another steep
+shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves,
+and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143"></a>143</span>
+Rivers in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side
+of their life for play, and another for work; and can be
+brilliant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at
+ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they
+set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers are just
+in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good
+rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks,
+that ships can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping
+irregularly under their banks until they get full of strangling
+eddies, which no boat can row over without being twisted
+against the rocks; and pools like wells, which no one can
+get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; but,
+wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of
+sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-mason
+therefore throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course,
+to build a great door to let the cat through, and little doors
+to let the kittens through; a great arch for the great current,
+to give it room in flood time, and little arches for the little
+currents along the shallow shore. This, even without any
+prudential respect for the floods of the great current, he would
+do in simple economy of work and stone; for the smaller your
+arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two
+arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments
+are at the same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a
+great deal; so that, where the current is shallow, the village
+mason makes his arches many and low: as the water gets
+deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build his piers up from
+the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he comes to
+the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of
+that, he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with
+another little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course
+as arches are wider they must be higher, or they will not
+stand; so the roadway must rise as the arches widen. And
+thus we have the general type of bridge, with its highest and
+widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches
+running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank
+at the river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144"></a>144</span>
+flat shore on the side of the small ones: and the bend of the
+river assuredly concave towards this flat, cutting round, with
+a sweep into the steep bank; or, if there is no steep bank,
+still assuredly cutting into the shore at the steep end of the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Now this kind of bridge, sympathizing, as it does, with
+the spirit of the river, and marking the nature of the thing
+it has to deal with and conquer, is the ideal of a bridge;
+and all endeavors to do the thing in a grand engineer's
+manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are barbarous;
+not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves,
+but because the mind perceives at once that there has
+been cost uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.<a name="FnAnchor_57" href="#Footnote_57"><span class="sp">[57]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_34"><img src="images/img145.jpg" width="700" height="390" alt="Fig. 34." title="Fig. 34." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 34.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>204. Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the
+Turnerian bridge in <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a> is of the absolutely perfect
+type, and is still farther interesting by having its main arch
+crowned by a watch-tower. But as I want you to note
+especially what perhaps was not the case in the real bridge,
+but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145"></a>145]<br />146</span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146"></a></span>
+arches diminish gradually, not one is <i>regularly</i> diminished&mdash;they
+are all of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this
+clearly in <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a>, but in the larger diagram, <a href="#fig_34">Fig. 34</a>, over
+leaf, you will with ease. This is indeed also part of the ideal
+of a bridge, because the lateral currents near the shore are
+of course irregular in size, and a simple builder would
+naturally vary his arches accordingly; and also, if the bottom
+was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is
+not as a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble
+composition, that this irregularity is introduced by Turner.
+It at once raises the object thus treated from the lower or
+vulgar unity of rigid law to the greater unity of clouds,
+and waves, and trees, and human souls, each different, each
+obedient, and each in harmonious service.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.</p>
+
+<p>205. There is, however, another point to be noticed in this
+bridge of Turner's. Not only does it slope away unequally
+at its sides, but it slopes in a gradual though very subtle
+curve. And if you substitute a straight line for this curve
+(drawing one with a rule from the base of the tower on each
+side to the ends of the bridge, in <a href="#fig_34">Fig. 34</a>, and effacing the
+curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered
+grievously.  You may ascertain, by experiment, that all
+beautiful objects whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately
+curved lines, except where the straight line is indispensable
+to their use or stability; and that when a complete
+system of straight lines, throughout the form, is necessary
+to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists,
+is in color and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape
+of any crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it
+beside a white lily, and you will feel the force of the curvature
+in its purity, irrespective of added color, or other interfering
+elements of beauty.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_35"><img src="images/img147.jpg" width="600" height="476" alt="Fig. 35." title="Fig. 35." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 35.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>206. Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines,
+it is necessary to a good composition that its continuities of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147"></a>147</span>
+object, mass, or color should be, if possible, in curves, rather
+than straight lines or angular ones. Perhaps one of the
+simplest and prettiest examples of a graceful continuity of
+this kind is in the line traced at any moment by the corks
+of a net as it is being drawn: nearly every person is more
+or less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now, it
+is almost always possible, not only to secure such a continuity
+in the arrangement or boundaries of objects which, like these
+bridge arches or the corks of the net, are actually connected
+with each other, but&mdash;and this is a still more noble and interesting
+kind of continuity&mdash;among features which appear at
+first entirely separate. Thus the towers of Ehrenbreitstein,
+on the left, in <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a>, appear at first independent of each
+other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, <a href="#fig_35">Fig.
+35</a>, the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle
+cadence and harmony among them. The reason of this is,
+that they are all bounded by one grand curve, traced by the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148"></a>148</span>
+dotted line; out of the seven towers, four precisely touch
+this curve, the others only falling hack from it here and there
+to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_36"><img src="images/img148.jpg" width="500" height="129" alt="Fig. 36." title="Fig. 36." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 36.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>207. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities
+of this kind: it is, in drawing large forests or
+mountain forms, essential to truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein
+might or might not in reality fall into such a
+curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand did;
+for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice,
+nor covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less
+governed by these great curves, it being one of the aims of
+Nature in all her work to produce them. The reader must
+already know this, if he has been able to sketch at all among
+mountains; if not, let him merely draw for himself, carefully,
+the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where
+they are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them.
+The steeper shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of
+the downs at Brighton or Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon
+(as Addington Hills), is easily accessible to a Londoner;
+and he will soon find not only how constant, but how
+graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distinguished
+from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation,
+that is to say, its close approach to straightness in some part
+of its course;<a name="FnAnchor_58" href="#Footnote_58"><span class="sp">[58]</span></a> and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say,
+its never remaining equal in degree at different parts of its
+course.</p>
+
+<p>208. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page149"></a>149</span></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_37"><img src="images/img149a.jpg" width="300" height="115" alt="Fig. 37." title="Fig. 37." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 37.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line,
+from less to more curvature, or more to less, so that <i>no</i> part
+of the line is a segment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses
+in any way whatever. Thus, in <a href="#fig_36">Fig. 36</a>, <i>a</i> is a bad
+curve because it is part of a circle, and is therefore monotonous
+throughout; but <i>b</i> is a good curve, because it continually
+changes its direction as it proceeds.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_38"><img src="images/img149b.jpg" width="400" height="490" alt="Fig. 38." title="Fig. 38." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 38.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The <i>first</i> difference between good and bad drawing of tree
+boughs consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put
+leaves on the line <i>b</i>, as in <a href="#fig_37">Fig. 37</a>, you can immediately feel
+the springiness of character dependent on the changefulness
+of the curve. You may put leaves on the other line for
+yourself, but you will find you cannot make a right tree
+spray of it. For <i>all</i> tree boughs, large or small, as well as
+all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character;
+and it is a point of primal necessity that your eye should
+always seize and your hand trace it. Here are two more
+portions of good curves, with leaves put on them at the extremities
+instead of the flanks, <a href="#fig_38">Fig. 38</a>; and two showing the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150"></a>150</span>
+arrangement of masses of foliage seen a little farther off,
+<a href="#fig_39">Fig. 39</a>, which you may in like manner amuse yourself by
+turning into segments of circles&mdash;you will
+see with what result. I hope however you
+have beside you, by this time, many good
+studies of tree boughs carefully made, in
+which you may study variations of curvature
+in their most complicated and lovely
+forms.<a name="FnAnchor_59" href="#Footnote_59"><span class="sp">[59]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_39"><img src="images/img150a.jpg" width="300" height="235" alt="Fig. 39." title="Fig. 39." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 39.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_40"><img src="images/img150b.jpg" width="117" height="400" alt="Fig. 40." title="Fig. 40." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 40.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>209. B. Not only does every good curve
+vary in general tendency, but it is modulated,
+as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate
+curves. Thus the outlines of a tree
+trunk are never as at <i>a</i>, <a href="#fig_40">Fig. 40</a>, but as at
+<i>b</i>. So also in waves, clouds, and all other
+nobly formed masses. Thus another essential
+difference between good and bad drawing,
+or good and bad sculpture, depends on
+the quantity and refinement of minor
+curvatures carried, by good work, into the
+great lines. Strictly speaking, however,
+this is not variation in large curves, but
+composition of large curves out of small
+ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the
+beautiful element, but not a change in its nature.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page151"></a>151</span></p>
+
+<p class="title1">5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.</p>
+
+<p>210. We have hitherto been concerned only with the binding
+of our various objects into beautiful lines or processions.
+The next point we have to consider is, how we may unite
+these lines or processions themselves, so as to make groups of
+<i>them</i>.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_41"><img src="images/img152a.jpg" width="250" height="355" alt="Fig. 41." title="Fig. 41." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 41.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table style="float: left; width: auto;" summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figleft1">
+    <a name="fig_42"><img src="images/img152b.jpg" width="120" height="295" alt="Fig. 42." title="Fig. 42." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 42.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in
+which, moving more or less side by side, they variously, but
+evidently with consent, retire from or approach each other,
+intersect or oppose each other; currents of melody in music,
+for different voices, thus approach and cross, fall and rise, in
+harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they approach the
+shore, flow into one another or cross, but with a great unity
+through all; and so various lines of composition often flow
+harmoniously through and across each other in a picture.
+But the most simple and perfect connection of lines is by
+radiation; that is, by their all springing from one point, or
+closing towards it; and this harmony is often, in Nature
+almost always, united with the other; as the boughs of trees,
+though they intersect and play amongst each other irregularly,
+indicate by their general tendency their origin from
+one root. An essential part of the beauty of all vegetable
+form is in this radiation; it is seen most simply in a single
+flower or leaf, as in a convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf; but
+more beautifully in the complicated arrangements of the
+large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is only a flat piece of
+radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all sides, and
+even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation
+more or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more
+beautiful, because varied by the freedom of the separate
+branches. I believe it has been ascertained that, in all trees,
+the angle at which, in their leaves, the lateral ribs are set on
+their central rib is approximately the same at which the
+branches leave the great stem; and thus each section of the
+tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own leaf,
+were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses
+of foliage. This force in proportion to their age, and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152"></a>152</span>
+lateral leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the
+extremities, so that, as before noticed, the lower the bough
+grows on the stem, the more it droops (<a href="#fig_17">Fig. 17</a>, <a href="#page067">p. 67</a>);
+besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a tendency to
+divide into two or more principal masses, which give a
+prettier and more complicated symmetry than if one stem
+ran all the way up the center. <a href="#fig_41">Fig. 41</a> may thus be considered
+the simplest type of tree radiation, as opposed to
+leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all secondary ramification
+is unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but
+if we take one half of such a tree, and merely give two
+secondary branches to each main branch (as represented
+in the general branch structure shown at <i>b</i>, <a href="#fig_18">Fig. 18</a>, <a href="#page068">p.
+68</a>), we shall have the form <a href="#fig_42">Fig. 42</a>. This I consider
+the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is curiously
+connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine,
+and Gothic ornamentation, into the discussion of which,
+however, we must not enter here. It will be
+observed, that both in Figs. <a href="#fig_41">41</a> and <a href="#fig_42">42</a> all
+the branches so spring from the main stem as
+very nearly to suggest their united radiation
+from the root <span class="sc">R</span>. This is by no means universally
+the case; but if the branches do not bend
+towards a point in the root, they at least converge
+to some point or other. In the examples in <a href="#fig_43">Fig.
+43</a>, the mathematical center of curvature, <i>a</i>, is
+thus, in one case, on the ground, at some distance from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153"></a>153</span>
+root, and in the other, near the top of the tree. Half, only,
+of each tree is given, for the sake of clearness: <a href="#fig_44">Fig. 44</a> gives
+both sides of another example, in which the origins of curvature
+are below the root. As the positions of such points may
+be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines
+is also farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing
+for the most part in a spiral order round the tree, and at
+proportionate distances, the systems of curvature which
+regulate the form of vegetation are quite infinite. Infinite
+is a word easily said, and easily written, and people do not
+always mean it when they say it; in this case I <i>do</i> mean it:
+the number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish
+anything like a representative number of types, I should
+have to give several hundreds of figures such as <a href="#fig_44">Fig. 44</a>.<a name="FnAnchor_60" href="#Footnote_60"><span class="sp">[60]</span></a></p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_43"><img src="images/img153a.jpg" width="300" height="210" alt="Fig. 43." title="Fig. 43." /></a></td>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_44"><img src="images/img153b.jpg" width="111" height="400" alt="Fig. 44." title="Fig. 44." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 43.</span></td>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 44.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_45"><img src="images/img154.jpg" width="400" height="144" alt="Fig. 45." title="Fig. 45." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 45.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the
+great relations of stem and branches. The forms of the
+branches themselves are regulated by still more subtle laws,
+for they occupy an intermediate position between the form of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154"></a>154</span>
+the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a flat ramification; the
+tree a completely rounded one; the bough is neither rounded
+nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between the
+two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling
+in shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the
+flake of a fir cone; by combination forming the solid mass of
+the tree, as the leaves compose the artichoke head. I have
+before pointed out to you the general resemblance of these
+branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be more
+accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can
+imagine a very broad-headed and flattened boat applied by
+its keel to the end of a main branch,<a name="FnAnchor_61" href="#Footnote_61"><span class="sp">[61]</span></a> as in <a href="#fig_45">Fig. 45</a>, the lines
+which its ribs will take, supposing them outside of its timbers
+instead of inside, and the general contour of it, as seen
+in different directions, from above and below, will give you
+the closest approximation to the perspectives and foreshortenings
+of a well-grown branch-flake. <a href="#fig_25">Fig. 25</a> above, <a href="#page089">p. 89</a>,
+is an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young
+oak; and, if you compare it with <a href="#fig_45">Fig. 45</a>, you will understand
+at once the action of the lines of leafage; the boat only
+failing as a type in that its ribs are too nearly parallel to
+each other at the sides, while the bough sends all its ramification
+well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may accomplish
+its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155"></a>155</span>
+securing the compliance with the great universal law that
+the branches nearest the root bend most back; and, of course,
+throwing <i>some</i> always back as well as forwards; the appearance
+of reversed action being much increased, and rendered
+more striking and beautiful, by perspective. <a href="#fig_25">Fig. 25</a> shows
+the perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below;
+<a href="#fig_46">Fig. 46</a> gives rudely the look it would have from above.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_46"><img src="images/img155.jpg" width="400" height="198" alt="Fig. 46." title="Fig. 46." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 46.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>212. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered,
+what subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved
+in the drawing of these branch-flakes, as you see them
+in different directions and actions; now raised, now depressed:
+touched on the edges by the wind, or lifted up and
+bent back so as to show all the white under surfaces of the
+leaves shivering in light, as the bottom of a boat rises white
+with spray at the surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards
+the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings,
+or bowed down under oppressive grace of deep-charged
+snow. Snow time, by the way, is one of the best for practice
+in the placing of tree masses; but you will only be able to
+understand them thoroughly by beginning with a single bough
+and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in <a href="#fig_38">Fig. 38</a>, <a href="#page149">p. 149</a>.
+First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as
+at <i>a</i>; then with five, as at <i>b</i>, and so on; directing your whole
+attention to the expression, both by contour and light and
+shade, of the boat-like arrangements, which, in your earlier
+studies, will have been a good deal confused, partly owing
+to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of shade, or
+absolute blackness of mass required in those studies.</p>
+
+<p>213. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156"></a>156</span>
+you out of the wood. You see that in every generally representative
+figure I have surrounded the radiating branches
+with a dotted line: such lines do indeed terminate every vegetable
+form; and you see that they are themselves beautiful
+curves, which, according to their flow, and the width or narrowness
+of the spaces they inclose, characterize the species
+of tree or leaf, and express its free or formal action, its grace
+of youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the
+freedom of her wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing
+an encompassing limit; and marking a unity in the
+whole tree, caused not only by the rising of its branches from
+a common root, but by their joining in one work, and being
+bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let
+us turn back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which,
+I doubt not, you must already have observed in your earlier
+studies, but which it is well to state here, as connected with
+the unity of the branches in the great trees. You must have
+noticed, I should think, that whenever a leaf is compound,&mdash;that
+is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way
+repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,&mdash;those leaflets
+are not symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller
+on the side towards the point of the great leaf, so as to express
+their subordination to it, and show, even when they
+are pulled off, that they are not small independent leaves,
+but members of one large leaf.</p>
+
+<p>214. <a href="#fig_47">Fig. 47</a>, which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine,
+without its minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate
+the principle clearly. It is composed of a central large mass,
+A, and two lateral ones, of which the one on the right only is
+lettered, B. Each of these masses is again composed of three
+others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe, the minor
+one, <i>a</i> of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the minor
+<i>b</i> 1 of B is larger than its opposite <i>b</i> 2. Again, each of
+these minor masses is divided into three; but while the central
+mass, <span class="sc">A</span> of A, is symmetrically divided, the <span class="sc">B</span> of B is unsymmetrical,
+its largest side-lobe being lowest. Again, in <i>b</i> 2, the
+lobe <i>c</i> 1 (its lowest lobe in relation to <span class="sc">B</span>) is larger than <i>c</i> 2;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157"></a>157</span>
+and so also in <i>b</i> 1. So that universally one lobe of a lateral
+leaf is always larger than the other, and the smaller lobe is
+that which is nearer the central mass; the lower leaf, as it
+were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power,
+in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf, and
+always expressing, therefore, its own subordination and
+secondary character. This law is carried out even in single
+leaves. As far as I know, the upper half, towards the point
+of the spray, is always the smaller; and a slightly different
+curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the lower
+side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole
+leaf; so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every
+subordinate leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its
+confession of its own lowliness and subjection.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_47"><img src="images/img157.jpg" width="500" height="493" alt="Fig. 47." title="Fig. 47." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 47.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>215. And now, if we bring together in one view the principles
+we have ascertained in trees, we shall find they may
+be summed under four great laws; and that all perfect<a name="FnAnchor_62" href="#Footnote_62"><span class="sp">[62]</span></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158"></a>158</span>
+vegetable form is appointed to express these four laws in
+noble balance of authority.</p>
+
+<p>1. Support from one living root.</p>
+
+<p>2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given
+point, either in the root or in some stated connection with it.</p>
+
+<p>3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and
+happiness according to its needs, by irregularities of action
+both in its play and its work, either stretching out to get its
+required nourishment from light and rain, by finding some
+sufficient breathing-place among the other branches, or knotting
+and gathering itself up to get strength for any load
+which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any
+stress of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing
+hither and thither as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young
+shoots, in their undecided states of mind about their future
+life.</p>
+
+<p>4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within
+certain limits, expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity
+with the boughs in its neighborhood; and to work with
+them according to its power, magnitude, and state of health,
+to bring out the general perfectness of the great curve, and
+circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.</p>
+
+<p>216. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the
+moral analogies of these laws; you may, perhaps, however, be
+a little puzzled to see the meaning of the second one. It
+typically expresses that healthy human actions should spring
+radiantly (like rays) from some single heart motive; the
+most beautiful systems of action taking place when this
+motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is
+clearly seen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful
+secondary systems of action taking place from motives not
+so deep or central, but in some beautiful subordinate connection
+with the central or life motive.</p>
+
+<p>The other laws, if you think over them, you will find
+equally significative; and as you draw trees more and more in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159"></a>159</span>
+their various states of health and hardship, you will be
+every day more struck by the beauty of the types they present
+of the truths most essential for mankind to know;<a name="FnAnchor_63" href="#Footnote_63"><span class="sp">[63]</span></a> and you
+will see what this vegetation of the earth, which is necessary
+to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and then as food,
+and just as necessary to our joy in all places of the earth,&mdash;what
+these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as
+we contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language,
+written or spoken for us, not in frightful black letters nor in
+dull sentences, but in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving
+words, and blossomed brightness of odoriferous wit, and
+sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom, and playful morality.</p>
+
+<p>217. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever
+my reader may be; but leave it we must, or we shall compose
+no more pictures to-day.</p>
+
+<p>This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action
+in arising from, or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps,
+of all principles of composition, the most influential in
+producing the beauty of groups of form. Other laws make
+them forcible or interesting, but this generally is chief in
+rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses
+in pictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers;
+but, like the law of principality, with careful concealment
+of its imperativeness, the point to which the lines of main
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160"></a>160</span>
+curvature are directed being very often far away out of the
+picture. Sometimes, however, a system of curves will be
+employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the value
+of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable
+enough.</p>
+
+<p>218. In the instance before us, the principal object being,
+as we have seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined
+that his system of curvature should have its origin in
+the top of this tower. The diagram <a href="#fig_34">Fig. 34</a>, <a href="#page145">p. 145</a>, compared
+with <a href="#fig_32">Fig. 32</a>, <a href="#page137">p. 137</a>, will show how this is done. One
+curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of
+the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber.
+This is a limiting curve of great importance, and Turner
+has drawn a considerable part of it with the edge of the timber
+very carefully, and then led the eye up to the sitting girl by
+some white spots and indications of a ledge in the bank;
+then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be missed.</p>
+
+<p>219. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half
+an inch of its course by the rudder; it is then taken up by
+the basket and the heads of the figures, and leads accurately
+to the tower angle. The gunwales of both the boats begin
+the next two curves, which meet in the same point; and all
+are centralized by the long reflection which continues the
+vertical lines.</p>
+
+<p>220. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is
+another, begun by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in
+the angle behind the rudder; continued by the bottom of the
+bank on which the figure sits, interrupted forcibly beyond it,<a name="FnAnchor_64" href="#Footnote_64"><span class="sp">[64]</span></a>
+but taken up again by the water-line leading to the bridge foot,
+and passing on in delicate shadows under the arches, not
+easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other extremity
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161"></a>161</span>
+of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating
+that the force and sweep of the river have indeed
+been in old times under the large arches; while the antiquity
+of the bridge is told us by a long tongue of land, either
+of carted rubbish, or washed down by some minor stream,
+which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a landing-place
+for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise,
+of which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap,
+immediately beneath the great tower. A common composer
+would have put these bales to one side or the other, but
+Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his
+tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured
+base adorns a pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of
+its height by throwing the reflection of it far down in the
+nearer water. All the great composers have this same feeling
+about sustaining their vertical masses: you will constantly
+find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,
+for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the
+great tower, in the sketch of St. Nicholas, at Prague, and the
+white group of figures under the tower in the sketch of
+Augsburg<a name="FnAnchor_65" href="#Footnote_65"><span class="sp">[65]</span></a>); and Veronese, Titian, and Tintoret continually
+put their principal figures at bases of pillars. Turner found
+out their secret very early, the most prominent instance of
+his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
+from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose <a href="#fig_20">Fig. 20</a>,
+already given to illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because,
+being another instance of precisely the same arrangement, it
+will serve to convince you of its being intentional. There, the
+vertical, formed by the larger tree, is continued by the figure
+of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller trees by his stick.
+The lines of the interior mass of the bushes radiate, under the
+law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's head; but
+their outline curves are carried on and repeated, under the
+law of continuity, by the curves of the dog and boy&mdash;by
+the way, note the remarkable instance in these of the use of
+darkest lines towards the light&mdash;all more or less guiding the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162"></a>162</span>
+eye up to the right, in order to bring it finally to the Keep
+of Windsor, which is the central object of the picture, as the
+bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which the boy
+climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction
+and character, with these greater curves; thus corresponding
+as nearly as possible to the minor tongue of land in the
+Coblentz. This, however, introduces us to another law, which
+we must consider separately.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.</p>
+
+<p>221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested
+by Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labor;
+sound to be heard clearly, must rise out of silence; light is
+exhibited by darkness, darkness by light; and so on in all
+things. Now in art every color has an opponent color, which,
+if brought near it, will relieve it more completely than any
+other; so, also, every form and line may be made more striking
+to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved
+line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one,
+and so on; and in all good work nearly double the value,
+which any given color or form would have uncombined, is
+given to each by contrast.<a name="FnAnchor_66" href="#Footnote_66"><span class="sp">[66]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
+vulgarizes a picture. Great painters do not commonly,
+or very visibly, admit violent contrast. They introduce it
+by stealth, and with intermediate links of tender change;
+allowing, indeed, the opposition to tell upon the mind as a
+surprise, but not as a shock.<a name="FnAnchor_67" href="#Footnote_67"><span class="sp">[67]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page163"></a>163</span></p>
+
+<p>222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, <a href="#fig_35">Fig. 35</a>, the
+main current of the lines being downwards, in a convex
+swell, they are suddenly stopped at the lowest tower by a
+counter series of beds, directed nearly straight across them.
+This adverse force sets off and relieves the great curvature,
+but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines below,
+which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
+get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great
+curve. No passage, however intentionally monotonous, is
+ever introduced by a good artist without <i>some</i> slight counter
+current of this kind; so much, indeed, do the great composers
+feel the necessity of it, that they will even do things purposely
+ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give greater value to their
+well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's versification
+the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior because he
+could not do them better, but because he feels that if all were
+equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
+if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would
+be fatiguing; and he purposely introduces the laboring or
+discordant verse, that the full ring may be felt in his main
+sentence, and the finished sweetness in his chosen rhythm.<a name="FnAnchor_68" href="#Footnote_68"><span class="sp">[68]</span></a>
+And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy their
+work by giving too much of all that they think is good, while
+the great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes
+to an opposite kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of
+enjoyment: he gives a passage of rich, involved, exquisitely
+wrought color, then passes away into slight, and pale, and
+simple color; he paints for a minute or two with intense
+decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spectator thinks,
+slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have <i>taken</i>
+any more decision from him just then; you have had as much
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164"></a>164</span>
+as is good for you: he paints over a great space of his picture
+forms of the most rounded and melting tenderness, and suddenly,
+as you think by a freak, gives you a bit as jagged and
+sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most exquisite
+piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow
+point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing
+hair of Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very
+little contrast will sometimes serve to make an entire group
+of forms interesting which would otherwise have been valueless.
+There is a good deal of picturesque material, for instance,
+in this top of an old tower, <a href="#fig_48">Fig. 48</a>, tiles and stones
+and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would
+have been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be
+that iron ring on the inner wall, which by its vigorous black
+<i>circular</i> line precisely opposes all the square and angular
+characters of the battlements and roof. Draw the tower
+without the ring, and see what a difference it will make.</p>
+
+
+<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both; " summary="Illustration">
+<tr>
+  <td class="figcenter1">
+    <a name="fig_48"><img src="images/img164.jpg" width="600" height="367" alt="Fig. 48." title="Fig. 48." /></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="caption"><span class="sc">Fig. 48.</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>223. One of the most important applications of the law of
+contrast is in association with the law of continuity, causing
+an unexpected but gentle break in a continuous series. This
+artifice is perpetual in music, and perpetual also in good
+illumination; the way in which little surprises of change
+are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165"></a>165</span>
+design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of
+the work of the good periods. We take, for instance, a bar
+of ornament between two written columns of an early fourteenth
+century MS., and at the first glance we suppose it to
+be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of a winding
+tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud. Presently,
+however, we see that, in order to observe the law of
+principality, there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud,
+nearly half-way up, which forms a center to the whole rod;
+and when we begin to examine the order of the leaves, we
+find it varied carefully. Let <span class="sc">A</span> stand for scarlet bud, <i>b</i> for
+blue leaf, <i>c</i> for two blue leaves on one stalk, <i>s</i> for a stalk
+without a leaf, and <span class="sc">R</span>, for the large red leaf. Then, counting
+from the ground, the order begins as follows:</p>
+
+<p><i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; and we think we shall
+have two <i>b</i>'s and an <span class="sc">A</span> all the way, when suddenly it becomes
+<i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">R</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; and we think we are going to
+have <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span> continued; but no: here it becomes <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>,
+<i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>c</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; <i>b</i>, <i>s</i>; and we think we are surely going to
+have <i>b</i>, <i>s</i> continued, but behold it runs away to the end with
+a quick <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <span class="sc">A</span>; <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>, <i>b</i>!<a name="FnAnchor_69" href="#Footnote_69"><span class="sp">[69]</span></a> Very often, however, the designer
+is satisfied with <i>one</i> surprise, but I never saw a good
+illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
+kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting
+without a snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's
+drawing of Rome with the large balustrade for a foreground
+in the Hakewell's Italy series: the single baluster
+struck out of the line, and showing the street below through
+the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
+otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.</p>
+
+<p>224. If you look back to <a href="#fig_48">Fig. 48</a> you will see, in the arrangement
+of the battlements, a simple instance of the use
+of such variation. The whole top of the tower, though actually
+three sides of a square, strikes the eye as a continuous
+series of five masses. The first two, on the left, somewhat
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166"></a>166</span>
+square and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the
+tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being
+couples, there is enough monotony in the series to make a
+change pleasant; and the last battlement, therefore, is a little
+higher than the first two,&mdash;a little lower than the second two,&mdash;and
+different in shape from either. Hide it with your
+finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements
+look.</p>
+
+<p>225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations
+of the laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole
+shape of the walls' mass being square, it is well, still for the
+sake of contrast, to oppose it not only by the element of curvature,
+in the ring, and lines of the roof below, but by that of
+sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes in the
+projecting point of the roof. Also, because the walls are
+thick and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with
+weakness; therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this
+roof as it sinks between them. The whole mass being nearly
+white, we want a contrasting shadow somewhere; and get it,
+under our piece of decrepitude. This shade, with the tiles of
+the wall below, forms another pointed mass, necessary to the
+first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior angle with
+your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the
+law of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has
+some share in the feeling with which you look at the battlements;
+there is a certain pleasure in the opposed slopes of
+their top, on one side down to the left, on the other to the
+right. Still less would you think the law of radiation had
+anything to do with the matter: but if you take the extreme
+point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow
+first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you,
+if you continue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow
+the second curve, the top of the tiles of the wall, and it will
+strike the top of the right-hand battlement; then draw a
+curve from the highest point of the angled battlement on the
+left, through the points of the roof and its dark echo; and you
+will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page167"></a>167</span>
+lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these
+main ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow
+the curve of the upper roof, it will take you to the top of the
+highest battlement; and the stones indicated at the right-hand
+side of the tower are more extended at the bottom, in order to
+get some less direct expression of sympathy, such as irregular
+stones may be capable of, with the general flow of the curves
+from left to right.</p>
+
+<p>226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these
+laws are indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition.
+But, as you study longer, you will discover that these laws,
+and many more, are obeyed by the powerful composers in
+every <i>touch</i>: that literally, there is never a dash of their pencil
+which is not carrying out appointed purposes of this kind
+in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much
+difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of
+the great composers ruling his colors, and a common painter
+confused by them, as there is between a general directing
+the march of an army, and an old lady carried off her feet
+by a mob.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.</p>
+
+<p>227. Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law
+which enforces the unity of opposite things, by giving to each
+a portion of the character of the other. If, for instance, you
+divide a shield into two masses of color, all the way down&mdash;suppose
+blue and white, and put a bar, or figure of an animal,
+partly on one division, partly on the other, you will find it
+pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the animal blue
+which comes upon the white half, and white which comes
+upon the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the
+sake of perfect intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of
+delight in interchange of color, since, in all ornamentation
+whatever, the practice is continual, in the ages of good
+design.</p>
+
+<p>228. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page168"></a>168</span>
+contrasts; as that, after red has been for some time on one
+side, and blue on the other, red shall pass to blue's side and
+blue to red's. This kind of alternation takes place simply
+in four-quartered shields; in more subtle pieces of treatment,
+a little bit only of each color is carried into the other, and
+they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most
+curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you
+have drawn some time carefully from Nature in light and
+shade, is the appearance of intentional artifice with which
+contrasts of this alternate kind are produced by her; the
+artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as long as it
+comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely
+at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly
+treat all her masses of shade and color, is so great, that if you
+only follow her closely, every one who looks at your drawing
+with attention will think that you have been inventing the
+most artificially and unnaturally delightful interchanges of
+shadow that could possibly be devised by human wit.</p>
+
+<p>229. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at
+length by Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade: it seems
+of all his principles of composition to be the one he is most
+conscious of; many others he obeys by instinct, but this he
+formally accepts and forcibly declares.</p>
+
+<p>The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of
+course, to teach us how opposite natures may be helped and
+strengthened by receiving each, as far as they can, some
+impress or reflection, or imparted power, from the other.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title1">8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.</p>
+
+<p>230. It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while
+contrast exhibits the <i>characters</i> of things, it very often
+neutralizes or paralyzes their <i>power</i>. A number of white
+things may be shown to be clearly white by opposition of a
+black thing, but if we want the full power of their gathered
+light, the black thing may be seriously in our way. Thus,
+while contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy which
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169"></a>169</span>
+employ them, concentrating the power of several into a mass.
+And, not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the
+wisdom of man is continually called upon to reconcile these
+opposite methods of exhibiting, or using, the materials in his
+power. By change he gives them pleasantness, and by consistency
+value; by change he is refreshed, and by perseverance
+strengthened.</p>
+
+<p>231. Hence many compositions address themselves to the
+spectator by aggregate force of color or line, more than by
+contrasts of either; many noble pictures are painted almost
+exclusively in various tones of red, or gray, or gold, so as to
+be instantly striking by their breadth of flush, or glow, or
+tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only by
+slight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some
+compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others
+slight and graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines
+of contrary character. And, in general, such compositions
+possess higher sublimity than those which are more mingled
+in their elements. They tell a special tale, and summon a
+definite state of feeling, while the grand compositions merely
+please the eye.</p>
+
+<p>232. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches
+most to the works of the greatest men; their separate pictures
+have all separate aims. We have not, in each, gray
+color set against somber, and sharp forms against soft, and
+loud passages against low: but we have the bright picture,
+with its delicate sadness; the somber picture, with its single
+ray of relief; the stern picture, with only one tender group
+of lines; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle
+at its flank; and so on. Hence the variety of their work,
+as well as its impressiveness. The principal bearing of this
+law, however, is on the separate masses or divisions of a
+picture: the character of the whole composition may be
+broken or various, if we please, but there must certainly be
+a tendency to consistent assemblage in its divisions. As an
+army may act on several points at once, but can only act
+effectually by having somewhere formed and regular masses,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170"></a>170</span>
+and not wholly by skirmishers; so a picture may be various
+in its tendencies, but must be somewhere united and coherent
+in its masses. Good composers are always associating their
+colors in great groups; binding their forms together by encompassing
+lines, and securing, by various dexterities of expedient,
+what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a
+large gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light
+being gathered to light, darkness to darkness, and color to
+color. If, however, this be done by introducing false lights or
+false colors, it is absurd and monstrous; the skill of a painter
+consists in obtaining breadth by rational arrangement of his
+objects, not by forced or wanton treatment of them. It is an
+easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another all
+black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the
+circumstances which will naturally produce white in one
+place, and brown in another. Generally speaking, however,
+breadth will result in sufficient degree from fidelity of study:
+Nature is always broad; and if you paint her colors in true
+relations, you will paint them in majestic masses. If you
+find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all probability,
+not only ill composed, but untrue.</p>
+
+<p>233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or
+scattering of light and color, has a certain contrasting charm,
+and is occasionally introduced with exquisite effect by good
+composers.<a name="FnAnchor_70" href="#Footnote_70"><span class="sp">[70]</span></a> Still it is never the mere scattering, but the
+order discernible through this scattering, which is the real
+source of pleasure; not the mere multitude, but the constellation
+of multitude. The broken lights in the work of a good
+painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not unshepherded,
+speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad painter
+fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
+it to be wished they were also of dissolution.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page171"></a>171</span></p>
+
+<p class="title1">9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.</p>
+
+<p>234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one
+of composition as of truth, but it must guide composition, and
+is properly, therefore, to be stated in this place.</p>
+
+<p>Good drawing is, as we have seen, an <i>abstract</i> of natural
+facts; you cannot represent all that you would, but must
+continually be falling short, whether you will or no, of the
+force, or quantity, of Nature. Now, suppose that your
+means and time do not admit of your giving the depth of
+color in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler.
+If you paint all the colors proportionately paler, as if an
+equal quantity of tint had been washed away from each of
+them, you still obtain a harmonious, though not an equally
+forcible, statement of natural fact. But if you take away
+the colors unequally, and leave some tints nearly as deep as
+they are in Nature, while others are much subdued, you have
+no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the observer,
+"Fancy all those colors a little deeper, and you will have the
+actual fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes
+away, something is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out
+of harmony.</p>
+
+<p>235. It will happen, however, much more frequently,
+that you have to darken the whole system of colors, than to
+make them paler. You remember, in your first studies of
+color from Nature, you were to leave the passages of light
+which were too bright to be imitated, as white paper. But,
+in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to put color
+into them; and then the other colors must be made darker,
+in some fixed relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately,
+though the whole scene is darker than reality, it is
+only as if you were looking at the reality in a lower light:
+but if, while you darken some of the tints, you leave others
+undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not give
+the impression of truth.</p>
+
+<p>236. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen <i>all</i> the colors so
+much as to relieve the lights in their natural degree, you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page172"></a>172</span>
+would merely sink most of your colors, if you tried to do so,
+into a broad mass of blackness: but it is quite possible to
+lower them harmoniously, and yet more in some parts of the
+picture than in others, so as to allow you to show the light you
+want in a visible relief. In well-harmonized pictures this is
+done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards
+the lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the
+very dark parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of
+course, to include large masses of middle tints. But the principal
+point to be observed in doing this, is to deepen the individual
+tints without dirtying or obscuring them. It is
+easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over with
+gray or brown; and easy to see the effect of the landscape,
+when its colors are thus universally polluted with black, by
+using the black convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions
+for falsifying Nature and degrading art which ever
+was put into an artist's hand.<a name="FnAnchor_71" href="#Footnote_71"><span class="sp">[71]</span></a> For the thing required is
+not to darken pale yellow by mixing gray with it, but to
+deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing
+black with it, but by making it deeper and richer crimson:
+and thus the required effect could only be seen in Nature, if
+you had pieces of glass of the color of every object in your
+landscape, and of every minor hue that made up those colors,
+and then could see the real landscape through this deep
+gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with
+glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to
+say, you can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for
+pale gold, and so on, in the proportion you need; and then you
+may paint as forcibly as you choose, but your work will still
+be in the manner of Titian, not of Caravaggio or Spagnoletto,
+or any other of the black slaves of painting.<a name="FnAnchor_72" href="#Footnote_72"><span class="sp">[72]</span></a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page173"></a>173</span></p>
+
+<p>237. Supposing those scales of color, which I told you to
+prepare in order to show you the relations of color to gray,
+were quite accurately made, and numerous enough, you would
+have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a deeper tone in
+any given mass of color, than to substitute for each of its hues
+the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you wanted,
+that is to say, if you wanted to deepen the whole two degrees,
+substituting for the yellow No. 5 the yellow No. 7, and for the
+red No. 9 the red No. 11, and so on: but the hues of any
+object in Nature are far too numerous, and their degrees too
+subtle, to admit of so mechanical a process. Still, you may
+see the principle of the whole matter clearly by taking a
+group of colors out of your scale, arranging them prettily,
+and then washing them all over with gray: that represents
+the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange
+the same group of colors, with the tints five or six degrees
+deeper in the scale; and that will represent the treatment of
+Nature by Titian.</p>
+
+<p>238. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the
+right of the thing by working from Nature.</p>
+
+<p>The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this
+kind is a good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with
+some white clouds in it. Paint the clouds in true and
+tenderly gradated white; then give the sky a bold full blue,
+bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and leaves
+grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green
+and brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to
+more complicated studies, matching the colors carefully first
+by your old method; then deepening each color with its own
+tint, and being careful, above all things, to keep truth of
+equal change when the colors are connected with each other,
+as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much more
+aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision
+with which you observe the relation of colors in dark sides
+and light sides, and the influence of modifying reflections,
+than by mere accuracy of added depth in independent colors.</p>
+
+<p>239. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174"></a>174</span>
+the most important of those which the artist has to regard.
+But there are all kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to
+its mode of production. There is even a harmony of touch.
+If you paint one part of it very rapidly and forcibly, and
+another part slowly and delicately, each division of the picture
+may be right separately, but they will not agree together: the
+whole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony. Similarly,
+if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm
+day, and another by a gray light in a cold day, though both
+may have been sunlight, and both may be well toned,
+and have their relative shadows truly cast, neither will look
+like light; they will destroy each other's power, by being out
+of harmony. These are only broad and definable instances
+of discordance; but there is an extent of harmony in all good
+work much too subtle for definition; depending on the
+draughtsman's carrying everything he draws up to just the
+balancing and harmonious point, in finish, and color, and
+depth of tone, and intensity of moral feeling, and style of
+touch, all considered at once; and never allowing himself to
+lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing at
+the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly
+in another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's etchings,
+you will be able, I think, to feel the nature of harmonious
+treatment in a simple kind, by comparing them with any
+of Richter's illustrations to the numerous German story-books
+lately published at Christmas, with all the German
+stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in
+character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is <i>perfect</i>
+in harmony. The pure and simple effects of daylight which
+he gets by his thorough mastery of treatment in this respect,
+are quite unrivaled, as far as I know, by any other work executed
+with so few touches. His vignettes to Grimm's German
+stories, already recommended, are the most remarkable
+in this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary, are
+of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human
+character, with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy;
+but, as drawings, they are almost unendurably out of harmony,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175"></a>175</span>
+violent blacks in one place being continually opposed
+to trenchant white in another; and, as is almost sure to be the
+case with bad harmonists, the local color hardly felt anywhere.
+All German work is apt to be out of harmony, in consequence
+of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its
+willful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind
+of excitement, which dwells violently on particular points,
+and makes all the lines of thought in the picture to stand on
+end, as it were, like a cat's fur electrified; while good work is
+always as quiet as a couchant leopard, and as strong.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<p>240. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition
+which occur to me as capable of being illustrated or defined;
+but there are multitudes of others which, in the present state
+of my knowledge, I cannot define, and others which I never
+hope to define; and these the most important, and connected
+with the deepest powers of the art. I hope, when I have
+thought of them more, to be able to explain some of the laws
+which relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that ignobleness
+especially which we commonly call "vulgarity" and which,
+in its essence, is one of the most curious subjects of inquiry
+connected with human feeling. Others I never hope to
+explain, laws of expression, bearing simply on simple matters;
+but, for that very reason, more influential than any
+others. These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily
+sensations are; it being just as impossible, I think, to show,
+finally, why one succession of musical notes<a name="FnAnchor_73" href="#Footnote_73"><span class="sp">[73]</span></a> shall be lofty
+and pathetic, and such as might have been sung by Casella
+to Dante, and why another succession is base and ridiculous,
+and would be fit only for the reasonably good ear of Bottom,
+as to explain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176"></a>176</span>
+The best part of every great work is always inexplicable: it
+is good because it is good; and innocently gracious, opening
+as the green of the earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.</p>
+
+<p>241. But though you cannot explain them, you may always
+render yourself more and more sensitive to these higher qualities
+by the discipline which you generally give to your character,
+and this especially with regard to the choice of incidents;
+a kind of composition in some sort easier than the artistical
+arrangements of lines and colors, but in every sort
+nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.</p>
+
+<p>242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last
+vignette to Rogers's Poems, the plow in the foreground
+has three purposes. The first purpose is to meet the stream
+of sunlight on the river, and make it brighter by opposition;
+but any dark object whatever would have done this. Its
+second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of
+the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression
+of repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its
+third and chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned
+in the furrow (the vessels also being moored, and having their
+sails down), to be a type of human labor closed with the
+close of day. The parts of it on which the hand leans are
+brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief dark
+of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of
+man as a punishment: but they make the soft light of the
+setting sun brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These
+thoughts may never occur to us as we glance carelessly at the
+design; and yet their under current assuredly affects the
+feelings, and increases, as the painter meant it should, the
+impression of melancholy, and of peace.</p>
+
+<p>243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the
+plates I have marked as most desirable for your possession:
+the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the
+advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near
+object to relieve its brightness.  But the incident which
+Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull at
+a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page177"></a>177</span>
+his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its
+unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element,
+and warns us of the sea's advance just as surely as the
+abandoned plow told us of the ceased labor of the day.</p>
+
+<p>244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single
+incidents of this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the
+arrangement of the whole subject, that the mind of a great
+composer is known. A single incident may be suggested by
+a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto might be for the heading
+of a chapter. But the great composers so arrange <i>all</i>
+their designs that one incident illustrates another, just as one
+color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham," of the
+Yorkshire series, which, as to its locality, may be considered
+a companion to the last drawing we have spoken of, the "Lancaster
+Sands," presents as interesting an example as we could
+find of Turner's feeling in this respect. The subject is a
+simple north-country village, on the shore of Morecambe
+Bay; not in the common sense a picturesque village; there are
+no pretty bow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance
+to the rustic doors, or quaint gables; nothing but a
+single street of thatched and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged
+in a somewhat monotonous line, the roofs so green with moss
+that at first we hardly discern the houses from the fields and
+trees. The village street is closed at the end by a wooden
+gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through
+it, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in
+which a right of way lies through the yard. The road
+which leads to this gate is full of ruts, and winds down a
+bad bit of hill between two broken banks of moor ground,
+succeeding immediately to the few inclosures which surround
+the village; they can hardly be called gardens: but a decayed
+fragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line,
+with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a
+smock-frock, is stretched between the trunks of some stunted
+willows; a <i>very</i> small haystack and pig-sty being seen at
+the back of the cottage beyond. An empty, two-wheeled,
+lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge wooden
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178"></a>178</span>
+collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the
+leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being
+about country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is
+a better house, with three chimneys and a dormer window in
+its roof, and the roof is of stone shingle instead of thatch,
+but very rough. This house is no doubt the clergyman's:
+there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from any
+other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney
+at the back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather
+thick, the fire not having been long lighted. A few hundred
+yards from the clergyman's house, nearer the shore, is the
+church, discernible from the cottages only by its low two-arched
+belfry, a little neater than one would expect in
+such a village; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite incumbent:<a name="FnAnchor_74" href="#Footnote_74"><span class="sp">[74]</span></a>
+and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two
+fragments of a border war-tower, standing on their circular
+mound, worn on its brow deep into edges and furrows by the
+feet of the village children. On the bank of moor, which
+forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's dog barking
+at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding another, a
+gentle white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of
+a handful of fresh hay, which she has brought for it in her
+blue apron, fastened up round her waist; she stands with her
+pail on her head, evidently the village coquette, for she has
+a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under the blue
+apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, bare-footed,
+stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground
+is thistly and not pleasurable to bare feet);&mdash;whether boy
+or girl we are not sure: it may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out
+bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of ragged trousers on;
+probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently useful to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179"></a>179</span>
+keep the sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed
+cows among the moorland hollows, and helps us at present to
+watch (holding the bonnet's edge down) the quarrel of the
+vixenish cow with the dog, which, leaning on our long stick,
+we allow to proceed without any interference. A little to the
+right the hay is being got in, of which the milkmaid has just
+taken her apronful to the white cow; but the hay is very thin,
+and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks; we must
+glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the
+willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together,
+kneeling against the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart
+without dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky
+hill, deep set with brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone
+emerging here and there, with pleasant turf on their
+brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds against the sky,
+which, clear and calm, and as golden as the moss, stretches
+down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows
+its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seawards: perhaps
+one of the village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may
+have built it there, that his mother may first see the sails of
+his ship whenever it runs into the bay. Then under the hill,
+and beyond the border tower, is the blue sea itself, the waves
+flowing in over the sand in long curved lines slowly; shadows
+of cloud, and gleams of shallow water on white sand alternating&mdash;miles
+away; but no sail is visible, not one fisher-boat
+on the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon.
+Beyond all are the Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun,
+with rosy light on all their crags.</p>
+
+<p>245. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of
+harmony there is in this composition; the entire purpose of
+the painter to give us the impression of wild, yet gentle,
+country life, monotonous as the succession of the noiseless
+waves, patient and enduring as the rocks; but peaceful, and
+full of health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the pure
+mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly
+between days of toil and nights of innocence.</p>
+
+<p>246. All noble composition of this kind can be reached
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180"></a>180</span>
+only by instinct; you cannot set yourself to arrange such a
+subject; you may see it, and seize it, at all times, but never
+laboriously invent it. And your power of discerning what is
+best in expression, among natural subjects, depends wholly
+on the temper in which you keep your own mind; above all,
+on your living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely
+sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days
+is wholly incompatible with any true perception of natural
+beauty. If you go down into Cumberland by the railroad,
+live in some frequented hotel, and explore the hills with
+merry companions, however much you may enjoy your tour
+or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so
+much as one pictorial subject rightly; you will not see into
+the depth of any. But take knapsack and stick, walk towards
+the hills by short day's journeys,&mdash;ten or twelve miles a
+day&mdash;taking a week from some starting-place sixty or seventy
+miles away: sleep at the pretty little wayside inns, or the
+rough village ones; then take the hills as they tempt you, following
+glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart guides,
+wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything
+which it is the ordinary traveler's duty to see, or pride to do.
+Never force yourself to admire anything when you are not in
+the humor; but never force yourself away from what you feel
+to be lovely, in search of anything better; and gradually the
+deeper scenes of the natural world will unfold themselves to
+you in still increasing fullness of passionate power; and your
+difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose subjects, but
+only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious
+thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which
+will of course be noble or original in proportion to your own
+depth of character and general power of mind; for it is not
+so much by the consideration you give to any single drawing,
+as by the previous discipline of your powers of thought, that
+the character of your composition will be determined. Simplicity
+of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and
+modesty of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp
+of daily life will make you enjoy coarse colors and affected
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181"></a>181</span>
+forms. Habits of patient comparison and accurate judgment
+will make your art precious, as they will make your actions
+wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in your living
+spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
+the works of your hands.&mdash;Faithfully yours,</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right; padding-right: 1em; "><span class="sc">J. Ruskin.</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_41" href="#FnAnchor_41">[41]</a> I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading Pre-Raphaelites
+have all about equal power over color in the abstract, Rossetti
+and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest for rendering
+color under effects of light; and of these two, Rossetti composes with
+richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of beauty, Hunt's stern realism
+leading him continually into harshness. Rossetti's carelessness, to do him
+justice, is only in water-color, never in oil.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_42" href="#FnAnchor_42">[42]</a> All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the rise of
+the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown trees would
+have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to work in dead
+color. Any color will do for some people, if it is browned and shining;
+but fallacy in dead color is detected on the instant. I even believe that
+whenever a painter begins to <i>wish</i> that he could touch any portion of his
+work with gum, he is going wrong.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish between
+translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have said above, a
+dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but luster or <i>shininess</i> is
+always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of my best painter-friends (the
+"best" being understood to attach to both divisions of that awkward
+compound word,) tried the other day to persuade me that luster was an
+ignobleness in anything; and it was only the fear of treason to ladies'
+eyes, and to mountain streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from
+yielding the point to him. One is apt always to generalize too quickly
+in such matters; but there can be no question that luster is destructive of
+loveliness in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever may be the
+pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes shine (though
+perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she would be sorry if
+her cheeks did; and which of us would wish to polish a rose?</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_43" href="#FnAnchor_43">[43]</a> But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed imperial, or
+gray paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is best. Coarse,
+gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and blunderers; no good
+draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner worked much on a thin
+tough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his sketches in tight bundles
+that would go deep into his pockets.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_44" href="#FnAnchor_44">[44]</a> I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I address
+you as a beginner, or an amateur: a great artist can sometimes get out of
+a difficulty with credit, or repent without confession. Yet even Titian's
+alterations usually show as stains on his work.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_45" href="#FnAnchor_45">[45]</a> It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few colors: it
+saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing, and you may
+at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange them in your
+color-box in the order I have set them down, you will always easily put
+your finger on the one you want.</p>
+
+<table class="nobctr" width="100%" summary="table">
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Cobalt</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Smalt</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Antwerb blue</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Prussian blue</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Black</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Gamboge</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Emerald green</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Hooker's green</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Lemon yellow</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Cadmium yellow</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Yellow ocher</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Roman ocher</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Raw sienna</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Burnt sienna</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Light red</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Indian red</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Mars orange</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Extract of vermilion</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Carmine</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Violet carmine</td> </tr>
+
+<tr> <td class="lsp">Brown madder</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Burnt umber</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Vandyke brown</td>
+     <td class="lsp">Sepia</td> </tr>
+
+</table>
+
+
+<p>Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but
+you need not care much about permanence in your work as yet, and they
+are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more fugitive still,
+and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color, put in the box merely
+to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and Prussian blue. No. 1 is
+the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a noble color for laying broken shadows
+with, to be worked into afterwards with other colors.</p>
+
+<p>If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's
+"Chromatography" at once; only do not attend to anything it says about
+principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements of practical
+serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on each other when
+mixed, etc.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_46" href="#FnAnchor_46">[46]</a> A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly
+prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the sheet
+of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip of cardboard an
+inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening, and match each color
+beside one of the circular openings. You will thus have no occasion to
+wash any of the colors away. But the first rough method is generally all
+you want, as, after a little practice, you only need to <i>look</i> at the hue
+through the opening in order to be able to transfer it to your drawing at
+once.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_47" href="#FnAnchor_47">[47]</a> If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should have
+many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer I would
+lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except black, Prussian
+blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I would leave for students.
+I don't say this jestingly; I believe such a tax would do more to
+advance real art than a great many schools of design.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_48" href="#FnAnchor_48">[48]</a> I say <i>modern</i>, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors, which is
+the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any artist. The best
+color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not quite right.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_49" href="#FnAnchor_49">[49]</a> See <a href="#note6">Note 6</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_50" href="#FnAnchor_50">[50]</a> The worst general character that color can possibly have is a prevalent
+tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a decaying heap
+of vegetables; this color is <i>accurately</i> indicative of decline or paralysis in
+missal-painting.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_51" href="#FnAnchor_51">[51]</a> That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The gradations of
+color in the various shadows belonging to various lights exhibit form, and
+therefore no one but a colorist can ever draw <i>forms</i> perfectly (see Modern
+Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at the end); but all notions of explaining form
+by superimposed color, as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color
+adorns form, but does not interpret it. An apple is prettier because it is
+striped, but it does not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because
+it is flushed, but you would see the form of the cheek bone better if it were
+not. Color may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as in grounding
+a bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance of projection,
+and whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or green, for your ground,
+the bas-relief will be just as clearly or just as imperfectly relieved, as
+long as the colors are of equal depth. The blue ground will not retire the
+hundredth part of an inch more than the red one.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_52" href="#FnAnchor_52">[52]</a> See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one more point
+connected with the management of color, under the head "Law of Harmony."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_53" href="#FnAnchor_53">[53]</a> See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. viii. § 6.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_54" href="#FnAnchor_54">[54]</a> See <a href="#note7">Note 7</a> in Appendix I.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_55" href="#FnAnchor_55">[55]</a> "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are peaceful
+things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in events; that
+one day should be like another day, or one history the repetition of another
+history, being more or less results of quietness, while dissimilarity and
+non-succession are results of interference and disquietude. Thus, though
+an echo actually increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of
+the note or syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way;
+hence also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a
+cuckoo."</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_56" href="#FnAnchor_56">[56]</a> This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, the masts being so delicate that
+they are confused among the lines of reflection. In the original they have
+orange light upon them, relieved against purple behind.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_57" href="#FnAnchor_57">[57]</a> The cost of art in getting a bridge level is <i>always</i> lost, for you must
+get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and you only can make
+the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther back, and pretending to
+have got rid of it when you have not, but have only wasted money in
+building an unnecessary embankment. Of course, the bridge should not
+be difficultly or dangerously steep, but the necessary slope, whatever it
+may be, should be in the bridge itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and
+not pushed aside into the approach, as in our Waterloo road; the only
+rational excuse for doing which is that when the slope must be long it is
+inconvenient to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any
+restiveness of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment.
+To this I answer: first, it is not more dangerous in reality,
+though it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective parapet,
+but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a useless
+rail; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on the bridge and
+make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be quite safe, because a
+little waste of space on the river is no loss, but your wide embankment at
+the side loses good ground; and so my picturesque bridges are right as
+well as beautiful, and I hope to see them built again some day instead of
+the frightful straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept
+from the pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_58" href="#FnAnchor_58">[58]</a> I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in other
+books; but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the notices of this
+part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap xvii.; and Stones of
+Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. § 8.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_59" href="#FnAnchor_59">[59]</a> If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without having
+gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch of the ramification
+of stone pine, <a href="#fig_4">Fig. 4</a>, <a href="#page017">p. 17</a>, and examine the curves of its boughs
+one by one, trying them by the conditions here stated under the heads A
+and B.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_60" href="#FnAnchor_60">[60]</a> The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these figures
+is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by compasses.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_61" href="#FnAnchor_61">[61]</a> I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely facsimiles
+of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to illustrate my
+meaning as I write&mdash;often sadly scrawled if I want to get on to something
+else. This one is really a little too careless; but it would take more time
+and trouble to make a proper drawing of so odd a boat than the matter is
+worth. It will answer the purpose well enough as it is.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_62" href="#FnAnchor_62">[62]</a> Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature dependent,
+as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of continual
+injury without materially losing the power of giving pleasure by its
+aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I have not, of course, space
+here to explain these minor distinctions, but the laws above stated apply
+to all the more important trees and shrubs likely to be familiar to the
+student.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_63" href="#FnAnchor_63">[63]</a> There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of leaves
+upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to attract attention,
+by their pretty play and change. If you examine them, you will
+find that the shadows do not take the forms of the leaves, but that, through
+each interstice, the light falls, at a little distance, in the form of a round
+or oval spot; that is to say, it produces the image of the sun itself, cast
+either vertically or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of
+the ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they
+fall through any small aperture: but the openings between leaves are the
+only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to attract his attention
+to it by its frequency, and lead him to think what this type may
+signify respecting the greater Sun; and how it may show us that, even
+when the opening through which the earth receives light is too small to
+let us see the Sun Himself, the ray of light that enters, if it comes straight
+from Him, will still bear with it His image.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_64" href="#FnAnchor_64">[64]</a> In the smaller figure (32), it will be seen that this interruption is
+caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge; and this object is
+serviceable as beginning another system of curves leading out of the
+picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as not to be easily represented
+in outline. As it is unnecessary to the explanation of our point here, it
+has been omitted in the larger diagram, the direction of the curve it begins
+being indicated by the dashes only.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_65" href="#FnAnchor_65">[65]</a> Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_66" href="#FnAnchor_66">[66]</a> If you happen to meet with the plate of Dürer's representing a coat-of-arms
+with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the concave
+curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage carried round
+it in front; and the use of the blank white part of the shield in opposing
+the rich folds of the dress.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_67" href="#FnAnchor_67">[67]</a> Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light to
+oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never set
+behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the mountain's edge.</p>
+
+<a name="Footnote_68" href="#FnAnchor_68">[68]</a>
+
+<p class="poemq">
+"A prudent chief not always must display <br />
+His powers in equal ranks and fair array, <br />
+But with the occasion and the place comply, <br />
+Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly. <br />
+Those oft are stratagems which errors seem, <br />
+Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream." <br />
+
+<span style="padding-left: 16em; "><i>Essay on Criticism.</i></span></p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_69" href="#FnAnchor_69">[69]</a> I am describing from an MS., <i>circa</i> 1300, of Gregory's Decretalia, in
+my own possession.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_70" href="#FnAnchor_70">[70]</a> One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice, is
+little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes of scattered
+gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe great part
+of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being marked through this
+division.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_71" href="#FnAnchor_71">[71]</a> I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by considerable
+power of effect, which prevails in modern French art, must be
+owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French landscape
+always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the dark mirror, and
+painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the veil of its perversion.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_72" href="#FnAnchor_72">[72]</a> Various other parts of this subject are entered into, especially in their
+bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_73" href="#FnAnchor_73">[73]</a> In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned by their
+mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be reasoned about;
+we like it just as we like an air in music, but cannot reason any refractory
+person into liking it, if they do not: and yet there is distinctly a right and
+a wrong in it, and a good taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in
+music.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_74" href="#FnAnchor_74">[74]</a> "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
+but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called ecclesiastical
+sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated condition, forms one of the
+principal elements of "Puseyism,"&mdash;I use this word regretfully, no other
+existing which will serve for it,&mdash;had been known and felt in our wild
+northern districts long before.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page182"></a>182</span></p>
+
+<p><br /></p>
+<hr class="art" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page183"></a>183</span></p>
+
+<h3>APPENDIX.</h3>
+<hr class="short" />
+
+<h4>I.</h4>
+
+<p class="title1">ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.</p>
+
+<p class="title2"><span class="sc">Note 1</span>, <a name="note1" href="#page042">p. 42</a>.&mdash;"<i>Principle of the stereoscope.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists,
+that they can, in some degree, imitate in a picture the effect
+of the stereoscope, by confusion of lines. There are indeed
+one or two artifices by which, as stated in the text, an
+appearance of retirement or projection may be obtained, so
+that they partly supply the place of the stereoscopic effect,
+but they do not imitate that effect. The principle of the
+human sight is simply this:&mdash;by means of our two eyes we
+literally see everything from two places at once; and, by
+calculated combination, in the brain, of the facts of form so
+seen, we arrive at conclusions respecting the distance and
+shape of the object, which we could not otherwise have
+reached. But it is just as vain to hope to paint at once the two
+views of the object as seen from these two places, though only
+an inch and a half distant from each other, as it would be
+if they were a mile and a half distant from each other. With
+the right eye you see one view of a given object, relieved
+against one part of the distance; with the left eye you see
+another view of it, relieved against another part of the distance.
+You may paint whichever of those views you please;
+you cannot paint both. Hold your finger upright, between
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184"></a>184</span>
+you and this page of the book, about six inches from your
+eyes, and three from the book; shut the right eye, and hide
+the words "inches from," in the second line above this, with
+your finger; you will then see "six" on one side of it, and
+"your," on the other. Now shut the left eye and open the
+right without moving your finger, and you will see "inches,"
+but not "six." You may paint the finger with "inches"
+beyond it, or with "six" beyond it, but not with both. And
+this principle holds for any object and any distance. You
+might just as well try to paint St. Paul's at once from both
+ends of London Bridge as to realize any stereoscopic effect in
+a picture.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 2</span>, <a name="note2" href="#page059">p. 59</a>.&mdash;"<i>Dark lines turned to the light.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>248. It ought to have been farther observed, that the
+inclosure of the light by future shadow is by no means the
+only reason for the dark lines which great masters often
+thus introduce. It constantly happens that a local color will
+show its own darkness most on the light side, by projecting
+into and against masses of light in that direction; and then
+the painter will indicate this future force of the mass by
+his dark touch. Both the monk's head in <a href="#fig_11">Fig. 11</a> and dog in
+<a href="#fig_20">Fig. 20</a> are dark towards the light for this reason.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 3</span>, <a name="note3" href="#page098">p. 98</a>.&mdash;"<i>Softness of reflections.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>249. I have not quite insisted enough on the extreme care
+which is necessary in giving the tender evanescence of the
+edges of the reflections, when the water is in the least agitated;
+nor on the decision with which you may reverse the object,
+when the water is quite calm. Most drawing of reflections
+is at once confused and hard; but Nature's is at once intelligible
+and tender. Generally, at the edge of the water, you
+ought not to see where reality ceases and reflection begins;
+as the image loses itself you ought to keep all its subtle and
+varied veracities, with the most exquisite softening of its edge.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185"></a>185</span>
+Practice as much as you can from the reflections of ships in
+calm water, following out all the reversed rigging, and
+taking, if anything, more pains with the reflection than with
+the ship.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 4</span>, <a name="note4" href="#page100">p. 100</a>.&mdash;"<i>Where the reflection is darkest, you will<br />
+see through the water best.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>250. For this reason it often happens that if the water
+be shallow, and you are looking steeply down into it, the
+reflection of objects on the bank will consist simply of pieces
+of the bottom seen clearly through the water, and relieved
+by flashes of light, which are the reflection of the sky. Thus
+you may have to draw the reflected dark shape of a bush:
+but, inside of that shape, you must not draw the leaves of
+the bush, but the stones under the water; and, outside of this
+dark reflection, the blue or white of the sky, with no stones
+visible.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 5</span>, <a name="note5" href="#page101">p. 101</a>.&mdash;"<i>Approach streams with reverence.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>251. I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents
+or waterfalls, as I do not consider them subjects for beginners
+to practice upon; but, as many of our younger artists are
+almost breaking their hearts over them, it may be well to
+state at once that it is physically impossible to draw a
+running torrent quite rightly, the luster of its currents and
+whiteness of its foam being dependent on intensities of light
+which art has not at its command. This also is to be observed,
+that most young painters make their defeat certain by attempting
+to draw running water, which is a lustrous object in
+rapid motion, without ever trying their strength on a lustrous
+object standing still. Let them break a coarse green-glass
+bottle into a great many bits, and try to paint those, with all
+their undulations and edges of fracture, as they lie still on
+the table; if they cannot, of course they need not try the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186"></a>186</span>
+rushing crystal and foaming fracture of the stream. If
+they can manage the glass bottle, let them next buy a fragment
+or two of yellow fire-opal; it is quite a common and
+cheap mineral, and presents, as closely as anything can, the
+milky bloom and color of a torrent wave: and if they can
+conquer the opal, they may at last have some chance with
+the stream, as far as the stream is in any wise possible. But,
+as I have just said, the bright parts of it are <i>not</i> possible, and
+ought, as much as may be, to be avoided in choosing subjects.
+A great deal more may, however, be done than any artist has
+done yet, in painting the gradual disappearance and lovely
+coloring of stones seen through clear and calm water.</p>
+
+<p>Students living in towns may make great progress in rock-drawing
+by frequently and faithfully drawing broken edges
+of common roofing slates, of their real size.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 6</span>, <a name="note6" href="#page125">p. 125</a>.&mdash;"<i>Nature's economy of color.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>252. I heard it wisely objected to this statement, the other
+day, by a young lady, that it was not through economy that
+Nature did not color deep down in the flower bells, but
+because "she had not light enough there to see to paint
+with." This may be true; but it is certainly not for want of
+light that, when she is laying the dark spots on a foxglove,
+she will not use any more purple than she has got already
+on the bell, but takes out the color all round the spot, and
+concentrates it in the middle.</p>
+
+<p class="title3"><span class="sc">Note 7</span>, <a name="note7" href="#page138">p. 138</a>.&mdash;"<i>The law of repetition.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>253. The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful
+picture of Vandyck's in the Manchester Exhibition, representing
+three children in court dresses of rich black and red.
+The law in question was amusingly illustrated, in the lower
+corner of that picture, by the introduction of two crows, in
+a similar color of court dress, having jet black feathers and
+bright red beaks.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page187"></a>187</span></p>
+
+<p>254. Since the first edition of this work was published,
+I have ascertained that there are two series of engravings
+from the Bible drawings mentioned in the list at <a href="#page050">p. 50</a>.
+One of these is inferior to the other, and in many respects
+false to the drawing; the "Jericho," for instance, in the
+false series, has common bushes instead of palm trees in the
+middle distance. The original plates may be had at almost
+any respectable printseller's; and ordinary impressions,
+whether of these or any other plates mentioned in the list
+at <a href="#page050">p. 50</a>, will be quite as useful as proofs: but, in buying
+Liber Studiorum, it is always well to get the best impressions
+that can be had, and if possible impressions of the
+original plates, published by Turner. In case these are not
+to be had, the copies which are in course of publication by
+Mr. Lupton (4 Keppel Street, Russell Square) are good
+and serviceable; but no others are of any use.&mdash;[Note
+of 1857.]</p>
+
+<p>I have placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's
+College) some photographs from the etchings made by Turner
+for the Liber; the original etchings being now unobtainable,
+except by fortunate accident. I have selected the subjects
+carefully from my own collection of the etchings; and though
+some of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the
+photographs, the student will find these proofs the best
+lessons in pen-drawing accessible to him.&mdash;[Note of 1859]</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page188"></a>188</span></p>
+
+
+<h4>II.</h4>
+
+<p class="title1">THINGS TO BE STUDIED.</p>
+
+<p>255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student
+is exposed, is that of liking things that he should not. It
+is not so much his difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set
+himself to conquer: and although, under the guidance of a
+master, many works of art may be made instructive, which
+are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of them
+being duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he
+studies alone, will be in allowing himself to possess only
+things, in their way, so free from faults, that nothing he
+copies in them can seriously mislead him, and to contemplate
+only those works of art which he knows to be either perfect
+or noble in their errors. I will therefore set down, in clear
+order, the names of the masters whom you may safely admire,
+and a few of the books which you may safely possess. In
+these days of cheap illustration, the danger is always rather
+of your possessing too much than too little. It may admit of
+some question, how far the looking at bad art may set off
+and illustrate the characters of the good; but, on the whole,
+I believe it is best to live always on quite wholesome food,
+and that our enjoyment of it will never be made more acute
+by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste
+the ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course
+the works of the great masters can only be serviceable to the
+student after he has made considerable progress himself.
+It only wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young persons,
+to drag them through picture galleries; at least, unless
+they themselves wish to look at particular pictures. Generally,
+young people only care to enter a picture gallery
+when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the
+other end of it; and they had better do that in the garden
+below. If, however, they have any real enjoyment of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189"></a>189</span>
+pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the principal
+point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
+them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing
+is of the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of
+much use to old ones), but what interests them; and therefore,
+though it is of great importance to put nothing but good
+art into their possession, yet, when they are passing through
+great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to look
+precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as
+art, it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in
+which art can interest them is when they look at it, not as
+art, but because it represents something they like in Nature.
+If a boy has had his heart filled by the life of some great
+man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to
+see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in which
+he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains,
+and dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a
+likeness to a Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the
+wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape;
+and if a girl's mind is filled with dreams of angels
+and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because she
+thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for
+her to begin the study of religious art.</p>
+
+<p>256. When, however, the student has made some definite
+progress, and every picture becomes really a guide to him,
+false or true, in his own work, it is of great importance that
+he should never look, with even partial admiration, at bad
+art; and then, if the reader is willing to trust me in the
+matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In which,
+with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to
+the epistolary address, as being the more convenient.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>First, in Galleries of Pictures:</p>
+
+<p>1. You may look, with trust in their being always right,
+at Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and
+Velasquez; the authenticity of the picture being of course
+established for you by proper authority.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page190"></a>190</span></p>
+
+<p>2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however,
+question of right and wrong,<a name="FnAnchor_75" href="#Footnote_75"><span class="sp">[75]</span></a> at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino,
+Francia, Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio,
+Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds, Gainsborough, Turner, and
+the modern Pre-Raphaelites.<a name="FnAnchor_76" href="#Footnote_76"><span class="sp">[76]</span></a> You had better look at no
+other painters than these, for you run a chance, otherwise,
+of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by some
+of the other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and
+Rubens; and of being, besides, corrupted in taste by the
+base ones, as Murillo, Salvator, Claude, Gaspar Poussin,
+Teniers, and such others. You may look, however, for
+examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation, being
+sure that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the
+Carracci, Bronzino, and the figure pieces of Salvator.</p>
+
+<p>Among those named for study under question, you cannot
+look too much at, nor grow too enthusiastically fond of,
+Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites;
+but, if you find yourself getting especially fond
+of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you must
+be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you
+begin to like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are
+losing your feeling for color; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino
+especially, you must be getting too fond of rigid detail;
+and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough especially, you
+must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.</p>
+
+<hr class="short" />
+<p>257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art,
+such as you may be able to get yourself, or to see at private
+houses or in shops, the works of the following masters are
+the most desirable, after the Turners, Rembrandts, and
+Dürers, which I have asked you to get first:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page191"></a>191</span></p>
+
+<p class="title4">1. Samuel Prout.<a name="FnAnchor_77" href="#Footnote_77"><span class="sp">[77]</span></a></p>
+
+<p>All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest
+value, wholly unrivaled in power of composition, and in
+love and feeling of architectural subject. His somewhat
+mannered linear execution, though not to be imitated in your
+own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally copied, for
+discipline's sake, with great advantage: it will give you a
+peculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any
+other way; and there is no fear of your getting into any
+faultful mannerism as long as you carry out the different
+modes of more delicate study above recommended.</p>
+
+<p>If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it
+your chief study, you should draw much from photographs
+of it; and then from the architecture itself, with the same
+completion of detail and gradation, only keeping the
+shadows of due paleness,&mdash;in photographs they are always
+about four times as dark as they ought to be,&mdash;and treat
+buildings with as much care and love as artists do their rock
+foregrounds, drawing all the moss, and weeds, and stains
+upon them. But if, without caring to understand architecture,
+you merely want the picturesque character of it, and
+to be able to sketch it fast, you cannot do better than take
+Prout for your exclusive master; only do not think that you
+are copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at
+the end of them. Get first his "Rhine," and draw the
+subjects that have most hills, and least architecture in them,
+with chalk on smooth paper, till you can lay on his broad
+flat tints, and get his gradations of light, which are very
+wonderful; then take up the architectural subjects in the
+"Rhine," and draw again and again the groups of figures,
+etc., in his "Microcosm," and "Lessons on Light and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192"></a>192</span>
+Shadow." After that, proceed to copy the grand subjects in
+the "Sketches in Flanders and Germany;" or "in Switzerland
+and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the
+Switzerland is very far inferior. Then work from Nature,
+not trying to Proutize Nature, by breaking smooth buildings
+into rough ones, but only drawing <i>what you see</i>, with Prout's
+simple method and firm lines. Don't copy his colored works.
+They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk and pencil
+drawings; and you will become a mere imitator, and a very
+feeble imitator, if you use color at all in Prout's method.
+I have not space to explain why this is so, it would take a
+long piece of reasoning; trust me for the statement.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">2. John Lewis.</p>
+
+<p>His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very
+valuable. Get them, if you can, and also some engravings
+(about eight or ten, I think, altogether) of wild beasts,
+executed by his own hand a long time ago; they are very
+precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is
+rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by
+himself; still it is well worth having.</p>
+
+<p>But let <i>no</i> lithographic work come into the house, if you
+can help it, nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those
+sketches of Lewis's.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">3. George Cruikshank.</p>
+
+<p>If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of
+"Grimm's German Stories," which were illustrated by him
+long ago, pounce upon them instantly; the etchings in them
+are the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I
+know, have been done since etching was invented. You
+cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.</p>
+
+<p>All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when
+they touch on the worst vulgarities of modern life; and
+often much spoiled by a curiously mistaken type of face,
+divided so as to give too much to the mouth and eyes and
+leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set about two
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193"></a>193</span>
+thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But
+his manner of work is always right; and his tragic power,
+though rarely developed, and warped by habits of caricature,
+is, in reality, as great as his grotesque power.</p>
+
+<p>There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your
+principal work lies among art of so totally different a character
+as most of that which I Have recommended to you; and
+you may, therefore, get great good by copying almost anything
+of his that may come in your way; except only his
+illustrations, lately published, to "Cinderella," and "Jack
+and the Bean-stalk," and "Tom Thumb," which are much
+overlabored, and confused in line. You should get them, but
+do not copy them.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">4. Alfred Rethel.</p>
+
+<p>I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance
+of Death," with text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but
+to be had now of any London bookseller for the sum, I believe,
+of eighteen pence, and containing six plates full of
+instructive character; the other, of two plates only, "Death
+the Avenger," and "Death the Friend." These two are far
+superior to the "Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will
+be enough in themselves to show all that Rethel can teach
+you. If you dislike ghastly subjects, get "Death the
+Friend" only.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">5. Bewick.</p>
+
+<p>The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the
+most masterly thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is
+worked just as Paul Veronese would have worked in wood,
+had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too coarse in execution,
+and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies, show,
+nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and
+there are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or
+satirical, which have never since been equaled in illustrations
+of this simple kind; the bitter intensity of the feeling
+being just like that which characterizes some of the leading
+Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page194"></a>194</span></p>
+
+<p class="title4">6. Blake.</p>
+
+<p>The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest
+rank in certain characters of imagination and expression; in
+the mode of obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a
+very useful example to you. In expressing conditions of glaring
+and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">7. Richter.</p>
+
+<p>I have already told you what to guard against in looking at
+his works. I am a little doubtful whether I have done well
+in including them in this catalogue at all; but the imaginations
+in them are so lovely and numberless, that I must risk,
+for their sake, the chance of hurting you a little in judgment
+of style. If you want to make presents of story-books to
+children, his are the best you can now get; but his most
+beautiful work, as far as I know, is his series of Illustrations
+to the Lord's Prayer.</p>
+
+
+<p class="title4">8. Rossetti.</p>
+
+<p>An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood-cuts
+from drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite
+masters. They are terribly spoiled in the cutting, and
+generally the best part, the expression of feature, <i>entirely</i>
+lost;<a name="FnAnchor_78" href="#Footnote_78"><span class="sp">[78]</span></a> still they are full of instruction, and cannot be studied
+too closely. But observe, respecting these wood-cuts, that if
+you have been in the habit of looking at much spurious work,
+in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or artificial,
+you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine
+work, which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is
+merely art, such as Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend
+you, though the chances are that you will not care about it;
+but genuine works of feeling, such as "Maud" or "Aurora
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195"></a>195</span>
+Leigh" in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in
+painting, are sure to offend you: and if you cease to work
+hard, and persist in looking at vicious and false art, they
+will continue to offend you. It will be well, therefore, to
+have one type of entirely false art, in order to know what to
+guard against. Flaxman's outlines to Dante contain, I
+think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and feebleness
+which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in
+thought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution.
+Base or degraded choice of subject, such as you will constantly
+find in Teniers and others of the Dutch painters, I need
+not, I hope, warn you against; you will simply turn away
+from it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble drawing, which
+makes mistakes in every direction at once, cannot teach
+you the particular sort of educated fallacy in question. But,
+in these designs of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling,
+and fair knowledge of anatomy, and firm setting down of
+lines, all applied in the foolishest and worst possible way;
+you cannot have a more finished example of learned error,
+amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with a steady
+hand.<a name="FnAnchor_79" href="#Footnote_79"><span class="sp">[79]</span></a> Retzsch's outlines have more real material in them
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page196"></a>196</span>
+than Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy and power;
+in artistic principle they are nearly as bad, and in taste,
+worse. All outlines from statuary, as given in works on
+classical art, will be very hurtful to you if you in the least
+like them; and <i>nearly</i> all finished line engravings. Some
+particular prints I could name which possess instructive
+qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them, and
+the best way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether.<a name="FnAnchor_80" href="#Footnote_80"><span class="sp">[80]</span></a>
+If you happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of
+them, and if you are fond of the large finished prints from
+Raphael, Correggio, etc., it is wholly impossible that you
+can make any progress in knowledge of real art till you have
+sold them all,&mdash;or burnt them, which would be a greater
+benefit to the world. I hope that, some day, true and noble
+engravings will be made from the few pictures of the great
+schools, which the restorations undertaken by the modern
+managers of foreign galleries may leave us; but the existing
+engravings have nothing whatever in common with the good
+in the works they profess to represent, and, if you like them,
+you like in the originals of them hardly anything but their
+errors.</p>
+
+<p>258. Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected
+by your taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons
+who have the purest taste in literature, and yet false
+taste in art, and it is a phenomenon which puzzles me not a
+little; but I have never known any one with false taste in
+books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest
+importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of
+sake, in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197"></a>197</span>
+swamps of literature, and live on a little rocky island of
+your own, with a spring and a lake in it, pure and good.
+I cannot, of course, suggest the choice of your library to you:
+every several mind needs different books; but there are some
+books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read Homer,<a name="FnAnchor_81" href="#Footnote_81"><span class="sp">[81]</span></a>
+Plato, Æschylus, Herodotus, Dante,<a name="FnAnchor_82" href="#Footnote_82"><span class="sp">[82]</span></a> Shakspeare, and Spenser,
+as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement
+of shelves to right and left of them for purposes of
+perpetual study. Among modern books avoid generally magazine
+and review literature. Sometimes it may contain a useful
+abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the
+chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead
+you. If you want to understand any subject whatever,
+read the best book upon it you can hear of: not a review of
+the book. If you don't like the first book you try, seek for
+another; but do not hope ever to understand the subject
+without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that
+class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most
+poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full
+of admiration and awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern
+satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and
+it always leads you to reverence or love something with your
+whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish the satire
+of the venomous race of books from the satire of the noble and
+pure ones; but in general you may notice that the cold-blooded,
+Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at
+sentiment; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin.
+Then, in general, the more you can restrain your serious
+reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history, and natural
+history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the healthier your
+mind will become. Of modern poetry, keep to Scott, Wordsworth,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198"></a>198</span>
+Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings,
+Thomas Hood, Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore,
+whose "Angel in the House" is a most finished piece of
+writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet modern
+domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
+is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has
+produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as
+sickly and useless; and Shelley, as shallow and verbose;
+Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able to
+discern the magnificence in him from the wrong. Never
+read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself;
+there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the
+world already.</p>
+
+<p>259. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and
+Helps. Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners,"
+because his teaching, though to some of us vitally
+necessary, may to others be hurtful. If you understand and
+like him, read him; if he offends you, you are not yet ready
+for him, and perhaps may never be so; at all events, give him
+up, as you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you, till
+you are stronger. Of fiction, read "Sir Charles Grandison,"
+Scott's novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young
+lady, Madame de Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making
+these, I mean, your constant companions. Of course
+you must, or will, read other books for amusement once or
+twice; but you will find that these have an element of perpetuity
+in them, existing in nothing else of their kind; while
+their peculiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of
+the greatest value in teaching you to feel the same characters
+in art. Read little at a time, trying to feel interest in little
+things, and reading not so much for the sake of the story as
+to get acquainted with the pleasant people into whose company
+these writers bring you. A common book will often
+give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which
+will give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of
+less importance to you in your earlier years, that the books
+you read should be clever than that they should be right. I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199"></a>199</span>
+do not mean oppressively or repulsively instructive; but
+that the thoughts they express should be just, and the feelings
+they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to
+read the wittiest or the most suggestive books: it is better, in
+general, to hear what is already known, and may be simply
+said. Much of the literature of the present day, though
+good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a tendency to
+agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too frequently
+in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible
+state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It
+may, indeed, become necessary for you, as you advance in
+life, to set your hand to things that need to be altered in the
+world, or apply your heart chiefly to what must be pitied in
+it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the safest temper
+is one of reverence, and the safest place one of obscurity.
+Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your
+teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet
+virtue, and that literature and art are best for you which point
+out, in common life, and in familiar things, the objects for
+hopeful labor, and for humble love.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="foot" />
+<div class="note">
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_75" href="#FnAnchor_75">[75]</a> I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in saying that
+this second class of painters have questionable qualities. The greatest
+men have often many faults, and sometimes their faults are a part of their
+greatness; but such men are not, of course, to be looked upon by the
+student with absolute implicitness of faith.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_76" href="#FnAnchor_76">[76]</a> Including, under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the
+Old Water-color, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still life,
+I believe, that ever existed.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_77" href="#FnAnchor_77">[77]</a> The order in which I place these masters does not in the least imply
+superiority or inferiority. I wrote their names down as they occurred to
+me; putting Rossetti's last because what I had to say of him was connected
+with other subjects; and one or another will appear to you great,
+or be found by you useful, according to the kind of subjects you are
+studying.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_78" href="#FnAnchor_78">[78]</a> This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first illustration
+to the "Palace of Art," which would have been the best in the book had
+it been well engraved. The whole work should be taken up again, and
+done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly from Pre-Raphaelite designs,
+with which no other modern work can bear the least comparison.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_79" href="#FnAnchor_79">[79]</a> The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in the
+"Seven Lamps," and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from Nature,
+and simple groups in marble, which were always good and interesting.
+Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and it is generally to be
+remembered that, in speaking of artists whose works I cannot be supposed
+to have specially studied, the errors I fall into will always be on
+the side of praise. For, of course, praise is most likely to be given when
+the thing praised is above one's knowledge; and, therefore, as our knowledge
+increases, such things may be found less praiseworthy than we
+thought. But blame can only be justly given when the thing blamed is
+below one's level of sight; and, practically, I never do blame anything
+until I have got well past it, and am certain that there is demonstrable
+falsehood in it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly trust-worthy,
+having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory
+word that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with respect
+to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far by sudden
+admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or other deceptive
+accidents; and this the more, because I never care to check an expression
+of delight, thinking the chances are, that, even if mistaken, it will do
+more good than harm; but I weigh every word of blame with scrupulous
+caution. I have sometimes erased a strong passage of blame from second
+editions of my books; but this was only when I found it offended the
+reader without convincing him, never because I repented of it myself.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_80" href="#FnAnchor_80">[80]</a> Large line engravings, I mean, in which the lines, as such, are conspicuous.
+Small vignettes in line are often beautiful in figures no less
+than landscape; as, for instance, those from Stothard's drawings in
+Rogers's Italy; and, therefore, I have just recommended the vignettes to
+Tennyson to be done by line engraving.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_81" href="#FnAnchor_81">[81]</a> Chapman's, if not the original.</p>
+
+<p><a name="Footnote_82" href="#FnAnchor_82">[82]</a> Gary's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which are the
+best translations of Plato. Herodotus and Æschylus can only be read in
+the original. It may seem strange that I name books like these for
+"beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for all ages; and an
+intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to enjoy much, even in
+Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="pg" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Elements of Drawing, by John Ruskin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Elements of Drawing
+       In Three Letters to Beginners
+
+
+Author: John Ruskin
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2009  [eBook #30325]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Marius Borror, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 30325-h.htm or 30325-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30325/30325-h/30325-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30325/30325-h.zip)
+
+
+Transcriber's note:
+
+      One typographical error has been corrected: it is listed
+      at the end of the text.
+
+      Illustrations occurring in the middle of a paragraph were
+      moved to the nearest paragraph's begining.
+
+
+
+
+
+Library Edition
+
+THE COMPLETE WORKS
+OF
+JOHN RUSKIN
+
+
+ELEMENTS OF DRAWING AND
+PERSPECTIVE
+THE TWO PATHS
+UNTO THIS LAST
+MUNERA PULVERIS
+SESAME AND LILIES
+ETHICS OF THE DUST
+
+
+National Library Association
+New York             Chicago
+
+
+THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING
+
+IN THREE LETTERS TO BEGINNERS.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                        PAGE
+
+  PREFACE                                                 ix
+
+    LETTER I.
+  ON FIRST PRACTICE                                        1
+
+    LETTER II.
+  SKETCHING FROM NATURE                                   65
+
+    LETTER III.
+  ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION                               106
+
+
+    APPENDIX I.
+  ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES                                     183
+
+    APPENDIX II.
+  THINGS TO BE STUDIED                                   188
+
+
+
+
+["The Elements of Drawing" was written during the winter of 1856. The
+First Edition was published in 1857; the Second followed in the same
+year, with some additions and slight alterations. The Third Edition
+consisted of sixth thousand, 1859; seventh thousand, 1860; and eighth
+thousand, 1861.
+
+The work was partly reproduced in "Our Sketching Club," by the Rev. R.
+St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A., 1874; with new editions in 1875, 1882, and
+1886.
+
+Mr. Ruskin meant, during his tenure of the Slade Professorship at
+Oxford, to recast his teaching, and to write a systematic manual for the
+use of his Drawing School, under the title of "The Laws of Fesole." Of
+this only vol. i. was completed, 1879; second edition, 1882.
+
+As, therefore, "The Elements of Drawing" has never been completely
+superseded, and as many readers of Mr. Ruskin's works have expressed a
+desire to possess the book in its old form, it is now reprinted as it
+stood in 1859.]
+
+
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+TO
+
+THE SECOND EDITION.
+
+
+As one or two questions, asked of me since the publication of this work,
+have indicated points requiring elucidation, I have added a few short
+notes in the first Appendix. It is not, I think, desirable otherwise to
+modify the form or add to the matter of a book as it passes through
+successive editions; I have, therefore, only mended the wording of some
+obscure sentences; with which exception the text remains, and will
+remain, in its original form, which I had carefully considered. Should
+the public find the book useful, and call for further editions of it,
+such additional notes as may be necessary will be always placed in the
+first Appendix, where they can be at once referred to, in any library,
+by the possessors of the earlier editions; and I will take care they
+shall not be numerous.
+
+  _August 3, 1857._
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+i. It may perhaps be thought, that in prefacing a manual of drawing, I
+ought to expatiate on the reasons why drawing should be learned; but
+those reasons appear to me so many and so weighty, that I cannot quickly
+state or enforce them. With the reader's permission, as this volume is
+too large already, I will waive all discussion respecting the importance
+of the subject, and touch only on those points which may appear
+questionable in the method of its treatment.
+
+ii. In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of
+children under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it
+advisable to engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of
+art. If it has talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on
+what paper it can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free
+will, due praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in
+its efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colors
+almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely
+daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-box may be taken away
+till it knows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on
+soldiers, striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colors at
+command; and, without restraining its choice of subject in that
+imaginative and historical art, of a military tendency, which children
+delight in, (generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical
+art delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the
+parents to try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things
+it can see and likes,--birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit.
+
+iii. In later years, the indulgence of using the color should only be
+granted as a reward, after it has shown care and progress in its
+drawings with pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should
+always be within a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he
+can hardly possess a volume of nursery tales without good wood-cuts in
+it, and should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind;
+but should be firmly restricted to a _few_ prints and to a few books. If
+a child has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a
+boy has many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by
+the limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in
+them is perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give
+themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is
+concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his
+colors and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,
+and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line
+is too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy;
+_accuracy_ being the first and last thing they look for. If the child
+shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should
+neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show
+pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it
+well, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any
+more than they would praise it for being stout. They should praise it
+only for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;
+otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly.
+The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated by George
+Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or
+fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;
+and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good
+hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to
+know something of the first principles of art.
+
+iv. Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought
+forward as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at
+present devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther
+experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in
+several important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are
+sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered
+without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so
+materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word
+or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be
+thought willful eccentricity.
+
+v. The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all
+directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they
+propose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil
+or water-color, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the slighter
+work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him such
+accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him to
+design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught as
+an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the
+second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in
+the branch Government Schools of Design.
+
+vi. Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to
+the end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it
+seems to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as
+_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the
+skill by which an inventive workman designs and molds a beautiful cup,
+is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and
+afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the
+faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original
+piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as
+those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate
+copies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any
+reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education
+of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael; then let
+Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or
+a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most
+convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the
+platter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain
+first the best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any
+consideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your
+trained artist to determine how far art can be popularized, or
+manufacture ennobled.
+
+vii. Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual
+temper and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends
+wholly on refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a
+master or a school can teach; so that while powers of invention
+distinguish man from man, powers of perception distinguish school from
+school. All great schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of
+sight: and the only rule which I have, as yet, found to be without
+exception respecting art, is that all great art is delicate.
+
+viii. Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to
+obtain, first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's
+power, a delicate method of work, such as may insure his seeing truly.
+For I am nearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is
+very little difficulty in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that
+this difficulty be still great, 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. It is surely also a more important thing,
+for young people and unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate
+the art of others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the
+modes of sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of
+judgment. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern
+water-color painting, can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo;
+they must forever remain blind to the refinement of such men's
+penciling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a
+degree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode
+recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot
+go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand
+what masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some
+proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting
+of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of
+natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labor than I have
+asked him to undergo.
+
+ix. That labor is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it
+possible that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works
+unassisted by a master. For the smooth and straight road which admits
+unembarrassed progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the
+hedges need to be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring
+back the erring traveler. The system followed in this work will,
+therefore, at first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are
+familiar with the practice of our class at the Working Men's College;
+for there, the pupil, having the master at his side to extricate him
+from such embarrassments as his first efforts may lead into, is _at
+once_ set to draw from a solid object, and soon finds entertainment in
+his efforts and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest
+object which it is possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and,
+practically, I find a child's toy, a white leather ball, better than
+anything else; as the gradations on balls of plaster of Paris, which I
+use sometimes to try the strength of pupils who have had previous
+practice, are a little too delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has
+been objected that a circle, or the outline of a sphere, is one of the
+most difficult of all lines to draw. It is so;[A] but I do not want it
+to be drawn. All that his study of the ball is to teach the pupil, is
+the way in which shade gives the appearance of projection. This he
+learns most satisfactorily from a sphere; because any solid form,
+terminated by straight lines or flat surfaces, owes some of its
+appearance of projection to its perspective; but in the sphere, what,
+without shade, was a flat circle, becomes, merely by the added shade,
+the image of a solid ball; and this fact is just as striking to the
+learner, whether his circular outline be true or false. He is,
+therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if he makes the
+ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply pointed out
+to him, and he does better next time, and better still the next. But his
+mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the outline left to
+take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline, for the sake of
+immediate intelligibility,--strictly speaking, it is merely the edge of
+the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to draw an outline,
+in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from the first, that
+Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another; but outlines
+none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this letter, is
+recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as the only
+means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye, and
+discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and
+extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the
+handling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the
+solitary student can only find out his own mistakes by help of the
+traced limit, and can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise
+in which nothing but firmness is required; and during which all other
+considerations (as of softness, complexity, etc.) are entirely excluded.
+
+x. Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that
+recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the
+most important and special of all that are involved in my teaching:
+namely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local
+color. I believe that the endeavor to separate, in the course of
+instruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local
+color, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the student's
+power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as much as it
+retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by any
+discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the only
+distinctive one in my system, so far as it _is_ a system. For the
+recommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration,
+whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other
+reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and
+teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or
+stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold
+their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."
+
+xi. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with
+regret that I have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous
+or formal discipline. But, to the unassisted student, such formalities
+are indispensable, and I am not without hope that the sense of secure
+advancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the
+following out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible
+to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be
+otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only
+desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as
+that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or
+whether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working
+world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give
+no price for it.
+
+xii. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have
+not imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would
+be worth while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a
+master's help, and in the way perspective is at present explained in
+treatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is
+not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the
+rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep
+of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot
+foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
+subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by
+the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever
+trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its
+laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in
+the easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult
+ones. It would take about a month's labor to draw imperfectly, by laws
+of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five
+minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending
+the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is
+true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused
+themselves with it; and all the great painters put fine saloons and
+arcades behind their Madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in
+perspective: but even this was generally done by them only to catch the
+public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they
+took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a
+crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their
+capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in
+the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only
+they left just perspective enough to please the public.
+
+xiii. In modern days, I doubt if any artist among us, except David
+Roberts, knows so much perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic
+arch to scale at a given angle and distance. Turner, though he was
+professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he
+professed, and never, as far as I remember, drew a single building in
+true perspective in his life; he drew them only with as much perspective
+as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his
+buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not
+justify this; and would recommend the student at least to treat
+perspective with common civility, but to pay no court to it. The best
+way he can learn it, by himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in
+a frame, so that it can be set upright before the eye, at the distance
+at which the proposed sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be
+placed at some fixed point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass,
+but as high or as low as the student likes; then with a brush at the end
+of a stick, and a little body-color that will adhere to the glass, the
+lines of the landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them
+through it. When so traced they are all in true perspective. If the
+glass be sloped in any direction, the lines are still in true
+perspective, only it is perspective calculated for a sloping plane,
+while common perspective always supposes the plane of the picture to be
+vertical. It is good, in early practice, to accustom yourself to inclose
+your subject, before sketching it, with a light frame of wood held
+upright before you; it will show you what you may legitimately take into
+your picture, and what choice there is between a narrow foreground near
+you, and a wide one farther off; also, what height of tree or building
+you can properly take in, etc.[B]
+
+xiv. Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because
+I do not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good
+purpose by an amateur. As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be
+drawn on the same principles as anything else.
+
+xv. Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student
+should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended
+practice he find himself in difficulties which I have not enough
+provided against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under
+drawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street),
+and who will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that can
+remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself
+in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do
+so; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me
+when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough
+guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious
+embarrassment; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions
+will find, on the whole, that the best answerer of questions is
+perseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.
+
+  [1857.]
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [A] Or, more accurately, appears to be so, because any one can see
+    an error in a circle.
+
+  [B] If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more
+    of perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of
+    49 Acacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master,
+    and to whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly,
+    easily, and rightly. [Mr. Runciman has died since this was written:
+    Mr. Ward's present address is Bedford Chambers, 28 Southampton
+    Street, Strand, London, W.C.]
+
+
+
+
+THE
+
+ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER I.
+
+ON FIRST PRACTICE.
+
+
+1. MY DEAR READER,--Whether this book is to be of use to you or not,
+depends wholly on your reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you
+desire only to possess a graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse
+in a fluent manner about drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in
+listless hours, I cannot help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that
+you may be able to set down clearly, and usefully, records of such
+things as cannot be described in words, either to assist your own memory
+of them, or to convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you
+wish to obtain quicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world,
+and to preserve something like a true image of beautiful things that
+pass away, or which you must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to
+understand the minds of great painters, and to be able to appreciate
+their work sincerely, seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely
+taking up the thoughts of other people about it; then I _can_ help you,
+or, which is better, show you how to help yourself.
+
+2. Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers, which
+indeed are noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much
+easier to learn to draw well, than it is to learn to play well on any
+musical instrument; but you know that it takes three or four years of
+practice, giving three or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary
+command over the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly
+command of your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with it,
+can be acquired without painstaking, or in a _very_ short time. The kind
+of drawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in
+a term or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not
+drawing at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not
+always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;
+profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of
+vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,
+after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will
+try to copy the commonest piece of real work--suppose a lithograph on
+the titlepage of a new opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest
+illustrated newspaper of the day,--they will find themselves entirely
+beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much
+more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young
+lady is supposed to have command; and that wood-cut was drawn in urgent
+haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by
+people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power;
+both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any
+simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.
+
+3. Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a
+new language, without some hard and disagreeable labor. But do not, on
+the other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear
+that you may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is
+indeed true that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw
+instinctively, and get on almost without teaching; though never without
+toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are
+many degrees: it will take one person a much longer time than another to
+attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are
+never quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the
+faculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in
+the experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to
+draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available
+power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all
+persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a
+decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess
+such knowledge.
+
+4. Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains,
+and to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I
+can promise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an
+hour's practice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in
+whatever way you find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours'
+practice, will give you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever
+you want to draw, and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other
+people's work: of which hours if you have one to spare at present, we
+may as well begin at once.
+
+
+EXERCISE I.
+
+5. Everything that you can see in the world around you, presents itself
+to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colors
+variously shaded.[1] Some of these patches of color have an appearance
+of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk has of
+threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs: but whether this be
+the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of a patch
+of some definite color; and the first thing to be learned is, how to
+produce extents of smooth color, without texture.
+
+6. This can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft
+at the point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpracticed
+hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it
+is better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and
+fine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by
+working over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be
+properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the best
+artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument,
+in order thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be
+content to do so for a considerable period.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 1.]
+
+7. Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of
+color, we must be able to lay on _one_ color properly, in whatever
+gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore,
+first to lay on tints or patches of gray, of whatever depth we want,
+with a pointed instrument. Take any finely pointed steel pen (one of
+Gillott's lithographic crowquills is best), and a piece of quite smooth,
+but not shining, note-paper, cream laid, and get some ink that has stood
+already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black, and as thick
+as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and draw four
+straight lines, so as to inclose a square, or nearly a square, about as
+large as _a_, Fig. 1. I say nearly a square, because it does not in the
+least matter whether it is quite square or not, the object being merely
+to get a space inclosed by straight lines.
+
+8. Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so
+completely and evenly that it shall look like a square patch of gray
+silk or cloth, cut out and laid on the white paper, as at _b_. Cover it
+quickly, first with straightish lines, in any direction you like, not
+troubling yourself to draw them much closer or neater than those in the
+square _a_. Let them quite dry before retouching them. (If you draw
+three or four squares side by side, you may always be going on with one
+while the others are drying.) Then cover these lines with others in a
+different direction, and let those dry; then in another direction still,
+and let those dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk of blotting,
+and then draw the lines as quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on
+as swiftly as the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to
+reach this great speed at first, you will go over the edge of the
+square, which is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now
+and then than to draw the lines very slowly; for if you do, the pen
+leaves a little dot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil
+your work. So draw each line quickly, stopping always as nearly as you
+can at the edge of the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge
+are afterwards to be removed with the penknife, but not till you have
+done the whole work, otherwise you roughen the paper, and the next line
+that goes over the edge makes a blot.
+
+9. When you have gone over the whole three or four times, you will find
+some parts of the square look darker than other parts. Now try to make
+the lighter parts as dark as the rest, so that the whole may be of equal
+depth or darkness. You will find, on examining the work, that where it
+looks darkest the lines are closest, or there are some much darker lines
+than elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little
+scratches and dots, _between_ the lines in the paler parts; and where
+there are any very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them out lightly with
+the penknife, for the eye must not be attracted by any line in
+particular. The more carefully and delicately you fill in the little
+gaps and holes the better; you will get on faster by doing two or three
+squares perfectly than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and
+begins to look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly
+to make any mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use
+the edge of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it
+softly into an even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty
+consists in getting evenness: one bit will always look darker than
+another bit of your square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look
+over the whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a mess,
+give it up and begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you
+have done your best with every square. The tint at last ought at least
+to be as close and even as that in _b_, Fig. 1. You will find, however,
+that it is very difficult to get a pale tint; because, naturally, the
+ink lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper
+more than you want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by
+leaving the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine,
+lightly and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last,
+passing the penknife over the whole. By keeping several squares in
+progress at one time, and reserving your pen for the light one just when
+the ink is nearly exhausted, you may get on better. The paper ought, at
+last, to look lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines
+distinctly visible.
+
+
+EXERCISE II.
+
+10. As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to
+vary it by proceeding with another at the same time. The power of
+shading rightly depends mainly on lightness of hand and keenness of
+sight; but there are other qualities required in drawing, dependent not
+merely on lightness, but steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect
+in its power, must be made accurate as well as keen, and not only see
+shrewdly, but measure justly.
+
+11. Possess yourself therefore of any cheap work on botany containing
+_outline_ plates of leaves and flowers, it does not matter whether bad
+or good: Baxter's British Flowering Plants is quite good enough. Copy
+any of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by
+the eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,
+rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right:
+when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the book; on
+this paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your
+own; and having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all
+patiently, till you have got it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with
+a very soft pencil, and do not rub out so hard[2] as to spoil the
+surface of your paper; never mind how dirty the paper gets, but do not
+roughen it; and let the false outlines alone where they do not really
+interfere with the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to
+hew and shape your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have
+got it as right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the
+point; rest your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to
+hold the pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising
+your pen point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on
+one part of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the
+present day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of
+shade; all such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for
+your exercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is
+better, however, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does
+not in the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but
+it matters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place
+than in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even
+line slowly and in any direction; all dashing lines, or approximations
+to penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the
+ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it
+in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.
+
+12. As soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you
+have made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in
+the slowness. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a
+sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[3] the real
+difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but
+keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.
+
+
+EXERCISE III.
+
+13. Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares,
+and chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for
+rest.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 2.]
+
+As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading
+instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to
+produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2, the dark tint passing gradually
+into the lighter ones. Nearly all expression of form, in drawing,
+depends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is
+always most skillful which passes from one tint into another very little
+paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your work, as
+in Fig. 2, and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to black,
+passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every part of
+the band may have visible change in it. The perception of gradation is
+very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many artists), and you
+will probably, for some time, think your gradation skillful enough, when
+it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece of gray shaded
+ribbon, and comparing it with your drawing, you may arrive, in early
+stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction with it. Widen your
+band little by little as you get more skillful, so as to give the
+gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the same time to
+look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest and the most
+beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and try to
+consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a piece of
+paper colored blue, or gray, or purple, as it happens to be, and observe
+how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the space in the
+window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on the outside and
+inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look round and
+hollow;[4] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus gradually you
+will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the light as it
+increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your eye gets keen
+and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.
+
+14. But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects
+in which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad
+omen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of
+by you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of
+sky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
+between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the
+corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to
+gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as
+_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without color, no, nor with color
+either; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your
+spots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the
+sense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
+for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all
+great painters, however delicate their perception of color, are fond of
+the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,
+and in a wood-cut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black
+lines; and if you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will
+never gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common wood-cuts,
+in the cheap publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given
+to the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but you must
+make your lines as fine as you can, as well as far apart, towards the
+light; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross
+irregularly in any directions easy to your hand, depending on nothing
+but their gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of
+lines, however, I shall have to tell you more, presently; in the
+meantime, do not trouble yourself about it.
+
+
+EXERCISE IV.
+
+15. As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an
+H. or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest
+possible to the palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen,
+lightening, however, now with india-rubber instead of the penknife. You
+will find that all _pale_ tints of shade are thus easily producible with
+great precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark
+power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt
+to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere,
+however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing
+any single speck or line that may be too black, with the _point_ of the
+knife: you must not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink.
+If you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over with
+india-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine
+touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to
+perfect evenness with the darker spots.
+
+You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work
+with it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.
+
+16. At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured
+that some clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking
+amazement, and ask you who could set you to that "niggling;" and if you
+persevere in it, you will have to sustain considerable persecution from
+your artistical acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good
+drawing depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You do not hear them
+tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with a crash among
+the keys, in imitation of the great masters: yet they might, as
+reasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your
+knowledge. Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the
+sense of being careless, confident, or exhibitory,--no,--no, and a
+thousand times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be bad
+advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done quickly, but good
+and beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find no boldness
+in the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not
+bold at her work, do you think you ought to be at yours? So never mind
+what people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently; and if
+you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that though
+there are all kinds and ways of art,--large work for large places, small
+work for narrow places, slow work for people who can wait, and quick
+work for people who cannot,--there is one quality, and, I think, only
+one, in which all great and good art agrees;--it is all delicate art.
+Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this at present,
+because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and subtle care,
+the great painters put into touches that at first look coarse; but,
+believe me, it is true, and you will find it is so in due time.
+
+17. You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil
+drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant
+by a chance touch of the india-rubber, than by an hour's labor with the
+point; and you may wonder why I tell you to produce tints so painfully,
+which might, it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two
+reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able
+to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you
+wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the india-rubber does it: and,
+secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams
+of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little
+pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves;
+in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:
+in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be
+represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an
+instrument known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage the
+point properly, you will indeed be able to do much also with this
+instrument, or with your fingers; but then you will have to retouch the
+flat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light into them, and that
+can only be done with the point. Labor on, therefore, courageously, with
+that only.
+
+
+EXERCISE V.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 3.]
+
+18. When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil
+point, get a good large alphabet, and try to _tint_ the letters into
+shape with the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure
+their height and extreme breadth with the compasses, as _a b_, _a c_,
+Fig. 3, and then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A,
+inclosed within the lines, being in what Turner would have called a
+"state of forwardness." Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of
+the letter, draw pen-and-ink lines firmly round the tint, as at _d_, and
+remove any touches outside the limit, first with the india-rubber, and
+then with the penknife, so that all may look clear and right. If you rub
+out any of the pencil inside the outline of the letter, retouch it,
+closing it up to the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are
+all to be ruled,[5] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and
+hand; and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting the
+curved letters, such as Bs, Cs, etc., to stand quite straight, and come
+into accurate form.
+
+19. All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be
+persisted in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in
+any of them. An entire master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to
+be able to draw any form at once, as Giotto his circle; but such skill
+as this is only to be expected of the consummate master, having pencil
+in hand all his life, and all day long,--hence the force of Giotto's
+proof of his skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully,
+without attaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point
+being, not that every line should be precisely what we intend or wish,
+but that the line which we intended or wished to draw should be right.
+If we always see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the
+hand may stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it
+does not matter how firm the hand is. Do not therefore torment yourself
+because you cannot do as well as you would like; but work patiently,
+sure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of
+power; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a
+more amusing exercise for you.
+
+
+EXERCISE VI.
+
+20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of
+leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall,
+or other light ground: it must not be against strong light, or you will
+find the looking at it hurt your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or
+you will be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in
+shade; and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or rainy
+day is the best for this practice.
+
+21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the
+sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map
+with absolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the
+roundness of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them
+in with pencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct
+and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your
+paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is
+exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in
+curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them
+with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had
+to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy
+penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave
+the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the
+whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not
+take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused
+network or mist; leave them all out,[6] drawing only the main branches
+as far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not
+to draw a tree, but to learn how to do so. When you have got the thing
+as nearly right as you can,--and it is better to make one good study,
+than twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate,--take your pen, and put a
+fine outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking care,
+as far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so
+as not to make the boughs thicker: the main use of the outline is to
+affirm the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental
+roughnesses and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,
+or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement in
+this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may
+perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than
+your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to
+mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to be slovenly and
+careless, and the outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence
+into attention and precision. The outline should be about the thickness
+of that in Fig. 4, which represents the ramification of a small stone
+pine, only I have not endeavored to represent the pencil shading within
+the outline, as I could not easily express it in a wood-cut; and you
+have nothing to do at present with the indication of foliage above, of
+which in another place. You may also draw your trees as much larger than
+this figure as you like; only, however large they may be, keep the
+outline as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer
+sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure,
+otherwise you do not get good enough practice out of them.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 4.]
+
+22. You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you
+some new notion about trees. But when you are tired of tree boughs, take
+any forms whatever which are drawn in flat color, one upon another; as
+patterns on any kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance),
+executed in two colors only; and practice drawing them of the right
+shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the depth
+required.
+
+In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of
+representing depth of color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of
+ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a darker tint of gray
+than a pattern of yellow.
+
+23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use
+of the brush; and necessary for you to do so in order to provide
+yourself with the gradated scale of color which you will want. If you
+can, by any means, get acquainted with any ordinary skillful water-color
+painter, and prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a
+brush, by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long while
+yet, to begin to color, but because the brush is often more convenient
+than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, and the sooner
+you know how to manage it as an instrument the better. If, however, you
+have no opportunity of seeing how water-color is laid on by a workman of
+any kind, the following directions will help you:--
+
+
+EXERCISE VII.
+
+24. Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in water so
+as to take up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer till you cannot rub
+much more, and the color gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two
+teaspoonfuls of water to the color you have rubbed down, and mix it well
+up with a camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.
+
+25. Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or
+pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large
+as those of the very largest chess-board: they need not be perfect
+squares, only as nearly so as you can quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard
+on something sloping as much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your
+brush into the color you have mixed, and taking up as much of the liquid
+as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay a pond
+or runlet of color along the top edge. Lead this pond of color
+gradually downwards, not faster at one place than another, but as if you
+were adding a row of bricks to a building, all along (only building down
+instead of up), dipping the brush frequently so as to keep the color as
+full in that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only
+that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if it should,
+never mind; go on quietly with your square till you have covered it all
+in. When you get to the bottom, the color will lodge there in a great
+wave. Have ready a piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and
+with the dry brush take up the superfluous color as you would with a
+sponge, till it all looks even.
+
+26. In leading the color down, you will find your brush continually go
+over the edge of the square, or leave little gaps within it. Do not
+endeavor to retouch these, nor take much care about them; the great
+thing is to get the color to lie smoothly where it reaches, not in
+alternate blots and pale patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the
+square as fast as possible, with such attention to your limit as you are
+able to give. The use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally
+to strike the color up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but the first
+thing is to get it even,--the power of rightly striking the edge comes
+only by time and practice: even the greatest artists rarely can do this
+quite perfectly.
+
+27. When you have done one square, proceed to do another which does not
+communicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares,
+as on a chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with
+the first, and put another coat over it, and so on over all the others.
+The use of turning the paper upside down is to neutralize the increase
+of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would otherwise
+take place from the ponding of the color.
+
+28. Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead of
+your lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once acquired, will
+save you from much partial poisoning. Take care, however, always to draw
+the brush from root to point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even
+wipe it as you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing
+harm, provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at first,
+and cherish it; it will serve you longer and better than many bad ones.
+
+29. When you have done the squares all over again, do them a third time,
+always trying to keep your edges as neat as possible. When your color is
+exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as much
+as you can grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate
+squares three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and
+dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them up to the
+same tint in the same way. The amount of jagged dark line which then
+will mark the limits of the squares will be the exact measure of your
+unskillfulness.
+
+30. As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses); and
+then draw straight lines irregularly across circles, and fill up the
+spaces so produced between the straight line and the circumference; and
+then draw any simple shapes of leaves, according to the exercise No.
+II., and fill up those, until you can lay on color quite evenly in any
+shape you want.
+
+31. You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot always
+put exactly the same quantity of water to the color, that the darker the
+color is, the more difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. Therefore,
+when you have gained some definite degree of power, try to fill in the
+forms required with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of
+laying several coats one over another; always taking care that the tint,
+however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid on, so much of
+it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line at the edge as it
+dries. A little experience will teach you how apt the color is to do
+this, and how to prevent it; not that it needs always to be prevented,
+for a great master in water-colors will sometimes draw a firm outline,
+when he _wants_ one, simply by letting the color dry in this way at the
+edge.
+
+32. When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with the darker
+color, no rapidity will prevent the tint from drying irregularly as it
+is led on from part to part. You will then find the following method
+useful. Lay in the color very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that you
+can only just see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the
+outlines, and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet
+everywhere. Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker color, and
+lay some of it _into_ the middle of the liquid color. It will spread
+gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now lead it up to the
+outlines already determined, and play it with the brush till it fills
+its place well; then let it dry, and it will be as flat and pure as a
+single dash, yet defining all the complicated forms accurately.
+
+33. Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably flat tint,
+you must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the color with three or
+four teaspoonfuls of water; then, when it is mixed, pour away about
+two-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoonful of pale color. Sloping your
+paper as before, draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space
+between them of the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the
+top of your paper, between the lines; and having struck on the first
+brushful of color, and led it down a little, dip your brush deep in
+water, and mix up the color on the plate quickly with as much more water
+as the brush takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler color, lead
+the tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the color again, and thus
+lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between each
+replenishing of the brush, and stirring the color on the plate well, but
+as quickly as you can. Go on until the color has become so pale that you
+cannot see it; then wash your brush thoroughly in water, and carry the
+wave down a little farther with that, and then absorb it with the dry
+brush, and leave it to dry.
+
+34. If you get to the bottom of your paper before your color gets pale,
+you may either take longer paper, or begin, with the tint as it was when
+you left off, on another sheet; but be sure to exhaust it to pure
+whiteness at last. When all is quite dry, recommence at the top with
+another similar mixture of color, and go down in the same way. Then
+again, and then again, and so continually until the color at the top of
+the paper is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and passes down into
+pure white paper at the end of your column, with a perfectly smooth
+gradation from one into the other.
+
+35. You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, instead
+of evenly gradated; this is because at some places you have taken up
+more water in your brush than at others, or not mixed it thoroughly on
+the plate, or led one tint too far before replenishing with the next.
+Practice only will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot
+always get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they
+ever leave them on their pictures without after-touching.
+
+36. As you get more power, and can strike the color more quickly down,
+you will be able to gradate in less compass;[7] beginning with a small
+quantity of color, and adding a drop of water, instead of a brushful;
+with finer brushes, also, you may gradate to a less scale. But slight
+skill will enable you to test the relations of color to shade as far as
+is necessary for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:--
+
+37. Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt,
+and vermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done
+with the Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[8] Cut a narrow
+slip, all the way down, of each gradated color, and set the three slips
+side by side; fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across
+all the three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the
+degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, etc. If you have gradated
+them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will be nearly
+equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, and any degree of
+the black slip will also, accurately enough for our purpose, balance in
+weight the degree similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then,
+when you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue color, if you
+can match their color by any compartment of the crimson or blue in your
+scales, the gray in the compartment of the gray scale marked with the
+same number is the gray which must represent that crimson or blue in
+your light and shade drawing.
+
+38. Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will
+find that you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[9] for yellow
+and scarlet, so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach
+to black; we cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark
+scarlet. Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way
+down; passing _then_ gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken
+the upper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian blue to darken
+the cobalt. You will thus have three more scales, passing from white
+nearly to black, through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and
+through scarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make
+another with green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet; the
+sepia alone will make a forcible brown one; and so on, until you have as
+many scales as you like, passing from black to white through different
+colors. Then, supposing your scales properly gradated and equally
+divided, the compartment or degree No. 1 of the gray will represent in
+chiaroscuro the No. 1 of all the other colors; No. 2 of gray the No. 2
+of the other colors, and so on.
+
+39. It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should
+understand the principle; for it would never be possible for you to
+gradate your scales so truly as to make them practically accurate and
+serviceable; and even if you could, unless you had about ten thousand
+scales, and were able to change them faster than ever juggler changed
+cards, you could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side
+of a frost-bitten apple. But when once you fully understand the
+principle, and see how all colors contain as it were a certain quantity
+of darkness, or power of dark relief from white--some more, some less;
+and how this pitch or power of each may be represented by equivalent
+values of gray, you will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an
+approximation by a glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at
+all.
+
+40. You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any
+shapes of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble or
+tortoiseshell, spots in surfaces of shells, etc., as tenderly as you
+can, in the darknesses that correspond to their colors; and when you
+find you can do this successfully, it is time to begin rounding.
+
+
+EXERCISE VIII.
+
+41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the first
+round or oval stone you can find, not very white, nor very dark; and the
+smoother it is the better, only it must not _shine_. Draw your table
+near the window, and put the stone, which I will suppose is about the
+size of _a_ in Fig. 5 (it had better not be much larger), on a piece of
+not very white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the
+light may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point
+interferes with your sight of your work. You must not let the _sun_ fall
+on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore choose a window which
+the sun does not come in at. If you can shut the shutters of the other
+windows in the room it will be all the better; but this is not of much
+consequence.
+
+42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything; I mean,
+anything that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot
+be drawn at all, only the idea of them more or less suggested; but if
+you can draw the stone _rightly_, everything within reach of art is also
+within yours.
+
+For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of representing
+_Roundness_. If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and
+straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing else that you may be
+able to do will be of any use. For Nature is all made up of roundnesses;
+not the roundness of perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces.
+Boughs are rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are
+rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there is no more
+flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. The world itself is
+round, and so is all that is in it, more or less, except human work,
+which is often very flat indeed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
+
+Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you
+have won the battle.
+
+43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will see that the
+side of it next the window is lighter than most of the paper; that the
+side of it farthest from the window is darker than the paper; and that
+the light passes into the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to
+the right on the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of
+things being more or less as in _a_, Fig. 5, the spots on the stone
+excepted, of which more presently.
+
+44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that everything
+you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker
+than the things about it, or of a different color from them. It is
+either seen as a patch of one color on a ground of another; or as a pale
+thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And
+if you can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the same size,
+shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will
+produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best
+draughtsman--Titian and Paul Veronese themselves--could do no more than
+this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an
+inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is
+to be done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper, on
+a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on spaces of red,
+white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in
+the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what
+you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there,
+if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper
+with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain,
+unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need
+not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up
+for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will
+find obedience easier and happier than you think.
+
+45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the forms and the
+evenness of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are
+dissatisfied with your work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It
+may not be wrong--in all probability is not wrong, in any (so-called)
+great point. But its edges are not true enough in outline; and its
+shades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it
+more tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.
+
+46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have
+a finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can
+draw with nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log
+of wood charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
+gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends
+on early precision in the commencement; much more in singing or drawing.
+
+47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in Fig. 5, but to copy the
+stone before you in the way that my sketch is done. To which end, first
+measure the extreme length of the stone with compasses, and mark that
+length on your paper; then, between the points marked, leave something
+like the form of the stone in light, scrawling the paper all over, round
+it; _b_, in Fig. 5, is a beginning of this kind. Rather leave too much
+room for the high light, than too little; and then more cautiously fill
+in the shade, shutting the light gradually up, and putting in the dark
+slowly on the dark side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of
+shape, because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible
+for you to draw the shape of the stone quite truly, and you must
+gradually gain correctness by means of these various exercises: what you
+have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to look solid and
+round, not much minding what its exact contour is--only draw it as
+nearly right as you can without vexation; and you will get it more right
+by thus feeling your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the
+outline at first. For you can _see_ no outline; what you see is only a
+certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it; and
+those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, by
+scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right shape, with the
+same gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really more
+likely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
+confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline.
+For instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin at _a_, in Fig. 5,
+whose form, though irregular, required more care in following than that
+of a common stone, I was going to draw it also under another effect;
+reflected light bringing its dark side out from the background: but when
+I had laid on the first few touches I thought it would be better to
+stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at _b_. In which beginning it
+will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I can more or
+less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work on, the lines
+which suggest the outline being blended with the others if I do not want
+them; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the
+irregularities of such a sketch will probably secure a higher completion
+at last, than if half an hour had been spent in getting a true outline
+before beginning.
+
+48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark.
+In order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round
+hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper the color
+of that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper with the hole in it,
+between you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards,
+so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
+through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like
+one of the patches of color you have been accustomed to match, only
+changing in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen
+through it. You will be able thus actually to _match_ the color of the
+stone at any part of it, by tinting the paper beside the circular
+opening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite _black_,
+but that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.[10]
+
+49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of
+the paper it lies on, look luminous through the opening; so that the
+little circle then tells as a light spot instead of a dark spot. When
+this is so, you cannot imitate it, for you have no means of getting
+light brighter than white paper: but by holding the paper more sloped
+towards the light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which
+before looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if
+you can place the paper in such a position that every part of the stone
+looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a spot of
+shade, and if your drawing is put in the same light, you can imitate or
+match every gradation. You will be amazed to find, under these
+circumstances, how slight the differences of tint are, by which, through
+infinite delicacy of gradation, Nature can express form.
+
+If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light
+through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it
+white; you can do no more.
+
+50. When you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed
+to finish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the
+stone as closely as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or
+fissures of any kind, whether between stones in walls, or in the grain
+of timber or rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they
+present, are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
+shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light and shade,
+however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, with a dark
+or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the
+bottom. This is one of the instances in which it may be as well to
+understand the reason of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing,
+for the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in
+general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some, we are sure
+to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the
+importance of those on which the attention is fixed causes us to
+exaggerate them, so that merely scientific draughtsmen caricature a
+third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose
+eye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not
+therefore trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
+people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are destitute
+of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help,
+especially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils
+to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their work, I can
+always show them how the thing is, and what appearance they are missing
+in it; but when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
+here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.
+
+51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object--for instance, the
+stone you are drawing--has a light side turned towards the light, a dark
+side turned away from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on
+something else (as by the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may
+sometimes be placed so as to see only the light side and shadow,
+sometimes only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both or either
+without the shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all
+the three, as the stone does here.
+
+52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now
+with your side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to
+the window. You will see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the
+other distinctly in shade. Here are light side and dark side, with no
+seen shadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on
+the other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.
+
+53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise, as you hold
+your hand, wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is
+turned from the light, the paper being of course farther from the
+window. You will see, as it passes, a strong gleam of light strike on
+your hand, and light it considerably on its dark side. This light is
+_reflected_ light. It is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes
+first in coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a
+ball would be if somebody threw it through the window at the wall and
+you caught it at the rebound.
+
+Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet
+cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as
+you wave the book, is now reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find
+the gleam is blue. Thus every object will cast some of its own color
+back in the light that it reflects.
+
+54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your
+hand: every object in the room on that side of it reflects some, but
+more feebly, and the colors mixing all together form a neutral[11]
+light, which lets the color of your hand itself be more distinctly seen
+than that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no
+reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.
+
+55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct light, and
+partly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the
+atmosphere and clouds. The color of their light sides depends much on
+that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colors of
+the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand what
+color an object will have at any point of its surface, that color
+depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of
+rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides
+is, that their color will be changeful, and that a picture which gives
+them merely darker shades of the color of the light sides must assuredly
+be bad.
+
+56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You
+will see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow
+of your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of
+shade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a
+rosy color somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
+all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the
+flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is, that much
+light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but
+very little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that
+chink under your finger.
+
+57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of
+the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the
+object. I say in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to
+prevent its being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or
+the ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand
+farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing
+gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some
+positions of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow
+altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a
+stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside
+the hand of one of his figures, and because he had been taught by rule
+that "shadow was darker than the dark side," he would never think of the
+reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the hand, just as
+if no glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of
+the true effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and
+wonders why the hand is so light on its dark side.
+
+58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a _rule_ in
+matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general
+way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it,
+supposing the colors otherwise the same; that is to say, when a white
+object casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark
+surface: the rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow
+of a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark,
+usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the
+ultimate truth in such matters is to _look_ for it; but, in the
+meantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the stone
+are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply,
+while the other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little
+darker shadow at the bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the
+stone surface is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And,
+therefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint, more
+or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or
+streak in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white
+one, you may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision,
+into either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on the side of
+it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that the light comes
+from, you will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
+side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete success of the
+effect depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the
+drawing; that is to say, on the evident correspondence of the form of
+the shadow with the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or
+anything irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience
+in following the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
+labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of shadow.
+
+59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the
+stains and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the
+forms. Very often, spots or bars of local color do more to express form
+than even the light and shade, and they are always interesting as the
+means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her
+lights; an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
+of composition. _a_, in Fig. 5, is a rough sketch of a fossil
+sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint,
+coming through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in
+the light; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller
+whiter spots in the dark. You may take such scattered lights as these
+out with the penknife, provided you are just as careful to place them
+rightly as if you got them by a more laborious process.
+
+60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation
+expresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on
+anything natural or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided
+it be not too complicated in form. I have asked you to draw a stone
+first, because any irregularities and failures in your shading will be
+less offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
+surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may as
+well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little
+while, till you find you can really shade delicately. You may then take
+up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on
+the table is as good as anything, and try to express them in the same
+way; only now you will find that your shades must be wrought with
+perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds.
+Always remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many
+scrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work
+resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel
+or napkin must be put on something that may be locked up, so that its
+folds shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
+the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery
+(there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the
+cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate
+your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then
+ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies from Nature,
+whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of
+the folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
+painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its
+sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the
+greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement
+of form than delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded
+surface will help you. Try whether it does or not: and if the patterned
+drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
+helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and simple
+checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even
+though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern
+occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications
+of it among the folds with scrupulous care.
+
+61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The
+greatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater
+they are, the more pains they take to do it truly.[12] Nor can there be
+better practice at any time, as introductory to the nobler complication
+of natural detail. For when you can draw the spots which follow the
+folds of a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
+spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps;
+but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able
+to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully
+drawn, will be the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the
+sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask
+drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
+living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet bank.
+
+62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or
+other finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much
+about the wooliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade
+and fold, and true in pattern. We shall see, in the course of
+after-practice, how the penned lines may be made indicative of texture;
+but at present attend only to the light and shade and pattern. You will
+be puzzled at first by _lustrous_ surfaces, but a little attention will
+show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right
+drawing of their light and shade, and reflections. Put a small black
+japanned tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it
+reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its
+own color mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw these
+reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as
+you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the luster
+to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects in
+general practice; only you should do one or two in order to understand
+the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as you cannot
+avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the shining of
+silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression of their
+folds. Observe also that there are very few things which are totally
+without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles you, on
+some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another object.
+
+63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the
+point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I
+give you leave to use the brush with one color,--sepia, or blue black,
+or mixed cobalt and blue black, or neutral tint; and this will much
+facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminary, you must do
+one or two more exercises in tinting.
+
+
+EXERCISE IX.
+
+64. Prepare your color as directed for Exercise VII. Take a brush full
+of it, and strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush
+gets dry, sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting
+the paper very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a
+number of more or less minute interstices in the color. The lighter and
+faster every dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry; and, as soon
+as it is dry, with little color in your brush, so that you can bring it
+to a fine point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to
+make the whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more
+color, always trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly
+applied color exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new
+color dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first.
+Retouch it therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A
+very small bit of color thus filled up with your very best care, and
+brought to look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give
+you better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in
+carelessly; so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most
+minute spot of white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then
+go to the small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a
+marked limit; then advance a little farther, and so on; thus always
+seeing distinctly what is done and what undone.
+
+
+EXERCISE X.
+
+65. Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of
+paper. Let it dry. Then another coat over four fifths of the square, or
+thereabouts, leaving the edge rather irregular than straight, and let it
+dry. Then another coat over three fifths; another over two fifths; and
+the last over one fifth; so that the square may present the appearance
+of gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the one
+beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,
+when filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those
+used in the pen etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately
+beyond each edge, so as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones
+imperceptibly. By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a
+multitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,
+you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of
+each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with
+the next tint. The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded
+from dark to pale, with no bars, only a crossing texture of touches,
+something like chopped straw, over the whole.[13]
+
+66. Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade
+you like; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of
+color, prepared _very_ pale, quite flat over all of it, except the
+highest light, leaving the edge of your color quite sharp. Then another
+wash, extending only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that
+sharp also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still
+darker parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry
+sharp. Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the
+darks, and work the whole delicately together as you would with the pen,
+till you have got it to the likeness of the true light and shade. You
+will find that the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now
+get effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen merely.
+
+67. The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not
+trouble or vex the color, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the
+paper: color looks much more lovely when it has been laid on with a dash
+of the brush, and left to dry in its own way, than when it has been
+dragged about and disturbed; so that it is always better to let the
+edges and forms be a little wrong, even if one cannot correct them
+afterwards, than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great
+masters in water color can lay on the true forms at once with a dash,
+and bad masters in water color lay on grossly false forms with a dash,
+and leave them false; for people in general, not knowing false from
+true, are as much pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular
+blot as with the presence of power in the determined one; but _we_, in
+our beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then
+correct with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be
+right, at whatever cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we
+can be right with freedom.
+
+68. I have hitherto limited you to color mixed with two or three
+teaspoonfuls of water; but, in finishing your light and shade from the
+stone, you may, as you efface the edge of the palest coat towards the
+light, use the color for the small touches with more and more water,
+till it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a
+perfect gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when they
+are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the color
+tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and dash
+away the superfluous color on blotting paper, you will find that,
+touching the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated
+touches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth to
+shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this
+properly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and
+shadows of William Hunt's drawings.[14]
+
+69. As you get used to the brush and color, you will gradually find out
+their ways for yourself, and get the management of them. And you will
+often save yourself much discouragement by remembering what I have so
+often asserted,--that if anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be
+refinement that is wanting, not force; and connection, not alteration.
+If you dislike the state your drawing is in, do not lose patience with
+it, nor dash at it, nor alter its plan, nor rub it desperately out, at
+the place you think wrong; but look if there are no shadows you can
+gradate more perfectly; no little gaps and rents you can fill; no forms
+you can more delicately define: and do not _rush_ at any of the errors
+or incompletions thus discerned, but efface or supply slowly, and you
+will soon find your drawing take another look. A very useful expedient
+in producing some effects, is to wet the paper, and then lay the color
+on it, more or less wet, according to the effect you want. You will soon
+see how prettily it gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can
+reinforce it with delicate stippling when you want it darker. Also,
+while the color is still damp on the paper, by drying your brush
+thoroughly, and touching the color with the brush so dried, you may take
+out soft lights with great tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of
+experiments of this kind, noticing how the color behaves; but
+remembering always that your final results must be obtained, and can
+only be obtained, by pure work with the point, as much as in the pen
+drawing.
+
+70. You will find also, as you deal with more and more complicated
+subjects, that Nature's resources in light and shade are so much richer
+than yours, that you cannot possibly get all, or anything like all, the
+gradations of shadow in any given group. When this is the case,
+determine first to keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for
+instance, there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a black
+inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper as a light mass,
+the green book as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass;
+and do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so as
+to equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference
+between the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the
+power of the former to draw so delicately as to express form in a
+dark-colored object with little light, and in a light-colored object
+with little darkness; and it is better even to leave the forms here and
+there unsatisfactorily rendered than to lose the general relations of
+the great masses. And this, observe, not because masses are grand or
+desirable things in your composition (for with composition at present
+you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a fact that things
+do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and that we see paper,
+book, and inkstand as three separate things, before we see the wrinkles,
+or chinks, or corners of any of the three. Understand, therefore, at
+once, that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in
+reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor
+markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature; you
+are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in doing this find
+that you cannot get the projection of things sufficiently shown; but
+never mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,
+but great need that their relations of shade to each other should be
+preserved. All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration
+of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more
+or less bad: a thoroughly fine drawing or painting will always show a
+slight tendency towards flatness.
+
+71. Observe, on the other hand, that, however white an object may be,
+there is always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must
+therefore have a slight tone of gray over everything in your picture
+except on the extreme high lights; even the piece of white paper, in
+your subject, must be toned slightly down, unless (and there are
+thousand chances against its being so) it should all be turned so as
+fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white
+objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian,
+you will soon understand this.[15]
+
+72. As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush
+the undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed
+to draw more complicated and beautiful things.[16] And first, the boughs
+of trees, now not in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the
+first bit of branch or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut
+off the ends of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only
+about a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit
+of branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw
+it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above
+all things, to get an accurate expression of its structure at the fork
+of the branch. When once you have mastered the tree at its _armpits_,
+you will have little more trouble with it.
+
+73. Always draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you
+see it. Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is
+behind it, ugly or not, else you will never know whether the light and
+shade are right; they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of
+the background. And this general law is to be observed in all your
+studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly, else you
+never know if what you have done is right, or whether you _could_ have
+done it rightly had you tried. There is nothing _visible_ out of which
+you may not get useful practice.
+
+74. Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with
+four or five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of
+light-colored or white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be
+relieved in dark from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape
+carefully with pencil as you did the complicated boughs, in order to be
+sure that all their masses and interstices are right in shape before you
+begin shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in the
+manner of Fig. 6, which is a young shoot of lilac.
+
+75. You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be at
+first puzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because the look of
+retirement or projection depends not so much on the perspective of the
+leaves themselves as on the double sight of the two eyes. Now there are
+certain artifices by which good painters can partly conquer this
+difficulty; as slight exaggerations of force or color in the nearer
+parts, and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not
+attempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves,
+shut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the point
+of one of the leaves against; and so sketch the whole bough as you see
+it in a fixed position, looking with one eye only. Your drawing never
+can be made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with
+_both_ eyes,[17] but it can be made perfectly like the object seen with
+one, and you must be content when you have got a resemblance on these
+terms.
+
+76. In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, take
+a single long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and as flat as
+you can, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, as if you wanted
+to know how thin it was; outline it so. Then slope it down gradually
+towards you, and watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held
+perpendicularly down before you. Draw it in three or four different
+positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each
+position, and you will soon find out how it must be.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 6.]
+
+77. Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then larger clusters;
+and practice, in this way, more and more complicated pieces of bough and
+leafage, till you find you can master the most difficult arrangements,
+not consisting of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you
+do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures,
+that you take a much more lively interest than before in the work of the
+great masters; you will see that very often their best backgrounds are
+composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,
+brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or two form the
+chief interest of their foregrounds. If you live in London you may test
+your progress _accurately_ by the degree of admiration you feel for the
+leaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and
+Ariadne. All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of
+foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of vegetation, that
+it is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any
+possibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too
+intricate, to be thus dealt with.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 7.]
+
+78. You must now therefore have recourse to some confused mode of
+execution, capable of expressing the confusion of Nature. And, first,
+you must understand what the character of that confusion is. If you look
+carefully at the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards'
+distance, you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at
+first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will see,
+mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which
+are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the
+edge turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for,
+supposing the real leaf shape to be as at _a_, Fig. 7, this, when
+removed some yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at
+_b_; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk and point
+disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes little more than a
+line; and the result is the condition at _c_, only with this farther
+subtlety in the look of it, inexpressible in the wood-cut, that the
+stalk and point of the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye,
+have yet some influence in _checking the light_ at the places where they
+exist, and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf which
+remains visible, so that its perfect effect could only be rendered by
+two layers of color, one subduing the sky tone a little, the next
+drawing the broken portions of the leaf, as at _c_, and carefully
+indicating the greater darkness of the spot in the middle, where the
+under side of the leaf is.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
+
+This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we cannot reach
+such accuracy; but we shall be able to render the general look of the
+foliage satisfactorily by the following mode of practice.
+
+79. Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches long.
+Fix it firmly by the stem in anything that will support it steadily; put
+it about eight feet away from you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a
+sheet of not very white paper behind it, as usual. Then draw very
+carefully, first placing them with pencil, and then filling them up with
+ink, every leaf-mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you see
+them against the paper: Fig. 8 is a bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do not
+be afraid of running the leaves into a black mass when they come
+together; this exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of
+such masses are when seen against the sky.
+
+80. Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common
+tree,--oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, etc.; in fact, if you are good, and
+industrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times
+a week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can
+get branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough, for this
+reason,--all masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the
+side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organization of
+branches from that seen in the view from above. They are generally seen
+more or less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature puts
+her best composition into the profile arrangement. But the view from
+above or below occurs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary
+you should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the tree.
+The difference between the two views is often far greater than you could
+easily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9, _a_ is the upper view and _b_
+the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. Fig. 8 is an intermediate
+view of a larger bough; seen from beneath, but at some lateral distance
+also.
+
+81. When you have done a few branches in this manner, take one of the
+drawings you have made, and put it first a yard away from you, then a
+yard and a half, then two yards; observe how the thinner stalks and
+leaves gradually disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness
+where they were; and make another study of the effect at each distance,
+taking care to draw nothing more than you really see, for in this
+consists all the difference between what would be merely a miniature
+drawing of the leaves seen near, and a full-size drawing of the same
+leaves at a distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would
+really appear of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass
+held at the same distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your
+drawing. You can always ascertain this full size of any object by
+holding your paper upright before you, at the distance from your eye at
+which you wish your drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object
+you have to draw, and mark upon this edge the points where the outline
+of the object crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You will
+always find it, thus measured, smaller than you supposed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 9.]
+
+82. When you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your
+own drawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real
+trees, because the black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and
+does not shake, and is not confused by sparkles of luster on the
+leaves,) you may try the extremities of the real trees, only not doing
+much at a time, for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex
+your sight. And this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the
+outline itself; at least the chemical action of the light in a
+photograph extends much within the edges of the leaves, and, as it
+were, eats them away, so that no tree extremity, stand it ever so still,
+nor any other form coming against bright sky, is truly drawn by a
+photograph; and if you once succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you
+will find the result much more lovely and interesting than any
+photograph can be.
+
+83. All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the
+dark form of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those
+sprays, and in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much
+more embarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some luster, and all
+are more or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in
+any given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and
+foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or
+hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves,--often very
+forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes
+the blue of the sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself
+flashing like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen
+as darknesses through the translucent parts of the leaf; a most
+important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape
+artists in general.
+
+84. The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance,
+the form of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvelous and quaint
+confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of
+growth, and unity of action, but wholly indefinable and inextricable,
+part by part, by any amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out
+in facsimile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and you
+must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will more or
+less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of
+Nature, without absolute delineation of detail.
+
+85. Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form
+only, because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural
+object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this
+inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of
+handling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are
+intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and
+hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and
+dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first
+the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot
+draw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of
+mist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single grass
+blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power
+over decisive form, you may safely--and must, in order to perfection of
+work--carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity of
+hand.
+
+86. But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now look at
+Art as well as at Nature, and see what means painters and engravers have
+actually employed for the expression of these subtleties. Whereupon
+arises the question, what opportunity you have to obtain engravings? You
+ought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain
+number of good examples of Turner's engraved works: if this be not in
+your power, you must just make the best use you can of the shop windows,
+or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly, the
+difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to
+better use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess
+yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or
+Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the
+annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular points
+deserving your study in each engraving.[18] Be sure, therefore, that
+your selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each
+letter. Do not get more than twelve of these plates, nor even all the
+twelve at first; for the more engravings you have, the less attention
+you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the enjoyment
+derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a certain
+point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it were, over a
+larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated in
+different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his
+attention should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his
+enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at many, with
+divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and his best way of
+discovering it is to think long over few things, and watch them
+earnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and
+to see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality
+know anything rightly. Beware of _handbook_ knowledge.
+
+87. These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to
+copy; and they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of
+composition, than they are at present; still, it will do you a great
+deal of good, sometimes to try how far you can get their delicate
+texture, or gradations of tone: as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt
+to incline too much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For
+instance, the texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its
+tiled roof, in the vignette at p. 227 of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite
+as work can possibly be; and it will be a great and profitable
+achievement if you can at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at
+all imitate the dark distant country at p. 7, or the sky at p. 80, of
+the same volume, or the foliage at pp. 12 and 144, it will be good gain;
+and if you can once draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9 of
+the Italy, or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25, or the
+moonlight at p. 223, you will find that even Nature herself cannot
+afterwards very terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or towers, or
+moonlight.
+
+88. You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same effect.
+And if you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, and begin to think
+that engraving is not drawing, and that copying it cannot help you to
+draw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the
+difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless
+habit of thinking that engraving is a mere business, easy enough when
+one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of
+drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is
+more difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is
+true that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it
+at certain stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a
+habit of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying
+to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched--that
+is, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line made is
+white instead of black, which renders it much more difficult to judge of
+what you are about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good for
+you, because it will awaken you to the real labor and skill of the
+engraver, and make you understand a little how people must work, in this
+world, who have really to _do_ anything in it.
+
+89. Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as a
+model--far from it; but it is necessary you should be able to do as
+well[19] before you think of doing better, and you will find many little
+helps and hints in the various work of it. Only remember that _all_
+engravers' foregrounds are bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling
+parallel lines of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy;
+nor admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances, and portions of
+the foliage in the plates marked _f_, which you may copy. The best for
+this purpose, if you can get it, is the "Chain bridge over the Tees,"
+of the England series; the thicket on the right is very beautiful and
+instructive, and very like Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and
+"Powis" is also remarkably good.
+
+90. Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what harm
+there is in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if possible,
+with a Rembrandt etching, or a photograph of one (of figures, not
+landscape). It does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or
+finished one, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will
+teach you most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that
+Rembrandt's most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid
+with almost inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all
+interesting. The "Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and
+Isaac," and such others, containing incident and character rather than
+chiaroscuro, will be the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it
+well; then exchange it, at little loss, for another; and so, gradually,
+obtain a good knowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity
+of examining his work at museums, etc., do so with the greatest care,
+not looking at _many_ things, but a long time at each. You must also
+provide yourself, if possible, with an engraving of Albert Duerer's. This
+you will not be able to copy; but you must keep it beside you, and refer
+to it as a standard of precision in line. If you can get one with a
+_wing_ in it, it will be best. The crest with the cock, that with the
+skull and satyr, and the "Melancholy," are the best you could have, but
+any will do. Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two
+masters, Rembrandt and Duerer. Rembrandt is often too loose and vague;
+and Duerer has little or no effect of mist or uncertainty. If you can see
+anywhere a drawing by Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the
+two characters; but there are no engravings which present this
+perfection, and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate
+study of Rembrandt and Duerer. Lean rather to Duerer; it is better, for
+amateurs, to err on the side of precision than on that of vagueness:
+and though, as I have just said, you cannot copy a Duerer, yet try every
+now and then a quarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer
+you can come; you cannot possibly try to draw the leafy crown of the
+"Melancholia" too often.
+
+91. If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Duerer, you may still learn
+much by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or
+Leech's wood-cuts in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and
+Richter's[20] on the severe side. But in so doing you will need to
+notice the following points:
+
+92. When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an
+artist does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,--that is to say,
+one in which no lines shall be prominently visible,--and he is reduced
+to show the black lines, either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is
+better to make these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of
+texture and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass
+or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech with
+zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that
+Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding
+of surfaces by the direction of the lines which shade them. All these
+various means of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can
+learn them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of
+shorthand; telling certain facts not in quite the right way, but in the
+only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after use of
+such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to get as
+much record of the object as you can in a given time; and that you
+continually make efforts to go beyond such shorthand, and draw portions
+of the objects rightly.
+
+93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating that
+of surface, observe these few points:
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
+
+If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they
+_can_ indicate anything by their direction, they should explain rather
+than oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of
+wood-cut from Titian, Fig. 10, the lines are serviceable by expressing,
+not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the
+flow of its grain. And Albert Duerer, whose work was chiefly engraving,
+sets himself always thus to make his lines as _valuable_ as possible;
+telling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you
+were always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to
+express effects of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert
+Duerer's way of work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as
+the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and the great
+painters always conceive their subject as complete, even when they are
+sketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not limited
+in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will often
+scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines,
+that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to
+themselves. When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is
+one inclining from the left upwards to the right, or vice versa, from
+the right downwards to the left; and when done very quickly, the line is
+hooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next. Hence,
+you will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a _very_ great
+master full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you
+will find him using simple straight lines from left to right, when an
+inferior master would have used curved ones. Fig. 11 is a fair facsimile
+of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits these characters very
+distinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded
+most commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a
+point increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master
+if you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded
+with straight lines.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
+
+94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest
+dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Fig. 11, and pass
+them for the work of great masters; and how the power of determining the
+genuineness of a drawing depends entirely on your knowing the facts of
+the objects drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is _all_
+conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's work, at
+its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity, but
+the _economy_ of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to
+judge of this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do,
+otherwise you cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,
+you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All
+judgment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature.
+
+95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous
+execution is never affectedly impetuous. If a great man is not in a
+hurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he
+puts none into his hand; if he thinks his effect would be better got
+with _two_ lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with
+one. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),
+that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution
+of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the
+easy execution will fall from your hand as it did from his: but if you
+merely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will
+not only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every
+judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and
+despise you accordingly.
+
+96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:
+
+All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an
+artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his
+outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he
+can by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so
+restricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad
+draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This
+hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state
+in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded
+with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure
+outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up
+afterwards with color, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or
+tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing
+wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves
+it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and
+his work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist
+habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his
+drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade
+than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched
+with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
+
+97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the English
+imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad
+work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste. And of such outlines,
+the worst are those which are darkened in some part of their course by
+way of expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such
+others; because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately
+represents the form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus,
+the outline _a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12, are both _true_ outlines
+of a ball; because, however thick the line may be, whether we take the
+interior or exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true
+circle. But _c_ is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner
+or outer edge of the black line must be an untrue circle, else the line
+could not be thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force," as it
+is called, is gained by falsification of the contours; so that no artist
+whose eye is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed
+often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and
+again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the
+first line by setting others beside and across it; and then a careless
+observer supposes it has been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes also,
+at a place where shade is afterwards to inclose the form, the painter
+will strike a broad dash of this shade beside his outline at once,
+looking as if he meant to thicken the outline; whereas this broad line
+is only the first installment of the future shadow, and the outline is
+really drawn with its inner edge.[21] And thus, far from good
+draughtsmen darkening the lines which turn away from the light, the
+_tendency_ with them is rather to darken them towards the light, for it
+is there in general that shade will ultimately inclose them. The best
+example of this treatment that I know is Raphael's sketch, in the
+Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows
+part of the left eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate the
+nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones
+behind the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will see in
+Fig. 11 the same principle variously exemplified; the principal dark
+lines, in the head and drapery of the arms, being on the side turned to
+the light.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 13.]
+
+98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not
+affect your drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines
+as _equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two
+following purposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II.,
+for if you cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to
+terminate your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is
+absent; or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are
+pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined,
+for the most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer
+one being shown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more
+distant one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required
+to round each tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot
+often get time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each
+tree as is done by Duerer in Fig. 13, you will get a most useful
+memorandum of their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only
+observe in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick
+one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of
+Duerer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately
+descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a
+shape, definitely observed and set down; it contains a true
+"signalement" of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of
+hedge, all round that village. If you have not time to draw thus
+carefully, do not draw at all--you are merely wasting your work and
+spoiling your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice you
+may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet;
+except sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell you
+presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to
+objects which have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone,
+when it rises against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline
+folds in drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at
+all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no
+good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute.
+You see, in that wood-cut of Duerer's, his reason for even limiting
+himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains,
+is that he may leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more
+by the dark sky and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real
+and sunny only by the addition of these shades.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 14.]
+
+99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go
+back to our question about tree-drawing left unanswered at page 48.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 15.]
+
+We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it
+is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the
+difficulty is to keep organization in the midst of mystery. And you will
+never succeed in doing this unless you lean always to the definite side,
+and allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through all
+your early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your first
+step must be to conditions like Figs. 14 and 15, which are careful
+facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful wood-cut of Duerer's, the
+"Flight into Egypt." Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a
+time, but thoroughly; then trace the Duerer, and apply it to your
+drawing, and do not be content till the one fits the other, else your
+eye is not true enough to carry you safely through meshes of real
+leaves. And in the course of doing this, you will find that not a line
+nor dot of Duerer's can be displaced without harm; that all add to the
+effect, and either express something, or illumine something, or relieve
+something. If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree
+drawing, of which so many rich examples are given constantly in our
+cheap illustrated periodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last
+year's _Illustrated News_ or others are full of them), you will see
+that, though good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are
+thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might just as well
+go one way as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce
+all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a
+little careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near
+the same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor
+any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will
+imitate so much as one leaf of Duerer's. Yet there is considerable
+intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine
+leaves of his, as well as of the grass.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 16.]
+
+100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner, you may draw
+from Nature as much as you like in the same way; and when you are tired
+of the intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more
+easy massing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10 (p. 55). This is facsimiled
+from an engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in
+manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough
+model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even
+so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig.
+16,[22] taking care always to have thorough command over your hand;
+that is, not to let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran
+glibly over the paper, but because in Nature it has actually a free and
+noble shape, and you have faithfully followed the same.
+
+101. And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as well as
+true shape, and that we are going to draw from Nature at our pleasure,
+other considerations enter into the business, which are by no means
+confined to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this
+letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting
+of correspondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only
+to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one--tiresomeness inseparable
+from directions touching the beginning of any art,--and to believe me,
+even though I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,
+
+                                      Very faithfully yours,
+
+                                                         J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [1] (_N.B._--This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous
+    or curious readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are
+    willing to take the statement in the text on trust.)
+
+    The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We
+    see nothing but flat colors; and it is only by a series of
+    experiments that we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates
+    the dark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates
+    that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical
+    power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the
+    _innocence of the eye_; that is to say, of a sort of childish
+    perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such, without
+    consciousness of what they signify,--as a blind man would see them
+    if suddenly gifted with sight.
+
+    For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain
+    directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat
+    dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly
+    endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by
+    the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and
+    part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the color of primroses); and, if
+    there were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass
+    was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow color. We
+    should try to gather some of them, and then find that the color went
+    away from the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not
+    from the primroses; and by a series of experiments we should find
+    out that the sun was really the cause of the color in the one,--not
+    in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
+    unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions
+    touching the signification of certain colors, we always suppose that
+    we _see_ what we only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the
+    real aspect of the signs we have learned to interpret. Very few
+    people have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow.
+
+    Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as
+    nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the
+    colors of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at
+    once in the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two
+    colors that form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade
+    and light, but bluish green barred with gold.
+
+    Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great
+    fact about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience
+    and touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white,
+    variously gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by
+    experience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of
+    brown, variously darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art
+    of Painting consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of
+    these patches of color, and putting patches of the same size, depth,
+    and shape on canvas. The only obstacle to the success of painting
+    is, that many of the real colors are brighter and paler than it is
+    possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to represent
+    them.
+
+  [2] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate
+    drawing, than india-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper
+    less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides,
+    you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not
+    for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very
+    lightly; or, if heavily, pressing it only, not passing it over the
+    paper, and leave what pencil marks will not come away so, without
+    minding them. In a finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often
+    serviceable, helping the general tone, and enabling you to take out
+    little bright lights.
+
+  [3] What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is
+    the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose
+    hand is so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can
+    let it fly as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of
+    a great master at real _work_ is _never_ free: its swiftest dash is
+    under perfect government. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause
+    within a hair's breadth of any appointed mark, in their fastest
+    touches; and follow, within a hair's breadth, the previously
+    intended curve. You must never, therefore, aim at freedom. It is not
+    required of your drawing that it should be free, but that it should
+    be right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and then your
+    work will be free in the best sense; but there is no merit in doing
+    wrong easily.
+
+    These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,
+    which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible.
+    The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter
+    it is at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other
+    lines, and concealed by them; the object in perfect shading being to
+    conceal the lines as much as possible.
+
+    And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of
+    hand than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in
+    Nature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he
+    draws them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find
+    mistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present
+    if you find your hand gaining command over the curves.
+
+  [4] If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed,
+    they will be useful models.
+
+  [5] Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this
+    permission. My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that
+    the pupil's eye should be trained to accurate perception of the
+    relations of curve and right lines, by having the latter absolutely
+    true, than that he should practice drawing straight lines. But also,
+    I believe, though I am not quite sure of this, that he never _ought_
+    to be able to draw a straight line. I do not believe a perfectly
+    trained hand ever can draw a line without some curvature in it, or
+    some variety of direction. Prout could draw a straight line, but I
+    do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great draughtsman can,
+    as far as I have observed, draw every line _but_ a straight one.
+
+  [6] Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused
+    quick touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of
+    twigs round the main branches; but do not take much trouble about
+    them.
+
+  [7] It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow
+    gradation than an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as
+    with the pen, to make the gradation go _far_.
+
+  [8] Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.
+
+  [9] The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is
+    always indicated by the color of the solid cake in the box.
+
+  [10] The figure _a_, Fig. 5, is very dark, but this is to give an
+    example of all kinds of depths of tint, without repeated figures.
+
+  [11] Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite
+    different tones in its neutrality, according to the colors of the
+    various reflected rays that compose it.
+
+  [12] If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might
+    perhaps be able to show you some metaphysical ones for the
+    enjoyment, by truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by
+    light and shade and perspective in patterned surfaces; but this is
+    at present not to the point; and all that you need to know is that
+    the drawing of such things is good exercise, and moreover a kind of
+    exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner,
+    all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.
+
+  [13] The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be
+    able, when you begin to color, to let one hue be seen in minute
+    portions, gleaming between the touches of another.
+
+  [14] William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.
+
+  [15] At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal
+    examples of Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most
+    neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of
+    his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the
+    larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark
+    of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a
+    minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated
+    to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will
+    begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid
+    in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focused to
+    two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on
+    the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing
+    child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same
+    thing.
+
+  [16] I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as
+    they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not
+    by difference of method.
+
+  [17] If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will
+    know why; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the
+    statement, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and
+    much loss of time. See, however, Note 1, in Appendix I.
+
+  [18] The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See
+    note at the end of Appendix I. The letters mean as follows:--
+
+    _a_ stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns,
+         cottages, etc.
+    _c_ clouds, including mist and aerial effects.
+    _f_ foliage.
+    _g_ ground, including low hills, when not rocky.
+    _l_ effects of light.
+    _m_ mountains, or bold rocky ground.
+    _p_ power of general arrangement and effect.
+    _q_ quiet water.
+    _r_ running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their
+         line of flow is beautifully marked.
+
+    _From the England Series._
+
+    _a c f r._ Arundel.                   _a f p._ Lancaster.
+      _a f l._ Ashby de la Zouche.      _c l m r._ Lancaster Sands.*
+    _a l q r._ Barnard Castle.*           _a g f._ Launceston.*
+      _f m r._ Bolton Abbey.            _c f l r._ Leicester Abbey.
+      _f g r._ Buckfastleigh.*              _f r._ Ludlow.
+      _a l p._ Caernarvon.                _a f l._ Margate.
+      _c l q._ Castle Upnor.              _a l q._ Orford.
+      _a f l._ Colchester.                  _c p._ Plymouth.
+        _l q._ Cowes.                         _f._ Powis Castle.
+      _c f p._ Dartmouth Cove.*           _l m q._ Prudhoe Castle.
+      _c l q._ Flint Castle.*           _f l m r._ Chain Bridge over
+    _a f g l._ Knaresborough.*                      Tees.*
+        _m r._ High Force of Tees.*         _m q._ Ulleswater.
+      _a f q._ Trematon.                    _f m._ Valle Crucis.
+
+    _From the Keepsake._
+
+      _m p q._ Arona.                         _p._ St. Germain en Laye.
+        _l m._ Drachenfels.*              _l p q._ Florence.
+        _f l._ Marly.*                      _l m._ Ballyburgh Ness.*
+
+    _From the Bible Series._
+
+        _f m._ Mount Lebanon.             _a c g._ Joppa.
+          _m._ Rock of Moses at         _c l p q._ Solomon's Pools.*
+                Sinai.                      _a l._ Santa Saba.
+      _a l m._ Jericho.                     _a l._ Pool of Bethesda.
+
+    _From Scott's Works._
+
+        _p r._ Melrose.*                    _c m._ Glencoe.
+        _f r._ Dryburgh.*                   _c m._ Loch Coriskin.*
+
+
+        _a l._ Caerlaverock.
+
+    _From the Rivers of France._
+
+        _a q._ Chateau of Amboise, with     _a p._ Rouen Cathedral.
+                large bridge on right.      _f p._ Pont de l'Arche.
+      _l p r._ Rouen, looking down the    _f l p._ View on the Seine,
+                river, poplars on right.*           with avenue.
+      _a l p._ Rouen, with cathedral      _a c p._ Bridge of Meulan.
+                and rainbow, avenue     _c g p r._ Caudebec.*
+                on left.
+
+  [19] As _well_;--not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on
+    the steel than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be
+    able to get tones as even, and touches as firm.
+
+  [20] See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be
+    studied."
+
+  [21] See Note 2 in Appendix I.
+
+  [22] This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it
+    looks like it. You will find it explained presently.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER II.
+
+SKETCHING FROM NATURE.
+
+
+102. MY DEAR READER,--The work we have already gone through together
+has, I hope, enabled you to draw with fair success either rounded and
+simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like
+those of leaves; provided only these masses or complexities will stay
+quiet for you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to
+baffle your patience. But if we are now to go out to the fields, and to
+draw anything like a complete landscape, neither of these conditions
+will any more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we copy
+their heaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to
+shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light
+where its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving in
+eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence; and instead of
+the small clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point,
+embarrassing enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as little
+to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its
+foam.
+
+103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation becomes
+more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it _is_
+possible; and when you have time and opportunity, some portions of a
+landscape may, as you gain greater skill, be rendered with an
+approximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you
+may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed
+to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive; and you must
+give more and more effort daily to the observance of characteristic
+points, and the attainment of concise methods.
+
+104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons.
+First, that it is always accessible as a study; and secondly, that its
+modes of growth present simple examples of the importance of leading or
+governing lines. It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot
+seize all, that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and
+grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form.
+I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive
+of the past history and present action of the thing. They show in a
+mountain, first, how it was built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is
+now being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it.
+In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its
+childhood: how troublesome trees have come in its way, and pushed it
+aside, and tried to strangle or starve it; where and when kind trees
+have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it
+bent; what winds torment it most; what boughs of it behave best, and
+bear most fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show
+the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which the
+water or vapor is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets shore,
+or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing
+distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always,
+whether in life or in art, _knowing the way things are going_. Your
+dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your
+wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so,--the
+animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course,
+the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a
+form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and
+will have power over its futurity. Those are its _awful_ lines; see that
+you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16
+(p. 63) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at
+Sestri near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their
+first budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every direction
+round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it. Then,
+when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up again; some
+of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of
+growing upright, if they can; and this struggle of theirs to recover
+their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow
+sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence
+their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, forky
+pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them,
+with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea; or if they are
+to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and
+the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy
+green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give that
+spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their
+chief beauty is in these.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
+
+105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small, you will notice
+that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there
+is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the
+tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at _c_,
+Fig. 17, is common to all trees that I know of, and it gives them a
+certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their
+branches which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely
+send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the
+branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and
+a path to take, which fills a definite place, and each terminates all
+its minor branches at its outer extremity, so as to form a greater outer
+curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for each species.
+That is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as _a_, Fig.
+17, but as _b_, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor
+divisions right out to the bounding curve; not but that smaller
+branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart of the tree, but the idea
+and main purpose in every branch are to carry all its child branches
+well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however small, take
+its part in filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the
+type of each separate bough is again not _a_, but _b_, Fig. 18;
+approximating, that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of
+broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to a
+rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless habit of
+drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging
+to the other, as in Fig. 19. If you look at the tree-boughs in any
+painting of Wilson's you will see this structure, and nearly every other
+that is to be avoided, in their intensest types. You will also notice
+that Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it
+had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing pines seem to fancy,
+in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two sides of the
+trunk, instead of all round it: always, therefore, take more pains in
+trying to draw the boughs of trees that grow _towards_ you than those
+that go off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the
+foreshortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing them to
+observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, though not
+of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and approximates, in its
+position, to the look of a hand held out to receive something, or
+shelter something. If you take a looking-glass, and hold your hand
+before it slightly hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers
+open, as if you were going to support the base of some great bowl,
+larger than you could easily hold; and sketch your hand as you see it in
+the glass with the points of the fingers towards you; it will materially
+help you in understanding the way trees generally hold out their hands:
+and if then you will turn yours with its palm downwards, as if you were
+going to try to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will
+get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such
+other spreading trees.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
+
+106. Fig. 20 will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which
+these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it
+carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group
+together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the
+springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the
+ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers
+of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimiled from an etching of
+Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure
+and firm lines; it will also show you how the particular action in
+foliage, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, may be
+intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look
+more tall and upright still, because their line is continued below by
+the figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes on the
+bank are made to look more rounded because their line is continued in
+one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These
+figures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully
+hereafter when we come to talk about composition; but, if you please,
+we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
+about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with
+composition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive
+representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking
+forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the
+"Law of Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth:
+indeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here
+than there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles
+of composition somewhat awkwardly.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
+
+107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite
+so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon
+enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old
+house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw
+the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good
+draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are
+weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the
+run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where
+it lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful, however few
+slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those
+hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them), and crowd
+gradually together at the top of the gable, partly diminishing in
+perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most
+English old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always
+the direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the
+earth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in any bank or height
+worth drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides.
+Figure 20 will give you some idea of the way in which such facts may be
+expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground
+all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people always
+turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how the
+water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the
+roots of the trees?
+
+108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature to aim
+exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts of form;
+using the pen--not now the steel, but the quill--firmly and steadily,
+never scrawling with it, but saying to yourself before you lay on a
+single touch,--"_that_ leaf is the main one, _that_ bough is the guiding
+one, and this touch, _so_ long, _so_ broad, means that part of
+it,"--point or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you
+look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it, and never
+let your hand run away with you, or get into any habit or method of
+touch. If you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from
+one end of it to the other without a tremor; if you want a shaking and
+broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a
+musician's finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that
+there is no general way of doing _any_ thing; no recipe can be given you
+for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be
+ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or
+rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to
+draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody "told you to _do_ grass."
+So a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all over
+like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of
+Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field
+puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's hawser, or kneaded like
+hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus saber, or fused like a glass
+bottle, or crystallized like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf:
+look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you to "do a
+stone."
+
+109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, and that
+you can render any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of
+Turner's or Duerer's work,[24] you must add a simple but equally careful
+light and shade to your pen drawing, so as to make each study as
+complete as possible; for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if
+you have the means, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber
+Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note
+below.[25] If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any
+of these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell
+you presently); but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You
+will see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint
+shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched part of it
+accurately; to which end put the print against the window, and trace
+slowly with the greatest care every black line; retrace this on smooth
+drawing-paper; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at
+the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the
+right side, not making a line which is too curved or too straight
+already in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over it.
+And in doing this, never work after you are tired, nor to "get the thing
+done," for if it is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true
+zeal and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and
+inattentive labor of a whole day. If you have not made the touches right
+at the first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with
+little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they need: you
+cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this etched
+outline by you in order to study at your ease the way in which Turner
+uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow;[26] it is only
+in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this.
+Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this
+etching which you like, and put on the light and shade with the brush,
+and any brown color that matches that of the plate;[27] working it with
+the point of the brush as delicately as if you were drawing with pencil,
+and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the paper,
+till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving.
+
+110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked
+to close resemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject
+carelessly done. Not that in drawing afterwards from Nature you are to
+be obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having
+fully accomplished the drawing _something_ rightly, you will
+thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you could
+otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out
+quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which
+it would have wholly refused if you had not put it to severest work.
+Nothing is more strange in art than the way that chance and materials
+seem to favor you, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make
+yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it,
+and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you would have
+them. Show the camel's hair, and the color in it, that no bending nor
+blotting is of any use to escape your will; that the touch and the shade
+_shall_ finally be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that
+hour of corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to all
+your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its appointed border.
+If you cannot obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a
+photograph[28] of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a
+village or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some calm water
+of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
+any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working, as I have
+just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of
+the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, however; first,
+there are portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at
+present to be at all able to copy; and, secondly, there are portions
+always more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene, and
+involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher.
+Both these characters will be advantageous to you for future study,
+after you have gained experience, but they are a little against you in
+early attempts at tinting; still you must fight through the difficulty,
+and get the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or gray,
+like those of the photograph.
+
+111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like
+photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long
+as your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not
+perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete
+results in tints merely, requires both long time and consummate skill;
+and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over
+or under them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any
+other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber
+Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest
+shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with
+the most subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the
+expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
+ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most
+tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist, or cloud.
+Most of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this
+principle, the touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of
+transparency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by
+great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good
+public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios
+either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss
+to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of
+photographs also are now taken from the best drawings by the old
+masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes and other societies
+organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to possess
+themselves of examples of these, and to make them accessible to students
+of drawing in the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
+the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
+photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre,
+to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be
+all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more
+serviceable than a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery
+of second-rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
+because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk
+separately, or color separately, may be seen by the poorest student in
+any cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity of
+tinting with line he cannot generally see but by some special inquiry,
+and in some out of the way places he could not find a single example of
+it. Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that you
+cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make the matter out
+alone, thus:
+
+112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to
+express its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid
+color instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and
+laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your
+bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or
+gray, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the
+photograph; and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife or
+blotting paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by
+a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen
+may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of
+texture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you
+have, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with
+the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two.
+Practice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes
+only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,
+sometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in
+full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the
+parts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you
+will do well to repeat frequently, whether you can get prints and
+drawings as well as photographs, or not.
+
+113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or
+its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in
+your power of working from Nature on all subjects that interest you,
+which you should do in four different ways.
+
+First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay
+quiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly
+perfect as you can, with gray or brown color of any kind, reinforced and
+defined with the pen.
+
+114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in
+detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and
+shade, make a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time
+to a Duereresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to you
+interesting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,
+try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
+memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
+sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your
+experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look
+of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of
+tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to
+prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,
+however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
+carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your
+Duereresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing
+be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or
+disguised.
+
+115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with
+a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of
+gray, which will fix the pencil. While this fixing color is wet, take
+out the higher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry,
+scratch out the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes,
+carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper is
+to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well; for you can
+get more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on
+cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with body-color
+white, unless you are consummately skillful. There is no objection to
+your making your Duereresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
+touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend much on your
+white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake.
+
+116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for
+Duereresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the
+shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can
+at once, and to get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more
+color again and again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
+which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out your
+chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the color off
+here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the
+wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it
+off with your sponge, etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and
+mark the outline characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber
+Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying away
+pieces of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on
+complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky,
+etc.; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or
+slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
+endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for
+display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable; there are a velocity
+and a dash which not only are compatible with perfect drawing, but
+obtain certain results which cannot be had otherwise. And it is
+perfectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed and decision,
+while your continual course of practice is such as to insure your
+retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
+circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find
+yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
+
+117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape
+scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making
+memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of
+no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
+study, nor a Duereresque one, may yet become of singular value in
+consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens
+often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
+element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21, seen
+within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers
+to which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's
+distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
+painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and
+the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without indication of their
+cause, as in Fig. 22 _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
+it would appear, as in Fig. 22 _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
+strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of gray on the light
+hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
+continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
+singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
+touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
+accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
+
+118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are in haste, with
+an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure
+your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very
+subtle; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so
+everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you
+are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is
+both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the
+gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the
+sharp touches, on which the best of the detail depends, getting
+gradually deadened by time, or to find the places where force was wanted
+look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the
+steady use of the pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it;
+keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
+well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but
+never being without this.
+
+119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to
+draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
+note one or two points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and
+the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
+means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
+peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
+to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
+There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
+only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
+nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
+will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
+a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
+pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of
+beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:
+
+120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account of their
+associations; or at least do not draw them because you love them; but
+merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw
+places that you love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat
+brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset
+hedges; besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor to
+make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your
+progress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious
+that the drawing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it
+is done. All you have to care about is to make it _right_, and to learn
+as much in doing it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in
+your friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you
+may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or
+the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it _is_ for practice, and not
+because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor
+because you wish to please your friend by drawing her room.
+
+121. Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am
+addressing you as a beginner--a time may come when your work will be
+precious to everybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know
+that it is worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will
+know that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing,
+send them a couple of cakes of color and a piece of Bristol board: those
+materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than if you
+had spread the one over the other.
+
+The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will much
+protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings
+pretty.
+
+122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if
+complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments,
+chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of
+furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret
+yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do not
+shine.
+
+(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw,
+and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things
+as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or
+profitless study than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study
+than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general,
+everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.
+
+(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen
+through another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before
+your chosen cottage, or between you and the turn of the river; its near
+branches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to
+represent this; and though, when the tree _is_ there, you must not
+imaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look
+for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,
+rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a
+thin tree in front of it, rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and
+rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems.
+
+(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps
+nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque
+and unmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge,
+with trees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the
+cattle line.
+
+Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that
+the subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that
+you should think you had entirely mastered _it_. But at first, and even
+for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure;
+which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.
+
+123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may,
+perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all banks
+are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large landscapes.
+If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places where the
+ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots of
+trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things within your
+reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, etc.
+Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful
+bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and color than high
+chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the flowery ground
+below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study: a not very
+thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up
+it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
+
+124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always
+beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of
+pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric porticoes. Any old
+English village, or cluster of farmhouses, drawn with all its ins and
+outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a
+French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to English as
+Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is
+incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have
+recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their
+expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty
+of component lines.
+
+In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden
+is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of
+cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,
+and bossy roses; you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
+anything in purer thoughts.
+
+Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood, and
+study them ripple by ripple.
+
+Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a
+peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old
+manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and
+cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in
+England from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an
+impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring
+vergerism about them.
+
+125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is
+redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece
+of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its
+complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
+color. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching
+among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
+hills will be comparatively easy.
+
+126. When you have practiced for a little time from such of these
+subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find
+difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a
+master's help: these difficulties will vary according to the character
+of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to
+another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would
+make this too large a book if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate;
+you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her
+own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on
+your own part will make some difficulties disappear; and that others
+will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists' work as
+may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
+a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are
+somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks may, I think, be
+conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing
+of vegetation, water, and skies.
+
+127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said
+enough about trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and
+tried to draw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be
+ready by this time to hear a little more of them. You will also
+recollect that we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing
+intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so
+because I wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing
+them for yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle
+considerations as to method in drawing them. And by this time, I
+imagine, you must have found out two principal things, universal facts,
+about leaves; namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their
+lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law
+of radiation, already referred to;[29] and the second, that this
+divergence is never formal, but carried out with endless variety of
+individual line. I must now press both these facts on your attention a
+little farther.
+
+128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of
+the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with
+the passages referring to them in Modern Painters, in which they are
+highly praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only
+works by a modern[30] draughtsman which express in any wise the energy
+of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There
+are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general character,
+obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame,
+Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether
+inferior in power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you
+must not take even Harding for a model, though you may use his works for
+occasional reference; and if you can afford to buy his Lessons on
+Trees,[31] it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at
+present help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well
+that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,
+because their great influence on young students renders it desirable
+that their real character should be thoroughly understood.
+
+129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on Trees, a
+pretty wood-cut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and
+in a very interesting arrangement of lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy
+of Mr. Harding, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think
+everything depends on black dots; still, the main lines are good, and
+very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we come to the
+point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil
+that he may practice from them till his hand gets into the habit of
+arranging lines freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr.
+Harding to be universal in application; "all outlines expressive of
+foliage," he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
+groups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23 below; and the
+characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner
+ends to a common center;" that "their ends terminate in [are inclosed
+by] ovoid curves;" and that "the outer ends are most emphatic."
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
+
+130. Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and
+inclosure, the main principle of this method of execution confirms, in a
+very interesting way, our conclusions respecting foliage composition.
+The reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be
+most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one end
+of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other: but
+ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
+more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and,
+as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as
+any mere habit of touch _can_ express. But, unfortunately, there is
+another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,
+which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose
+sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be
+carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual
+individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the
+moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the
+leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of
+growth with its companions in the radiating group.
+
+131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster
+may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one
+than _b_ in Fig. 9, p. 47, nor a less formal one than this shoot of
+Spanish chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24; but in either of them,
+even the general reader, unpracticed in any of the previously
+recommended exercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed
+with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if
+he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will
+find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free
+touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch
+whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it;
+but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
+the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close
+to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw
+the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it,
+and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point
+of a leaf here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
+by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
+through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really
+_can_ see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig.
+9 nor Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as
+Fig. 25.[32]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
+
+132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these
+_three_ laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is,
+first, the organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism,
+or concurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of
+rocks, and clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the
+members subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under
+which the separate character of each is more or less concealed.
+
+I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This
+is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your
+common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they
+were moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;
+he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps
+of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;
+and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
+unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,
+or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is
+the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of
+government; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of
+their authority rather than in its denial.
+
+133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and
+liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great
+masters separate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the
+men of inferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice
+of individuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep
+of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or
+mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has
+great feeling for masses of form and harmony of color; but in the detail
+gives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species
+of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible.
+Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are
+essential to masterly work, the individuality is the _more_ essential,
+and the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment
+separates the great masters _finally_ from the inferior ones. It is the
+more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in
+visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a
+lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no
+government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common
+affection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it
+possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to
+have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
+dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in
+which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than
+himself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than
+himself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be
+relieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be
+instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a
+stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
+walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in everlasting
+multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.
+Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of
+form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some
+great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and
+their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life.
+
+134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you enjoy the pursuit
+of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning
+them, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters
+in a piece of painting by merely considering what are the noble
+characters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of
+manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and
+refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What
+advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness
+in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
+of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial
+composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or
+relieve human souls; that power precisely in the same relative degree,
+play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of
+a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in
+companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
+simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of
+goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its
+color, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.
+
+135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too
+far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete,
+that the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the
+more useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one
+particular, or in any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice, no
+moral virtue, which has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of
+painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the
+art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness,
+and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and
+modesty, and all other such habits, and every conceivable modification
+and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness,
+by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable vices
+and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character and
+passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king to the
+innocent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
+
+136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the
+investigation of the higher branches of composition, matters which it
+would be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to
+them here, in order that you may understand how the utmost noblenesses
+of art are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in
+your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the
+most noble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of
+individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,
+whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
+
+137. Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein
+consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the
+tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly
+observes, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great
+laws of growth and action in trees: it fails,--and observe, not in a
+minor, but in the principal point,--because it cannot rightly render any
+one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not
+from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true
+drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to a hand which has
+contracted a _habit_ of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,
+and stops, and says calmly,--That leaf is of such and such a character;
+I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers
+what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend.
+This process may be as quick as lightning when the master is great--one
+of the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process
+is always gone through; no touch or form is ever added to another by a
+good painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
+the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf No. 2; you
+cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or
+rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and
+pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully;
+make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it
+shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders;
+otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may
+therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[33] and you
+may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand
+so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you must
+never copy it; otherwise your progress will be at once arrested. The
+utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's manner,
+but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil to gain
+his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides
+drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding
+what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and
+complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand the one
+and love the other more and more, whether you can draw well yourself or
+not.
+
+138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above
+stated, that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen
+perfectly, but only by fragments, and under various conditions of
+obscurity.[34] This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature
+complete as a type of the human nature. We have, observe, first,
+Subordination; secondly, Individuality; lastly, and this not the least
+essential character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every
+serrated point and shining vein which escapes or deceives our sight
+among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or
+judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all
+that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at first think
+we understand, a closer and more loving watchfulness would show to be
+full of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
+
+139. The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
+completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at
+all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try
+always when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in
+light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
+definitely; preparing for the after development of the forms by
+chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future
+arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings
+of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples, and so peculiar. The
+character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains
+that Turner has taken. Thus the Aesacus and Hesperie was wrought out with
+the greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the near tree is
+etched as in Fig. 26. The work looks at first like a scholar's instead
+of a master's; but when the light and shade are added, every touch falls
+into its place, and a perfect expression of grace and complexity
+results. Nay, even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be
+able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the
+expression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are
+more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before
+Turner's time, had been employed, even by the best masters, in their
+distant masses. Fig. 27 is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of
+the old wood-cuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are too
+much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs too completely
+seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery in aspect, owing to the
+want of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat
+conventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses; and
+their exquisite delineation of the foreground, kept their
+conventionalism from degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and
+other derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and
+sinks gradually into scrawled work, like Fig. 28, about the worst which
+it is possible to get into the habit of using, though an ignorant person
+might perhaps suppose it more "free," and therefore better than Fig. 26.
+Note also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a
+bough is wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally
+somewhere, as in Fig. 26, just above the foliage. Very often the
+muscular action which is to be expressed by the line runs into the
+middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the branch at that place
+may be dimly seen, or not at all; and it is then only by the future
+shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappearance, will be
+indicated.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
+
+140. One point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In
+the minds of our ordinary water-color artists a distant tree seems only
+to be conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other
+masses, and giving cool color to the landscape, but differing no wise,
+in texture, from the blots of other shapes which these painters use to
+express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn
+trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed
+more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their
+_softness_ of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of
+color, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture,
+partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely
+softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to
+reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the
+surface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form
+and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife
+passed lightly _over_ this careful drawing will do a good deal; but you
+must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim much at this softness
+in the lines of the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and
+more or less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,
+according to the character of tree, various modes of execution adapted
+to express its texture; but always keep this character of softness in
+your mind, and in your scope of aim; for in most landscapes it is the
+intention of Nature that the tenderness and transparent infinitude of
+her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the most
+distinct opposition to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or
+buildings.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
+
+141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of
+representing water, of which important feature of landscape I have
+hardly said anything yet.
+
+Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional lines, whose
+horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In
+paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose.
+
+But these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of
+calm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection
+of the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these
+reflections, disturbing them here and there as you see the breeze or
+current disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you
+have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give you a
+true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate
+drawing as the picture above the pool; except only that if there be the
+least motion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be
+diffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and
+the oblique ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.
+
+142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing you
+need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturbance on the
+surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current
+plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to
+get the _curves_ of these lines true; the whole value of your careful
+drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false
+curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if
+you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and
+delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they
+are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking
+pains, work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by motion
+in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as may be; but when you
+are in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with vertical
+lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated reflection is with
+horizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw the descending
+shades delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best always
+when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you are not, to use the
+vertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflections become
+shaken, and must be drawn with bold undulatory descending lines.
+
+143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest
+possible importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their
+perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more stringent than that of
+any other lines in Nature. It will not be detected by the general
+observer, if you miss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or
+the perspective of a building;[36] but every intelligent spectator will
+feel the difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or shingle,
+and a false one. _Absolutely_ right, in difficult river perspectives
+seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and
+observe, there is NO rule for them. To develop the curve mathematically
+would require a knowledge of the exact quantity of water in the river,
+the shape of its bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even
+with these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician could
+solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it; nothing
+else.
+
+144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great
+differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the
+object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is
+simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water _actually_ reversed
+(not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the
+same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,
+whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid
+objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection,
+always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.
+
+If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror,
+lay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and
+draw them and their reflections; moving them about, and watching how
+their reflections alter, and chiefly how their reflected colors and
+shades differ from their own colors and shades, by being brought into
+other oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
+character in water-painting than mere difference in form.
+
+145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows
+on the bottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections;
+and in a clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of
+effect resulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it,
+mingling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
+water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand,
+do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything
+that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect.
+There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted
+always by refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone
+shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will
+be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the
+stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen
+through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which; and wherever the
+reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best,[37] and
+_vice versa_. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these
+images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective,
+and where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of the
+water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it: but whether
+you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of
+the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye.
+The more you look down into the water, the better you see objects
+through it; the more you look along it, the eye being low, the more you
+see the reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given space
+of surface in a stream will entirely change while you stand still in the
+same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colors
+with which water is painted are an indication of the position of the
+spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of the shores.
+The most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is
+when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich
+reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an angle which
+exactly divides the visible colors between those of the stones and that
+of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple,
+obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the
+play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.
+
+146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if there be a strong
+color in the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss lakes,
+all these phenomena are doubly involved; for the darker reflections now
+become of the color of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for
+instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther,
+the color of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on the
+surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where the waves let
+light through them, at their edges; and the third, shown as a change of
+color on the objects seen through the water. Thus, the same wave that
+makes a white object look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will
+take a red or violet-colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure
+emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. With all this,
+however, you are not much concerned at present, but I tell it you partly
+as a preparation for what we have afterwards to say about color, and
+partly that you may approach lakes and streams with reverence,[38] and
+study them as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
+few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.[39] Not but
+that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you know precisely what
+you mean by them, as you will see by many of the Turner sketches, which
+are now framed at the National Gallery; but you must have painted water
+many and many a day--yes, and all day long--before you can hope to do
+anything like those.
+
+147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the
+clouds, I say nothing special about _ground_.[40] But there is too much
+to be said about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the
+principal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume
+of Modern Painters; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
+Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will
+give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of
+ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in
+irregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of
+the perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and
+much also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks
+on any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised
+to find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on
+which they fall.
+
+148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity
+about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject;--that the
+clouds, not being much liable to man's interference, are always
+beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of this in any other features
+of landscape. The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene
+especially depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts
+or the landlord quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a
+special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most
+delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer plows or builds upon.
+But the clouds, though we can hide them with smoke, and mix them with
+poison, cannot be quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore
+gloriously arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers
+of memory you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that
+interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united
+influence of every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn
+together in a marvelous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its
+appointed place, or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not
+able to recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is
+impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all the clouds
+at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will
+not fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before
+another.
+
+149. You must try therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching
+at the utmost possible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by
+any shorthand or symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character
+of each, as transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving
+afterwards such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable
+you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting from its
+general aspect; at other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a
+single cloud: sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes
+quite steady enough to let you mark out his principal masses; and one or
+two white or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay
+without serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in
+drawing them, practice occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will
+teach you better than any other stable thing the kind of softness there
+is in clouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies
+of sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
+artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding
+the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones
+tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as
+vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have
+done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or
+in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
+solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy
+nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;
+sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more _drifted_
+into form than they are _carved_ into form, the warm air around them
+cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain
+limits; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
+swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that
+of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is,
+that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms,
+especially considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn
+also at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the
+force of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that if we
+put shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed
+in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
+Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
+them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage.
+
+150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and
+there; one of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much the
+memorandum so obtained, as the lesson you will get respecting the
+softness of the cloud-outlines. You will always find yourself at a loss
+to see where the outline really is; and when drawn it will always look
+hard and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square,
+however often you alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the
+other and back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean
+between roundness and squareness in all its coils or battlements. I
+speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud: the lighter
+wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined;--they can only
+be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly
+developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough, and
+may be drawn with decision. When you have thus accustomed yourself a
+little to the placing and action of clouds, try to work out their light
+and shade, just as carefully as you do that of other things, looking
+exclusively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy
+and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some
+examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet drew the sky:
+even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in
+the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among the
+best of Turner's storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes
+to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.
+
+151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the
+present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to
+master the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for
+drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,
+which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the
+fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
+single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
+whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the
+subjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate
+work addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two
+things to be said on composition which may set the young artist's mind
+somewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defense from the urgency of
+ill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter here;
+trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your
+serious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book
+with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or
+
+                                           Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                         J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [23] It is meant, I believe, for "Salt Hill."
+
+  [24] I do not mean that you can approach Turner or Duerer in their
+    strength, that is to say, in their imagination or power of design.
+    But you may approach them, by perseverance, in truth of manner.
+
+  [25] The following are the most desirable plates:--
+
+    Grande Chartreuse.               Little Devil's Bridge.
+    Aesacus and Hesperie.            River Wye (_not_ Wye and Severn).
+    Cephalus and Procris.            Holy Island.
+    Source of Arveron.               Clyde.
+    Ben Arthur.                      Lauffenburg.
+    Watermill.                       Blair Athol.
+    Hindhead Hill.                   Alps from Grenoble.
+    Hedging and Ditching.            Raglan. (Subject with quiet brook,
+    Dumblane Abbey.                   trees, and castle on the right.)
+    Morpeth.
+    Calais Pier.
+    Pembury Mill.
+
+    If you cannot get one of these, any of the others will be
+    serviceable, except only the twelve following, which are quite
+    useless:--
+
+      1. Scene in Italy, with goats on a walled road, and trees above.
+      2. Interior of church.
+      3. Scene with bridge, and trees above; figures on left, one playing
+          a pipe.
+      4. Scene with figure playing on tambourine.
+      5. Scene on Thames with high trees, and a square tower of a church
+          seen through them.
+      6. Fifth Plague of Egypt.
+      7. Tenth Plague of Egypt.
+      8. Rivaulx Abbey.
+      9. Wye and Severn.
+     10. Scene with castle in center, cows under trees on the left.
+     11. Martello Towers.
+     12. Calm.
+
+    It is very unlikely that you should meet with one of the original
+    etchings; if you should, it will be a drawing-master in itself
+    alone, for it is not only equivalent to a pen-and-ink drawing by
+    Turner, but to a very careful one; only observe, the Source of
+    Arveron, Raglan, and Dumblane were not etched by Turner; and the
+    etchings of those three are not good for separate study, though it
+    is deeply interesting to see how Turner, apparently provoked at the
+    failure of the beginnings in the Arveron and Raglan, took the plates
+    up himself, and either conquered or brought into use the bad etching
+    by his marvelous engraving. The Dumblane was, however, well etched
+    by Mr. Lupton, and beautifully engraved by him. The finest Turner
+    etching is of an aqueduct with a stork standing in a mountain
+    stream, not in the published series; and next to it, are the
+    unpublished etchings of the Via Mala and Crowhurst. Turner seems to
+    have been so fond of these plates that he kept retouching and
+    finishing them, and never made up his mind to let them go. The Via
+    Mala is certainly, in the state in which Turner left it, the finest
+    of the whole series: its etching is, as I said, the best after that
+    of the aqueduct. Figure 20, above, is part of another fine
+    unpublished etching, "Windsor, from Salt Hill." Of the published
+    etchings, the finest are the Ben Arthur, Aesacus, Cephalus, and Stone
+    Pines, with the Girl washing at a Cistern; the three latter are the
+    more generally instructive. Hindhead Hill, Isis, Jason, and Morpeth,
+    are also very desirable.
+
+  [26] You will find more notice of this point in the account of
+    Harding's tree-drawing, a little farther on.
+
+  [27] The impressions vary so much in color that no brown can be
+    specified.
+
+  [28] You had better get such a photograph, even though you have a
+    Liber print as well.
+
+  [29] See the closing letter in this volume.
+
+  [30] [In 1857.]
+
+  [31] If you are not acquainted with Harding's works, (an unlikely
+    supposition, considering their popularity,) and cannot meet with the
+    one in question, the diagrams given here will enable you to
+    understand all that is needful for our purposes.
+
+  [32] I draw this figure (a young shoot of oak) in outline only, it
+    being impossible to express the refinements of shade in distant
+    foliage in a wood-cut.
+
+  [33] His lithographic sketches, those for instance in the Park and
+    the Forest, and his various lessons on foliage, possess greater
+    merit than the more ambitious engravings in his Principles and
+    Practice of Art. There are many useful remarks, however, dispersed
+    through this latter work.
+
+  [34] On this law you do well, if you can get access to it, to look
+    at the fourth chapter of the fourth volume of Modern Painters.
+
+  [35] See Note 3 in Appendix I.
+
+  [36] The student may hardly at first believe that the perspective of
+    buildings is of little consequence; but he will find it so
+    ultimately. See the remarks on this point in the Preface.
+
+  [37] See Note 4 in Appendix I.
+
+  [38] See Note 5 in Appendix I.
+
+  [39] It is a useful piece of study to dissolve some Prussian blue in
+    water, so as to make the liquid definitely blue: fill a large white
+    basin with the solution, and put anything you like to float on it,
+    or lie in it; walnut shells, bits of wood, leaves of flowers, etc.
+    Then study the effects of the reflections, and of the stems of the
+    flowers or submerged portions of the floating objects, as they
+    appear through the blue liquid; noting especially how, as you lower
+    your head and look along the surface, you see the reflections
+    clearly; and how, as you raise your head, you lose the reflections,
+    and see the submerged stems clearly.
+
+  [40] Respecting Architectural Drawing, see the notice of the works
+    of Prout in the Appendix.
+
+
+
+
+LETTER III.
+
+ON COLOR AND COMPOSITION.
+
+
+152. MY DEAR READER,--If you have been obedient, and have hitherto done
+all that I have told you, I trust it has not been without much subdued
+remonstrance, and some serious vexation. For I should be sorry if, when
+you were led by the course of your study to observe closely such things
+as are beautiful in color, you had not longed to paint them, and felt
+considerable difficulty in complying with your restriction to the use of
+black, or blue, or gray. You _ought_ to love color, 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 color because you think
+painting a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may color
+well. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce anything more than
+pleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in color,
+unless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other
+vocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and
+masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well, requires your
+life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is
+increased--not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more--by
+the addition of color to your work. For the chances are more than a
+thousand to one against your being right both in form and color with a
+given touch: it is difficult enough to be right in form, if you attend
+to that only; but when you have to attend, at the same moment, to a much
+more subtle thing than the form, the difficulty is strangely
+increased,--and multiplied almost to infinity by this great fact, that,
+while form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any
+line that it is either right or wrong, color is wholly _relative_. Every
+hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add in other
+places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you have
+put a hotter color in another place, and what was in harmony when you
+left it, becomes discordant as you set other colors beside it; so that
+every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but
+with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is
+afterwards to be done being previously considered. You may easily
+understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and
+great genius besides, can make a colorist.
+
+153. But though you cannot produce finished colored drawings of any
+value, you may give yourself much pleasure, and be of great use to other
+people, by occasionally sketching with a view to color only; and
+preserving distinct statements of certain color facts--as that the
+harvest moon at rising was of such and such a red, and surrounded by
+clouds of such and such a rosy gray; that the mountains at evening were
+in truth so deep in purple; and the waves by the boat's side were indeed
+of that incredible green. This only, observe, if you have an eye for
+color; but you may presume that you have this, if you enjoy color.
+
+154. And, though of course you should always give as much form to your
+subject as your attention to its color will admit of, remember that the
+whole value of what you are about depends, in a colored sketch, on the
+color merely. If the color is wrong, everything is wrong: just as, if
+you are singing, and sing false notes, it does not matter how true the
+words are. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly; and if you color
+at all, you must color rightly. Give up all the form, rather than the
+slightest part of the color: just as, if you felt yourself in danger of
+a false note, you would give up the word, and sing a meaningless sound,
+if you felt that so you could save the note. Never mind though your
+houses are all tumbling down,--though your clouds are mere blots, and
+your trees mere knobs, and your sun and moon like crooked
+sixpences,--so only that trees, clouds, houses, and sun or moon, are of
+the right colors. Of course, the discipline you have gone through will
+enable you to hint something of form, even in the fastest sweep of the
+brush; but do not let the thought of form hamper you in the least, when
+you begin to make colored memoranda. If you want the form of the
+subject, draw it in black and white. If you want its color, take its
+color, and be sure you _have_ it, and not a spurious, treacherous,
+half-measured piece of mutual concession, with the colors all wrong, and
+the forms still anything but right. It is best to get into the habit of
+considering the colored work merely as supplementary to your other
+studies; making your careful drawings of the subject first, and then a
+colored memorandum separately, as shapeless as you like, but faithful in
+hue, and entirely minding its own business. This principle, however,
+bears chiefly on large and distant subjects: in foregrounds and near
+studies, the color cannot be had without a good deal of definition of
+form. For if you do not map the mosses on the stones accurately, you
+will not have the right quantity of color in each bit of moss pattern,
+and then none of the colors will look right; but it always simplifies
+the work much if you are clear as to your point of aim, and satisfied,
+when necessary, to fail of all but that.
+
+155. Now, of course, if I were to enter into detail respecting coloring,
+which is the beginning and end of a painter's craft, I should need to
+make this a work in three volumes instead of three letters, and to
+illustrate it in the costliest way. I only hope, at present, to set you
+pleasantly and profitably to work, leaving you, within the tethering of
+certain leading-strings, to gather what advantages you can from the
+works of art of which every year brings a greater number within your
+reach;--and from the instruction which, every year, our rising artists
+will be more ready to give kindly, and better able to give wisely.
+
+156. And, first, of materials. Use hard cake colors, not moist colors:
+grind a sufficient quantity of each on your palette every morning,
+keeping a separate plate, large and deep, for colors to be used in
+broad washes, and wash both plate and palette every evening, so as to be
+able always to get good and pure color when you need it; and force
+yourself into cleanly and orderly habits about your colors. The two best
+colorists of modern times, Turner and Rossetti,[41] afford us, I am
+sorry to say, no confirmation of this precept by their practice. Turner
+was, and Rossetti is, as slovenly in all their procedures as men can
+well be; but the result of this was, with Turner, that the colors have
+altered in all his pictures, and in many of his drawings; and the result
+of it with Rossetti is, that though his colors are safe, he has
+sometimes to throw aside work that was half done, and begin over again.
+William Hunt, of the Old Water-color, is very neat in his practice; so,
+I believe, is Mulready; so is John Lewis; and so are the leading
+Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti only excepted. And there can be no doubt about
+the goodness of the advice, if it were only for this reason, that the
+more particular you are about your colors the more you will get into a
+deliberate and methodical habit in using them, and all true speed in
+coloring comes of this deliberation.
+
+157. Use Chinese white, well ground, to mix with your colors in order to
+pale them, instead of a quantity of water. You will thus be able to
+shape your masses more quietly, and play the colors about with more
+ease; they will not damp your paper so much, and you will be able to go
+on continually, and lay forms of passing cloud and other fugitive or
+delicately shaped lights, otherwise unattainable except by time.
+
+158. This mixing of white with the pigments, so as to render them
+opaque, constitutes body-color drawing as opposed to transparent-color
+drawing, and you will, perhaps, have it often said to you that this
+body-color is "illegitimate." It is just as legitimate as oil-painting,
+being, so far as handling is concerned, the same process, only without
+its uncleanliness, its unwholesomeness, or its inconvenience; for oil
+will not dry quickly, nor carry safely, nor give the same effects of
+atmosphere without tenfold labor. And if you hear it said that the
+body-color looks chalky or opaque, and, as is very likely, think so
+yourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain effects of glow
+and transparencies of gloom are not to be reached without transparent
+color, those glows and glooms are _not_ the noblest aim of art. After
+many years' study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in
+Italy, and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am now
+entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done in art
+must be done in dead color. The habit of depending on varnish or on
+lucid tints for transparency, makes the painter comparatively lose sight
+of the nobler translucence which is obtained by breaking various colors
+amidst each other: and even when, as by Correggio, exquisite play of hue
+is joined with exquisite transparency, the delight in the depth almost
+always leads the painter into mean and false chiaroscuro; it leads him
+to like dark backgrounds instead of luminous ones,[42] and to enjoy, in
+general, quality of color more than grandeur of composition, and
+confined light rather than open sunshine: so that the really greatest
+thoughts of the greatest men have always, so far as I remember, been
+reached in dead color, and the noblest oil pictures of Tintoret and
+Veronese are those which are likest frescoes.
+
+159. Besides all this, the fact is, that though sometimes a little
+chalky and coarse-looking body-color is, in a sketch, infinitely liker
+Nature than transparent color: the bloom and mist of distance are
+accurately and instantly represented by the film of opaque blue (_quite_
+accurately, I think, by nothing else); and for ground, rocks, and
+buildings, the earthy and solid surface is, of course, always truer than
+the most finished and carefully wrought work in transparent tints can
+ever be.
+
+160. Against one thing, however, I must steadily caution you. All kinds
+of color are equally illegitimate, if you think they will allow you to
+alter at your pleasure, or blunder at your ease. There is _no_ vehicle
+or method of color which admits of alteration or repentance; you must be
+right at once, or never; and you might as well hope to catch a rifle
+bullet in your hand, and put it straight, when it was going wrong, as to
+recover a tint once spoiled. The secret of all good color in oil, water,
+or anything else, lies primarily in that sentence spoken to me by
+Mulready: "Know what you have to do." The process may be a long one,
+perhaps: you may have to ground with one color; to touch it with
+fragments of a second; to crumble a third into the interstices; a fourth
+into the interstices of the third; to glaze the whole with a fifth; and
+to re-enforce in points with a sixth: but whether you have one, or ten,
+or twenty processes to go through, you must go _straight_ through them
+knowingly and foreseeingly all the way; and if you get the thing once
+wrong, there is no hope for you but in washing or scraping boldly down
+to the white ground, and beginning again.
+
+161. The drawing in body-color will tend to teach you all this, more
+than any other method, and above all it will prevent you from falling
+into the pestilent habit of sponging to get texture; a trick which has
+nearly ruined our modern water-color school of art. There are sometimes
+places in which a skillful artist will roughen his paper a little to get
+certain conditions of dusty color with more ease than he could
+otherwise; and sometimes a skillfully rased piece of paper will, in the
+midst of transparent tints, answer nearly the purpose of chalky
+body-color in representing the surfaces of rocks or building. But
+artifices of this kind are always treacherous in a tyro's hands,
+tempting him to trust in them: and you had better always work on white
+or gray paper as smooth as silk;[43] and never disturb the surface of
+your color or paper, except finally to scratch out the very highest
+lights if you are using transparent colors.
+
+162. I have said above that body-color drawing will teach you the use of
+color better than working with merely transparent tints; but this is not
+because the process is an easier one, but because it is a more complete
+one, and also because it involves some working with transparent tints in
+the best way. You are not to think that because you use body-color you
+may make any kind of mess that you like, and yet get out of it. But you
+are to avail yourself of the characters of your material, which enable
+you most nearly to imitate the processes of Nature. Thus, suppose you
+have a red rocky cliff to sketch, with blue clouds floating over it. You
+paint your cliff first firmly, then take your blue, mixing it to such a
+tint (and here is a great part of the skill needed) that when it is laid
+over the red, in the thickness required for the effect of the mist, the
+warm rock-color showing through the blue cloud-color, may bring it to
+exactly the hue you want (your upper tint, therefore, must be mixed
+colder than you want it); then you lay it on, varying it as you strike
+it, getting the forms of the mist at once, and, if it be rightly done,
+with exquisite quality of color, from the warm tint's showing through
+and between the particles of the other. When it is dry, you may add a
+little color to retouch the edges where they want shape, or heighten the
+lights where they want roundness, or put another tone over the whole:
+but you can take none away. If you touch or disturb the surface, or by
+any untoward accident mix the under and upper colors together, all is
+lost irrecoverably. Begin your drawing from the ground again if you
+like, or throw it into the fire if you like. But do not waste time in
+trying to mend it.[44]
+
+163. This discussion of the relative merits of transparent and opaque
+color has, however, led us a little beyond the point where we should
+have begun; we must go back to our palette, if you please. Get a cake of
+each of the hard colors named in the note below[45] and try experiments
+on their simple combinations, by mixing each color with every other. If
+you like to do it in an orderly way, you may prepare a squared piece of
+pasteboard, and put the pure colors in columns at the top and side; the
+mixed tints being given at the intersections, thus (the letters standing
+for colors):
+
+      b       c      d      e      f     etc.
+    a a b    a c    a d    a e    a f
+    b --     b c    b d    b e    b f
+    c --     --     c d    c e    c f
+    d --     --     --     d e    d f
+    e --     --     --     --     e f
+    etc.
+
+This will give you some general notion of the characters of mixed tints
+of two colors only, and it is better in practice to confine yourself as
+much as possible to these, and to get more complicated colors, either by
+putting the third _over_ the first blended tint, or by putting the third
+into its interstices. Nothing but watchful practice will teach you the
+effects that colors have on each other when thus put over, or beside,
+each other.
+
+164. When you have got a little used to the principal combinations,
+place yourself at a window which the sun does not shine in at,
+commanding some simple piece of landscape: outline this landscape
+roughly; then take a piece of white cardboard, cut out a hole in it
+about the size of a large pea; and supposing R is the room, _a d_ the
+window, and you are sitting at _a_, Fig. 29, hold this cardboard a
+little outside of the window, upright, and in the direction _b d_,
+parallel to the side of the window, or a little turned, so as to catch
+more light, as at _a d_, never turned as at _c d_, or the paper will be
+dark. Then you will see the landscape, bit by bit, through the circular
+hole. Match the colors of each important bit as nearly as you can,
+mixing your tints with white, beside the aperture. When matched, put a
+touch of the same tint at the top of your paper, writing under it: "dark
+tree color," "hill color," "field color," as the case may be. Then wash
+the tint away from beside the opening, and the cardboard will be ready
+to match another piece of the landscape.[46] When you have got the
+colors of the principal masses thus indicated, lay on a piece of each in
+your sketch in its right place, and then proceed to complete the sketch
+in harmony with them, by your eye.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
+
+165. In the course of your early experiments, you will be much struck by
+two things: the first, the inimitable brilliancy of light in sky and in
+sunlighted things; and the second, that among the tints which you can
+imitate, those which you thought the darkest will continually turn out
+to be in reality the lightest. Darkness of objects is estimated by us,
+under ordinary circumstances, much more by knowledge than by sight;
+thus, a cedar or Scotch fir, at 200 yards off, will be thought of darker
+green than an elm or oak near us; because we know by experience that the
+peculiar color they exhibit, at that distance, is the _sign_ of darkness
+of foliage. But when we try them through the cardboard, the near oak
+will be found, indeed, rather dark green, and the distant cedar,
+perhaps, pale gray-purple. The quantity of purple and gray in Nature is,
+by the way, another somewhat surprising subject of discovery.
+
+166. Well, having ascertained thus your principal tints, you may proceed
+to fill up your sketch; in doing which observe these following
+particulars:
+
+(1.) Many portions of your subject appeared through the aperture in the
+paper brighter than the paper, as sky, sunlighted grass, etc. Leave
+these portions, for the present, white; and proceed with the parts of
+which you can match the tints.
+
+(2.) As you tried your subject with the cardboard, you must have
+observed how many changes of hue took place over small spaces. In
+filling up your work, try to educate your eye to perceive these
+differences of hue without the help of the cardboard, and lay them
+deliberately, like a mosaic-worker, as separate colors, preparing each
+carefully on your palette, and laying it as if it were a patch of
+colored cloth, cut out, to be fitted neatly by its edge to the next
+patch; so that the _fault_ of your work may be, not a slurred or misty
+look, but a patched bed-cover look, as if it had all been cut out with
+scissors. For instance, in drawing the trunk of a birch tree, there will
+be probably white high lights, then a pale rosy gray round them on the
+light side, then a (probably greenish) deeper gray on the dark side,
+varied by reflected colors, and, over all, rich black strips of bark and
+brown spots of moss. Lay first the rosy gray, leaving white for the high
+lights _and for the spots of moss_, and not touching the dark side. Then
+lay the gray for the dark side, fitting it well up to the rosy gray of
+the light, leaving also in this darker gray the white paper in the
+places for the black and brown moss; then prepare the moss colors
+separately for each spot, and lay each in the white place left for it.
+Not one grain of white, except that purposely left for the high lights,
+must be visible when the work is done, even through a magnifying-glass,
+so cunningly must you fit the edges to each other. Finally, take your
+background colors, and put them on each side of the tree trunk, fitting
+them carefully to its edge.
+
+167. Fine work you would make of this, wouldn't you, if you had not
+learned to draw first, and could not now draw a good outline for the
+stem, much less terminate a color mass in the outline you wanted?
+
+Your work will look very odd for some time, when you first begin to
+paint in this way, and before you can modify it, as I shall tell you
+presently how; but never mind; it is of the greatest possible importance
+that you should practice this separate laying on of the hues, for all
+good coloring finally depends on it. It is, indeed, often necessary, and
+sometimes desirable, to lay one color and form boldly over another:
+thus, in laying leaves on blue sky, it is impossible always in large
+pictures, or when pressed for time, to fill in the blue through the
+interstices of the leaves; and the great Venetians constantly lay their
+blue ground first, and then, having let it dry, strike the golden brown
+over it in the form of the leaf, leaving the under blue to shine through
+the gold, and subdue it to the olive-green they want. But in the most
+precious and perfect work each leaf is inlaid, and the blue worked round
+it; and, whether you use one or other mode of getting your result, it is
+equally necessary to be absolute and decisive in your laying the color.
+Either your ground must be laid firmly first, and then your upper color
+struck upon it in perfect form, forever, thenceforward, unalterable; or
+else the two colors must be individually put in their places, and led up
+to each other till they meet at their appointed border, equally,
+thenceforward, unchangeable. Either process, you see, involves absolute
+decision. If you once begin to slur, or change, or sketch, or try this
+way and that with your color, it is all over with it and with you. You
+will continually see bad copyists trying to imitate the Venetians, by
+daubing their colors about, and retouching, and finishing, and
+softening: when every touch and every added hue only lead them farther
+into chaos. There is a dog between two children in a Veronese in the
+Louvre, which gives the copyists much employment. He has a dark ground
+behind him, which Veronese has painted first, and then when it was dry,
+or nearly so, struck the locks of the dog's white hair over it with some
+half-dozen curling sweeps of his brush, right at once, and forever. Had
+one line or hair of them gone wrong, it would have been wrong forever;
+no retouching could have mended it. The poor copyists daub in first some
+background, and then some dog's hair; then retouch the background, then
+the hair; work for hours at it, expecting it always to come right
+to-morrow--"when it is finished." They _may_ work for centuries at it,
+and they will never do it. If they can do it with Veronese's allowance
+of work, half a dozen sweeps of the hand over the dark background, well;
+if not, they may ask the dog himself whether it will ever come right,
+and get true answer from him--on Launce's conditions: "If he say 'ay,'
+it will; if he say 'no,' it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing,
+it will."
+
+168. (3.) Whenever you lay on a mass of color, be sure that however
+large it may be, or however small, it shall be gradated. No color exists
+in Nature under ordinary circumstances without gradation. If you do not
+see this, it is the fault of your inexperience: you will see it in due
+time, if you practice enough. But in general you may see it at once. In
+the birch trunk, for instance, the rosy gray _must_ be gradated by the
+roundness of the stem till it meets the shaded side; similarly the
+shaded side is gradated by reflected light. Accordingly, whether by
+adding water, or white paint, or by unequal force of touch (this you
+will do at pleasure, according to the texture you wish to produce), you
+must, in every tint you lay on, make it a little paler at one part than
+another, and get an even gradation between the two depths. This is very
+like laying down a formal law or recipe for you; but you will find it is
+merely the assertion of a natural fact. It is not indeed physically
+impossible to meet with an ungradated piece of color, but it is so
+supremely improbable, that you had better get into the habit of asking
+yourself invariably, when you are going to copy a tint--not "Is that
+gradated?" but "Which way is that gradated?" and at least in ninety-nine
+out of a hundred instances, you will be able to answer decisively after
+a careful glance, though the gradation may have been so subtle that you
+did not see it at first. And it does not matter how small the touch of
+color may be, though not larger than the smallest pin's head, if one
+part of it is not darker than the rest, it is a bad touch; for it is not
+merely because the natural fact is so, that your color should be
+gradated; the preciousness and pleasantness of the color itself depends
+more on this than on any other of its qualities, for gradation is to
+colors just what curvature is to lines, both being felt to be beautiful
+by the pure instinct of every human mind, and both, considered as types,
+expressing the law of gradual change and progress in the human soul
+itself. What the difference is in mere beauty between a gradated and
+ungradated color, may be seen easily by laying an even tint of
+rose-color on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. The victorious
+beauty of the rose as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the
+delicacy and quantity of its color gradations, all other flowers being
+either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less
+tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed.
+
+169. (4.) But observe, it is not enough in general that color should be
+gradated by being made merely paler or darker at one place than another.
+Generally color changes as it diminishes, and is not merely darker at
+one spot, but also purer at one spot than anywhere else. It does not in
+the least follow that the darkest spots should be the purest; still less
+so that the lightest should be the purest. Very often the two gradations
+more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction from
+paleness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to
+dullness, but there will almost always be both of them, however
+reconciled; and you must never be satisfied with a piece of color until
+you have got both: that is to say, every piece of blue that you lay on
+must be _quite_ blue only at some given spot, nor that a large spot; and
+must be gradated from that into less pure blue,--grayish blue, or
+greenish blue, or purplish blue,--over all the rest of the space it
+occupies. And this you must do in one of three ways: either, while the
+color is wet, mix with it the color which is to subdue it, adding
+gradually a little more and a little more; or else, when the color is
+quite dry, strike a gradated touch of another color over it, leaving
+only a point of the first tint visible; or else, lay the subduing tints
+on in small touches, as in the exercise of tinting the chess-board. Of
+each of these methods I have something to tell you separately; but that
+is distinct from the subject of gradation, which I must not quit without
+once more pressing upon you the preeminent necessity of introducing it
+everywhere. I have profound dislike of anything like habit of hand, and
+yet, in this one instance, I feel almost tempted to encourage you to get
+into a habit of never touching paper with color, without securing a
+gradation. You will not, in Turner's largest oil pictures, perhaps six
+or seven feet long by four or five high, find one spot of color as large
+as a grain of wheat ungradated: and you will find in practice, that
+brilliancy of hue, and vigor of light, and even the aspect of
+transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character
+alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity resulting far more from
+_equality_ of color than from nature of color. Give me some mud off a
+city crossing, some ocher out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and
+some coal-dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me
+time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust: but though you had the red
+of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for
+the gold, you cannot paint a luminous picture, if you keep the masses of
+those colors unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth.
+
+170. (5.) Next, note the three processes by which gradation and other
+characters are to be obtained:
+
+A. Mixing while the color is wet.
+
+You may be confused by my first telling you to lay on the hues in
+separate patches, and then telling you to mix hues together as you lay
+them on: but the separate masses are to be laid, when colors distinctly
+oppose each other at a given limit; the hues to be mixed, when they
+palpitate one through the other, or fade one into the other. It is
+better to err a little on the distinct side. Thus I told you to paint
+the dark and light sides of the birch trunk separately, though, in
+reality, the two tints change, as the trunk turns away from the light,
+gradually one into the other; and, after being laid separately on, will
+need some farther touching to harmonize them: but they do so in a very
+narrow space, marked distinctly all the way up the trunk, and it is
+easier and safer, therefore, to keep them separate at first. Whereas it
+often happens that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one
+being continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of it:
+blue and green often do so in water; blue and gray, or purple and
+scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and
+truthful results may be obtained by laying one color into the other
+while wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with
+the brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color; only
+observe, never mix in this way two _mixtures_; let the color you lay
+into the other be always a simple, not a compound tint.
+
+171. B. Laying one color over another.
+
+If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and after it is quite dry,
+strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much
+more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly,
+if you lay a dark color first, and strike a little blue or white
+body-color lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful gray than by
+mixing the color and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
+artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not have you
+trust much to them: they are apt to make you think too much of quality
+of color. I should like you to depend on little more than the dead
+colors, simply laid on, only observe always this, that the _less_ color
+you do the work with, the better it will always be:[47] so that if you
+had laid a red color, and you want a purple one above, do not mix the
+purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower the red,
+but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it lightly over
+the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus produce the
+required purple; and if you want a green hue over a blue one, do not lay
+a quantity of green on the blue, but a _little_ yellow, and so on,
+always bringing the under color into service as far as you possibly can.
+If, however, the color beneath is wholly opposed to the one you have to
+lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over scarlet, you must
+either remove the required parts of the under color daintily first with
+your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white over it massively,
+and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white with the upper color.
+This is better, in general, than laying the upper color itself so thick
+as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it be a transparent color,
+you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike warm boughs and leaves of
+trees over blue sky, and they are too intricate to have their places
+left for them in laying the blue, it is better to lay them first in
+solid white, and then glaze with sienna and ocher, than to mix the
+sienna and white; though, of course, the process is longer and more
+troublesome. Nevertheless, if the forms of touches required are very
+delicate, the after glazing is impossible. You must then mix the warm
+color thick at once, and so use it: and this is often necessary for
+delicate grasses, and such other fine threads of light in foreground
+work.
+
+172. C. Breaking one color in small points through or over another.
+
+This is the most important of all processes in good modern[48] oil and
+water-color painting, but you need not hope to attain very great skill
+in it. To do it well is very laborious, and requires such skill and
+delicacy of hand as can only be acquired by unceasing practice. But you
+will find advantage in noting the following points:
+
+173. (_a._) In distant effects of rich subject, wood, or rippled water,
+or broken clouds, much may be done by touches or crumbling dashes of
+rather dry color, with other colors afterwards put cunningly into the
+interstices. The more you practice this, when the subject evidently
+calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of
+color. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of
+separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of color
+in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up
+minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the color you fill
+them with to show brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point
+of it, with a little white left beside or round it in the interstice,
+than to put a pale tint of the color over the whole interstice. Yellow
+or orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show
+brightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.
+
+174. (_b._) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed portions of
+another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost color in
+rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under
+one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons: the first, that the
+play of the two colors together is pleasant to the eye; the second, that
+much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the upper
+dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken
+crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose; in clouds they
+may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the
+cloud masses; and in water, the minor waves. All noble effects of dark
+atmosphere are got in good water-color drawing by these two expedients,
+interlacing the colors, or retouching the lower one with fine darker
+drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is
+barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for passages
+of delicate atmospheric light.
+
+175. (_c._) When you have time, practice the production of mixed tints
+by interlaced touches of the pure colors out of which they are formed,
+and use the process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get
+rich and luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old
+Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent
+memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower
+completely, but laying the ground color of one petal, and painting the
+spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of
+lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their
+position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds
+besides those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of the
+spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like; and
+work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute
+grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise you will never get their
+richness or bloom. You will be surprised to find as you do this, first,
+the universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon;
+secondly, that Nature is just as economical of _her_ fine colors as I
+have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way she paints,
+that her colors cost her something enormous; she will only give you a
+single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light; but down in
+the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the
+showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look
+close, only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the world
+at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the center of it.
+And so with all her colors. Sometimes I have really thought her
+miserliness intolerable: in a gentian, for instance, the way she
+economizes her ultramarine down in the bell is a little too bad.[49]
+
+176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for the sake
+of students, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments;
+but if you mean to be a colorist, you must lay a tax on them yourself
+when you begin to use true color; that is to say, you must use them
+little, and make of them much. There is no better test of your color
+tones being good, than your having made the white in your picture
+precious, and the black conspicuous.
+
+177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering
+or brilliant: it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of black clouds,
+and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew; but when white is well managed,
+it ought to be strangely delicious,--tender as well as bright,--like
+inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to
+seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space
+of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the
+colors. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint,
+by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need
+it, and by keeping the white itself subdued by gray, except at a few
+points of chief luster.
+
+178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a
+point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is
+too heavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some
+_color_,--never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently
+and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among
+them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points
+indicative of intense shade in the very center of masses of shadow.
+Shadows of absolutely negative gray, however, may be beautifully used
+with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued
+strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the
+spectator should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and
+enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold color and the
+white which it relieves. Of all the great colorists Velasquez is the
+greatest master of the black chords. His black is more precious than
+most other people's crimson.
+
+179. It is not, however, only white and black which you must make
+valuable; you must give rare worth to every color you use; but the white
+and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the
+other colors should be continually passing one into the other, being all
+evidently companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and
+neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You may
+melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue, and your blue into
+green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should,
+however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and
+this especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work,
+and giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine coloring,
+like fine drawing, is delicate; and so delicate that if, at last, you
+_see_ the color you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You
+ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone, by touches of color
+which individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom of
+any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom
+hurts it.
+
+180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are _odd_ colors.
+You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work ten minutes before you
+know what to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you feel that
+it is red; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it; presently
+afterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will
+always find your color too warm or too cold--no color in the box will
+seem to have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it
+were laid at a single touch with a single color.
+
+181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general, if you cannot
+choose and harmonize them by instinct, you will never do it at all. If
+you need examples of utterly harsh and horrible color, you may find
+plenty given in treatises upon coloring, to illustrate the laws of
+harmony; and if you want to color beautifully, color as best pleases
+yourself at _quiet times_, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as if it
+were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the color may
+be pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful. Look much at the
+morning and evening sky, and much at simple flowers--dog-roses,
+wood-hyacinths, violets, poppies, thistles, heather, and such like,--as
+Nature arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever any scientific
+person tells you that two colors are "discordant," make a note of the
+two colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have actually
+heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colors
+which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be
+felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!--a peacock's
+neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green
+lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds
+at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good eye for
+colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and
+green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral
+gray, and the like; and how she strikes these color-concords for general
+tones, and then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and
+you will gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and
+beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you enjoy them,
+depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at
+least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If
+color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it,
+you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color,
+whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.
+
+182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend much on your
+state of health and right balance of mind; when you are fatigued or ill
+you will not see colors well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not
+choose them well: thus, though not infallibly a test of character in
+individuals, color power is a great sign of mental health in nations;
+when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring always
+gets dull.[50] You must also take great care not to be misled by
+affected talk about colors from people who have not the gift of it:
+numbers are eager and voluble about it who probably never in all their
+lives received one genuine color-sensation. The modern religionists of
+the school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and
+chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than
+strawberries and plums.
+
+183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea that color can help
+or display _form_; color[51] always disguises form, and is meant to do
+so.
+
+184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm
+colors" (reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold
+colors" (blue and gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this
+from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so
+great as that of the gold and orange in twilight sky. Colors, as such,
+are ABSOLUTELY inexpressive respecting distance. It is their quality (as
+depth, delicacy, etc.) which expresses distance, not their tint. A blue
+bandbox set on the same shelf with a yellow one will not look an inch
+farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always
+appear to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. It is
+quite true that in certain objects, blue is a _sign_ of distance; but
+that is not because blue is a retiring color, but because the mist in
+the air is blue, and therefore any warm color which has not strength of
+light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue: but blue
+is no more, on this account, a "retiring color," than brown is a
+retiring color, because, when stones are seen through brown water, the
+deeper they lie the browner they look; or than yellow is a retiring
+color, because, when objects are seen through a London fog, the farther
+off they are the yellower they look. Neither blue, nor yellow, nor red,
+can have, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or
+distance: they express them only under the peculiar circumstances which
+render them at the moment, or in that place, _signs_ of nearness or
+distance. Thus, vivid orange in an orange is a sign of nearness, for if
+you put the orange a great way off, its color will not look so bright;
+but vivid orange in sky is a sign of distance, because you cannot get
+the color of orange in a cloud near you. So purple in a violet or a
+hyacinth is a sign of nearness, because the closer you look at them the
+more purple you see. But purple in a mountain is a sign of distance,
+because a mountain close to you is not purple, but green or gray. It
+may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale color will more
+or less express distance, and a powerful or dark color nearness; but
+even this is not always so. Heathery hills will usually give a pale and
+tender purple near, and an intense and dark purple far away; the rose
+color of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at your feet, deep and full
+on the snow in the distance; and the green of a Swiss lake is pale in
+the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak
+six miles from shore. And in any case, when the foreground is in strong
+light, with much water about it, or white surface, casting intense
+reflections, all its colors may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint;
+while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole
+foreground with intense darks of purple, blue green, or ultramarine
+blue. So that, on the whole, it is quite hopeless and absurd to expect
+any help from laws of "aerial perspective." Look for the natural
+effects, and set them down as fully as you can, and as faithfully, and
+_never_ alter a color because it won't look in its right place. Put the
+color strong, if it be strong, though far off; faint, if it be faint,
+though close to you. Why should you suppose that Nature always means you
+to know exactly how far one thing is from another? She certainly intends
+you always to enjoy her coloring, but she does not wish you always to
+measure her space. You would be hard put to it, every time you painted
+the sun setting, if you had to express his 95,000,000 miles of distance
+in "aerial perspective."
+
+185. There is, however, I think, one law about distance, which has some
+claims to be considered a constant one: namely, that dullness and
+heaviness of color are more or less indicative of nearness. All distant
+color is _pure_ color: it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely,
+not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any
+earthy or imperfect color, purify or harmonize it; hence a bad colorist
+is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. I do not of course mean
+that you are to use bad colors in your foreground by way of making it
+come forward; but only that a failure in color, there, will not put it
+out of its place; while a failure in color in the distance will at once
+do away with its remoteness; your dull-colored foreground will still be
+a foreground, though ill-painted; but your ill-painted distance will not
+be merely a dull distance,--it will be no distance at all.
+
+186. I have only one thing more to advise you, namely, never to color
+petulantly or hurriedly. You will not, indeed, be able, if you attend
+properly to your coloring, to get anything like the quantity of form you
+could in a chiaroscuro sketch; nevertheless, if you do not dash or rush
+at your work, nor do it lazily, you may always get enough form to be
+satisfactory. An extra quarter of an hour, distributed in quietness
+over the course of the whole study, may just make the difference between
+a quite intelligible drawing, and a slovenly and obscure one. If you
+determine well beforehand what outline each piece of color is to have,
+and, when it is on the paper, guide it without nervousness, as far as
+you can, into the form required; and then, after it is dry, consider
+thoroughly what touches are needed to complete it, before laying one of
+them on; you will be surprised to find how masterly the work will soon
+look, as compared with a hurried or ill-considered sketch. In no process
+that I know of--least of all in sketching--can time be really gained by
+precipitation. It is gained only by caution; and gained in all sorts of
+ways; for not only truth of form, but force of light, is always added by
+an intelligent and shapely laying of the shadow colors. You may often
+make a simple flat tint, rightly gradated and edged, express a
+complicated piece of subject without a single retouch. The two Swiss
+cottages, for instance, with their balconies, and glittering windows,
+and general character of shingly eaves, are expressed in Fig. 30 with
+one tint of gray, and a few dispersed spots and lines of it; all of
+which you ought to be able to lay on without more than thrice dipping
+your brush, and without a single touch after the tint is dry.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
+
+187. Here, then, for I cannot without colored illustrations tell you
+more, I must leave you to follow out the subject for yourself, with
+such help as you may receive from the water-color drawings accessible to
+you; or from any of the little treatises on their art which have been
+published lately by our water-color painters.[52] But do not trust much
+to works of this kind. You may get valuable hints from them as to
+mixture of colors; and here and there you will find a useful artifice or
+process explained; but nearly all such books are written only to help
+idle amateurs to a meretricious skill, and they are full of precepts and
+principles which may, for the most part, be interpreted by their
+_precise_ negatives, and then acted upon with advantage. Most of them
+praise boldness, when the only safe attendant spirit of a beginner is
+caution;--advise velocity, when the first condition of success is
+deliberation;--and plead for generalization, when all the foundations of
+power must be laid in knowledge of speciality.
+
+      *       *       *       *       *
+
+188. And now, in the last place, I have a few things to tell you
+respecting that dangerous nobleness of consummate art,--COMPOSITION. For
+though it is quite unnecessary for you yet awhile to attempt it, and it
+_may_ be inexpedient for you to attempt it at all, you ought to know
+what it means, and to look for and enjoy it in the art of others.
+
+Composition means, literally and simply, putting several things
+together, so as to make _one_ thing out of them; the nature and goodness
+of which they all have a share in producing. Thus a musician composes an
+air, by putting notes together in certain relations; a poet composes a
+poem, by putting thoughts and words in pleasant order; and a painter a
+picture, by putting thoughts, forms, and colors in pleasant order.
+
+In all these cases, observe, an intended unity must be the result of
+composition. A pavior cannot be said to compose the heap of stones which
+he empties from his cart, nor the sower the handful of seed which he
+scatters from his hand. It is the essence of composition that
+everything should be in a determined place, perform an intended part,
+and act, in that part, advantageously for everything that is connected
+with it.
+
+189. Composition, understood in this pure sense, is the type, in the
+arts of mankind, of the Providential government of the world.[53] It is
+an exhibition, in the order given to notes, or colors, or forms, of the
+advantage of perfect fellowship, discipline, and contentment. In a
+well-composed air, no note, however short or low, can be spared, but the
+least is as necessary as the greatest: no note, however prolonged, is
+tedious; but the others prepare for, and are benefited by, its duration:
+no note, however high, is tyrannous; the others prepare for, and are
+benefited by, its exaltation: no note, however low, is overpowered; the
+others prepare for, and sympathize with, its humility: and the result
+is, that each and every note has a value in the position assigned to it,
+which, by itself, it never possessed, and of which, by separation from
+the others, it would instantly be deprived.
+
+190. Similarly, in a good poem, each word and thought enhances the value
+of those which precede and follow it; and every syllable has a
+loveliness which depends not so much on its abstract sound as on its
+position. Look at the same word in a dictionary, and you will hardly
+recognize it.
+
+Much more in a great picture; every line and color is so arranged as to
+advantage the rest. None are inessential, however slight; and none are
+independent, however forcible. It is not enough that they truly
+represent natural objects; but they must fit into certain places, and
+gather into certain harmonious groups: so that, for instance, the red
+chimney of a cottage is not merely set in its place as a chimney, but
+that it may affect, in a certain way pleasurable to the eye, the pieces
+of green or blue in other parts of the picture; and we ought to see that
+the work is masterly, merely by the positions and quantities of these
+patches of green, red, and blue, even at a distance which renders it
+perfectly impossible to determine what the colors represent: or to see
+whether the red is a chimney, or an old woman's cloak; and whether the
+blue is smoke, sky, or water.
+
+191. It seems to be appointed, in order to remind us, in all we do, of
+the great laws of Divine government and human polity, that composition
+in the arts should strongly affect every order of mind, however
+unlearned or thoughtless. Hence the popular delight in rhythm and meter,
+and in simple musical melodies. But it is also appointed that _power_ of
+composition in the fine arts should be an exclusive attribute of great
+intellect. All men can more or less copy what they see, and, more or
+less, remember it: powers of reflection and investigation are also
+common to us all, so that the decision of inferiority in these rests
+only on questions of _degree_. A. has a better memory than B., and C.
+reflects more profoundly than D. But the gift of composition is not
+given _at all_ to more than one man in a thousand; in its highest range,
+it does not occur above three or four times in a century.
+
+192. It follows, from these general truths, that it is impossible to
+give rules which will enable you to compose. You might much more easily
+receive rules to enable you to be witty. If it were possible to be witty
+by rule, wit would cease to be either admirable or amusing: if it were
+possible to compose melody by rule, Mozart and Cimarosa need not have
+been born: if it were possible to compose pictures by rule, Titian and
+Veronese would be ordinary men. The essence of composition lies
+precisely in the fact of its being unteachable, in its being the
+operation of an individual mind of range and power exalted above others.
+
+But though no one can _invent_ by rule, there are some simple laws of
+arrangement which it is well for you to know, because, though they will
+not enable you to produce a good picture, they will often assist you to
+set forth what goodness may be in your work in a more telling way than
+you could have done otherwise; and by tracing them in the work of good
+composers, you may better understand the grasp of their imagination,
+and the power it possesses over their materials. I shall briefly state
+the chief of these laws.
+
+
+1. THE LAW OF PRINCIPALITY.
+
+193. The great object of composition being always to secure unity; that
+is, to make out of many things one whole; the first mode in which this
+can be effected is, by determining that _one_ feature shall be more
+important than all the rest, and that the others shall group with it in
+subordinate positions.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
+
+This is the simplest law of ordinary ornamentation. Thus the group of
+two leaves, _a_, Fig. 31, is unsatisfactory, because it has no leading
+leaf; but that at _b_ _is_ prettier, because it has a head or master
+leaf; and _c_ more satisfactory still, because the subordination of the
+other members to this head leaf is made more manifest by their gradual
+loss of size as they fall back from it. Hence part of the pleasure we
+have in the Greek honeysuckle ornament, and such others.
+
+194. Thus, also, good pictures have always one light larger and brighter
+than the other lights, or one figure more prominent than the other
+figures, or one mass of color dominant over all the other masses; and in
+general you will find it much benefit your sketch if you manage that
+there shall be one light on the cottage wall, or one blue cloud in the
+sky, which may attract the eye as leading light, or leading gloom, above
+all others. But the observance of the rule is often so cunningly
+concealed by the great composers, that its force is hardly at first
+traceable; and you will generally find they are vulgar pictures in which
+the law is strikingly manifest.
+
+195. This may be simply illustrated by musical melody: for instance, in
+such phrases as this--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+one note (here the upper G) rules the whole passage, and has the full
+energy of it concentrated in itself. Such passages, corresponding to
+completely subordinated compositions in painting, are apt to be
+wearisome if often repeated. But, in such a phrase as this--
+
+[Illustration]
+
+it is very difficult to say which is the principal note. The A in the
+last bar is slightly dominant, but there is a very equal current of
+power running through the whole; and such passages rarely weary. And
+this principle holds through vast scales of arrangement; so that in the
+grandest compositions, such as Paul Veronese's Marriage in Cana, or
+Raphaels Disputa, it is not easy to fix at once on the principal figure;
+and very commonly the figure which is really chief does not catch the
+eye at first, but is gradually felt to be more and more conspicuous as
+we gaze. Thus in Titian's grand composition of the Cornaro Family, the
+figure meant to be principal is a youth of fifteen or sixteen, whose
+portrait it was evidently the painter's object to make as interesting as
+possible. But a grand Madonna, and a St. George with a drifting banner,
+and many figures more, occupy the center of the picture, and first
+catch the eye; little by little we are led away from them to a gleam of
+pearly light in the lower corner, and find that, from the head which it
+shines upon, we can turn our eyes no more.
+
+196. As, in every good picture, nearly all laws of design are more or
+less exemplified, it will, on the whole, be an easier way of explaining
+them to analyze one composition thoroughly, than to give instances from
+various works. I shall therefore take one of Turner's simplest; which
+will allow us, so to speak, easily to decompose it, and illustrate each
+law by it as we proceed.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 32.]
+
+Fig. 32 is a rude sketch of the arrangement of the whole subject; the
+old bridge over the Moselle at Coblentz, the town of Coblentz on the
+right, Ehrenbreitstein on the left. The leading or master feature is, of
+course, the tower on the bridge. It is kept from being _too_ principal
+by an important group on each side of it; the boats, on the right, and
+Ehrenbreitstein beyond. The boats are large in mass, and more forcible
+in color, but they are broken into small divisions, while the tower is
+simple, and therefore it still leads. Ehrenbreitstein is noble in its
+mass, but so reduced by aerial perspective of color that it cannot
+contend with the tower, which therefore holds the eye, and becomes the
+key of the picture. We shall see presently how the very objects which
+seem at first to contend with it for the mastery are made, occultly, to
+increase its preeminence.
+
+
+2. THE LAW OF REPETITION.
+
+197. Another important means of expressing unity is to mark some kind of
+sympathy among the different objects, and perhaps the pleasantest,
+because most surprising, kind of sympathy, is when one group imitates or
+repeats another; not in the way of balance or symmetry, but
+subordinately, like a far-away and broken echo of it. Prout has insisted
+much on this law in all his writings on composition; and I think it is
+even more authoritatively present in the minds of most great composers
+than the law of principality.[54] It is quite curious to see the pains
+that Turner sometimes takes to echo an important passage of color; in
+the Pembroke Castle for instance, there are two fishing-boats, one with
+a red, and another with a white sail. In a line with them, on the beach,
+are two fish in precisely the same relative positions; one red and one
+white. It is observable that he uses the artifice chiefly in pictures
+where he wishes to obtain an expression of repose: in my notice of the
+plate of Scarborough, in the series of the Harbors of England, I have
+already had occasion to dwell on this point; and I extract in the
+note[55] one or two sentences which explain the principle. In the
+composition I have chosen for our illustration, this reduplication is
+employed to a singular extent. The tower, or leading feature, is first
+repeated by the low echo of it to the left; put your finger over this
+lower tower, and see how the picture is spoiled. Then the spires of
+Coblentz are all arranged in couples (how they are arranged in reality
+does not matter; when we are composing a great picture, we must play the
+towers about till they come right, as fearlessly as if they were
+chessmen instead of cathedrals). The dual arrangement of these towers
+would have been too easily seen, were it not for the little one which
+pretends to make a triad of the last group on the right, but is so faint
+as hardly to be discernible: it just takes off the attention from the
+artifice, helped in doing so by the mast at the head of the boat, which,
+however, has instantly its own duplicate put at the stern.[56] Then
+there is the large boat near, and its echo beyond it. That echo is
+divided into two again, and each of those two smaller boats has two
+figures in it; while two figures are also sitting together on the great
+rudder that lies half in the water, and half aground. Then, finally, the
+great mass of Ehrenbreitstein, which appears at first to have no
+answering form, has almost its _facsimile_ in the bank on which the girl
+is sitting; this bank is as absolutely essential to the completion of
+the picture as any object in the whole series. All this is done to
+deepen the effect of repose.
+
+198. Symmetry, or the balance of parts or masses in nearly equal
+opposition, is one of the conditions of treatment under the law of
+Repetition. For the opposition, in a symmetrical object, is of like
+things reflecting each other: it is not the balance of contrary natures
+(like that of day and night), but of like natures or like forms; one
+side of a leaf being set like the reflection of the other in water.
+
+Symmetry in Nature is, however, never formal nor accurate. She takes the
+greatest care to secure some difference between the corresponding things
+or parts of things; and an approximation to accurate symmetry is only
+permitted in animals, because their motions secure perpetual difference
+between the balancing parts. Stand before a mirror; hold your arms in
+precisely the same position at each side, your head upright, your body
+straight; divide your hair exactly in the middle and get it as nearly as
+you can into exactly the same shape over each ear; and you will see the
+effect of accurate symmetry: you will see, no less, how all grace and
+power in the human form result from the interference of motion and life
+with symmetry, and from the reconciliation of its balance with its
+changefulness. Your position, as seen in the mirror, is the highest type
+of symmetry as understood by modern architects.
+
+199. In many sacred compositions, living symmetry, the balance of
+harmonious opposites, is one of the profoundest sources of their power:
+almost any works of the early painters, Angelico, Perugino, Giotto,
+etc., will furnish you with notable instances of it. The Madonna of
+Perugino in the National Gallery, with the angel Michael on one side and
+Raphael on the other, is as beautiful an example as you can have.
+
+In landscape, the principle of balance is more or less carried out, in
+proportion to the wish of the painter to express disciplined calmness.
+In bad compositions, as in bad architecture, it is formal, a tree on one
+side answering a tree on the other; but in good compositions, as in
+graceful statues, it is always easy and sometimes hardly traceable. In
+the Coblentz, however, you cannot have much difficulty in seeing how the
+boats on one side of the tower and the figures on the other are set in
+nearly equal balance; the tower, as a central mass, uniting both.
+
+
+3. THE LAW OF CONTINUITY.
+
+200. Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity, is by
+giving some orderly succession to a number of objects more or less
+similar. And this succession is most interesting when it is connected
+with some gradual change in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus
+the succession of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting
+when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more obscure in
+distance: so the succession of mountain promontories one behind another,
+on the flanks of a valley; so the succession of clouds, fading farther
+and farther towards the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of
+different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed
+order. If there be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects,
+there is no continuity; there is only repetition--monotony. It is the
+change in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually free,
+and able to escape, if they like, from the law that rules them, and yet
+submitting to it.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
+
+201. I will leave our chosen illustrative composition for a moment to
+take up another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of
+Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset; so
+delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for
+me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a wood-cut; but the
+rough sketch, Fig. 33, is enough to give an idea of its arrangement.
+The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of
+repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud
+and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun,
+meeting towards that point in the horizon where he has set; and the
+tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy
+haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just
+folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled
+silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap their hands,
+and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed
+arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting. But all
+this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old
+pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves,
+and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts
+escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.
+
+202. I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of
+this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our general
+illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the retiring
+arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint the subject at all;
+and it was this same principle which led him always to seize on subjects
+including long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially,
+observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather
+than at the center. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general
+laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I
+may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the
+study of composition.
+
+203. All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to
+lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels
+deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to
+sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to
+play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and childlike, and
+another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves,
+and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers
+in this way are just like wise men, who keep one side of their life for
+play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and
+transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the
+other side when they set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers
+are just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good
+rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships
+can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping irregularly under their
+banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row
+over without being twisted against the rocks; and pools like wells,
+which no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the
+bottom; but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of
+sides. Now the natural way in which a village stone-mason therefore
+throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great
+door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens
+through; a great arch for the great current, to give it room in flood
+time, and little arches for the little currents along the shallow shore.
+This, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great
+current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the
+smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two
+arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the
+same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that,
+where the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many
+and low: as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build
+his piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he
+comes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that,
+he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little
+one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they
+must be higher, or they will not stand; so the roadway must rise as the
+arches widen. And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its
+highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches
+running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank at the
+river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the
+side of the small ones: and the bend of the river assuredly concave
+towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or,
+if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the
+steep end of the bridge.
+
+Now this kind of bridge, sympathizing, as it does, with the spirit of
+the river, and marking the nature of the thing it has to deal with and
+conquer, is the ideal of a bridge; and all endeavors to do the thing in
+a grand engineer's manner, with a level roadway and equal arches, are
+barbarous; not only because all monotonous forms are ugly in themselves,
+but because the mind perceives at once that there has been cost
+uselessly thrown away for the sake of formality.[57]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 34.]
+
+204. Well, to return to our continuity. We see that the Turnerian bridge
+in Fig. 32 is of the absolutely perfect type, and is still farther
+interesting by having its main arch crowned by a watch-tower. But as I
+want you to note especially what perhaps was not the case in the real
+bridge, but is entirely Turner's doing, you will find that though the
+arches diminish gradually, not one is _regularly_ diminished--they are
+all of different shapes and sizes: you cannot see this clearly in Fig.
+32, but in the larger diagram, Fig. 34, over leaf, you will with ease.
+This is indeed also part of the ideal of a bridge, because the lateral
+currents near the shore are of course irregular in size, and a simple
+builder would naturally vary his arches accordingly; and also, if the
+bottom was rocky, build his piers where the rocks came. But it is not as
+a part of bridge ideal, but as a necessity of all noble composition,
+that this irregularity is introduced by Turner. It at once raises the
+object thus treated from the lower or vulgar unity of rigid law to the
+greater unity of clouds, and waves, and trees, and human souls, each
+different, each obedient, and each in harmonious service.
+
+
+4. THE LAW OF CURVATURE.
+
+205. There is, however, another point to be noticed in this bridge of
+Turner's. Not only does it slope away unequally at its sides, but it
+slopes in a gradual though very subtle curve. And if you substitute a
+straight line for this curve (drawing one with a rule from the base of
+the tower on each side to the ends of the bridge, in Fig. 34, and
+effacing the curve), you will instantly see that the design has suffered
+grievously. You may ascertain, by experiment, that all beautiful objects
+whatsoever are thus terminated by delicately curved lines, except where
+the straight line is indispensable to their use or stability; and that
+when a complete system of straight lines, throughout the form, is
+necessary to that stability, as in crystals, the beauty, if any exists,
+is in color and transparency, not in form. Cut out the shape of any
+crystal you like, in white wax or wood, and put it beside a white lily,
+and you will feel the force of the curvature in its purity, irrespective
+of added color, or other interfering elements of beauty.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 35.]
+
+206. Well, as curves are more beautiful than straight lines, it is
+necessary to a good composition that its continuities of object, mass,
+or color should be, if possible, in curves, rather than straight lines
+or angular ones. Perhaps one of the simplest and prettiest examples of a
+graceful continuity of this kind is in the line traced at any moment by
+the corks of a net as it is being drawn: nearly every person is more or
+less attracted by the beauty of the dotted line. Now, it is almost
+always possible, not only to secure such a continuity in the arrangement
+or boundaries of objects which, like these bridge arches or the corks of
+the net, are actually connected with each other, but--and this is a
+still more noble and interesting kind of continuity--among features
+which appear at first entirely separate. Thus the towers of
+Ehrenbreitstein, on the left, in Fig. 32, appear at first independent of
+each other; but when I give their profile, on a larger scale, Fig. 35,
+the reader may easily perceive that there is a subtle cadence and
+harmony among them. The reason of this is, that they are all bounded by
+one grand curve, traced by the dotted line; out of the seven towers,
+four precisely touch this curve, the others only falling hack from it
+here and there to keep the eye from discovering it too easily.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 36.]
+
+207. And it is not only always possible to obtain continuities of this
+kind: it is, in drawing large forests or mountain forms, essential to
+truth. The towers of Ehrenbreitstein might or might not in reality fall
+into such a curve, but assuredly the basalt rock on which they stand
+did; for all mountain forms not cloven into absolute precipice, nor
+covered by straight slopes of shales, are more or less governed by these
+great curves, it being one of the aims of Nature in all her work to
+produce them. The reader must already know this, if he has been able to
+sketch at all among mountains; if not, let him merely draw for himself,
+carefully, the outlines of any low hills accessible to him, where they
+are tolerably steep, or of the woods which grow on them. The steeper
+shore of the Thames at Maidenhead, or any of the downs at Brighton or
+Dover, or, even nearer, about Croydon (as Addington Hills), is easily
+accessible to a Londoner; and he will soon find not only how constant,
+but how graceful the curvature is. Graceful curvature is distinguished
+from ungraceful by two characters; first in its moderation, that is to
+say, its close approach to straightness in some part of its course;[58]
+and, secondly, by its variation, that is to say, its never remaining
+equal in degree at different parts of its course.
+
+208. This variation is itself twofold in all good curves.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 37.]
+
+A. There is, first, a steady change through the whole line, from less to
+more curvature, or more to less, so that _no_ part of the line is a
+segment of a circle, or can be drawn by compasses in any way whatever.
+Thus, in Fig. 36, _a_ is a bad curve because it is part of a circle, and
+is therefore monotonous throughout; but _b_ is a good curve, because it
+continually changes its direction as it proceeds.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 38.]
+
+The _first_ difference between good and bad drawing of tree boughs
+consists in observance of this fact. Thus, when I put leaves on the line
+_b_, as in Fig. 37, you can immediately feel the springiness of
+character dependent on the changefulness of the curve. You may put
+leaves on the other line for yourself, but you will find you cannot make
+a right tree spray of it. For _all_ tree boughs, large or small, as well
+as all noble natural lines whatsoever, agree in this character; and it
+is a point of primal necessity that your eye should always seize and
+your hand trace it. Here are two more portions of good curves, with
+leaves put on them at the extremities instead of the flanks, Fig. 38;
+and two showing the arrangement of masses of foliage seen a little
+farther off, Fig. 39, which you may in like manner amuse yourself by
+turning into segments of circles--you will see with what result. I hope
+however you have beside you, by this time, many good studies of tree
+boughs carefully made, in which you may study variations of curvature in
+their most complicated and lovely forms.[59]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 39.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 40.]
+
+209. B. Not only does every good curve vary in general tendency, but it
+is modulated, as it proceeds, by myriads of subordinate curves. Thus the
+outlines of a tree trunk are never as at _a_, Fig. 40, but as at _b_. So
+also in waves, clouds, and all other nobly formed masses. Thus another
+essential difference between good and bad drawing, or good and bad
+sculpture, depends on the quantity and refinement of minor curvatures
+carried, by good work, into the great lines. Strictly speaking, however,
+this is not variation in large curves, but composition of large curves
+out of small ones; it is an increase in the quantity of the beautiful
+element, but not a change in its nature.
+
+
+5. THE LAW OF RADIATION.
+
+210. We have hitherto been concerned only with the binding of our
+various objects into beautiful lines or processions. The next point we
+have to consider is, how we may unite these lines or processions
+themselves, so as to make groups of _them_.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 41.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 42.]
+
+Now, there are two kinds of harmonies of lines. One in which, moving
+more or less side by side, they variously, but evidently with consent,
+retire from or approach each other, intersect or oppose each other;
+currents of melody in music, for different voices, thus approach and
+cross, fall and rise, in harmony; so the waves of the sea, as they
+approach the shore, flow into one another or cross, but with a great
+unity through all; and so various lines of composition often flow
+harmoniously through and across each other in a picture. But the most
+simple and perfect connection of lines is by radiation; that is, by
+their all springing from one point, or closing towards it; and this
+harmony is often, in Nature almost always, united with the other; as the
+boughs of trees, though they intersect and play amongst each other
+irregularly, indicate by their general tendency their origin from one
+root. An essential part of the beauty of all vegetable form is in this
+radiation; it is seen most simply in a single flower or leaf, as in a
+convolvulus bell, or chestnut leaf; but more beautifully in the
+complicated arrangements of the large boughs and sprays. For a leaf is
+only a flat piece of radiation; but the tree throws its branches on all
+sides, and even in every profile view of it, which presents a radiation
+more or less correspondent to that of its leaves, it is more beautiful,
+because varied by the freedom of the separate branches. I believe it has
+been ascertained that, in all trees, the angle at which, in their
+leaves, the lateral ribs are set on their central rib is approximately
+the same at which the branches leave the great stem; and thus each
+section of the tree would present a kind of magnified view of its own
+leaf, were it not for the interfering force of gravity on the masses of
+foliage. This force in proportion to their age, and the lateral
+leverage upon them, bears them downwards at the extremities, so that, as
+before noticed, the lower the bough grows on the stem, the more it
+droops (Fig. 17, p. 67); besides this, nearly all beautiful trees have a
+tendency to divide into two or more principal masses, which give a
+prettier and more complicated symmetry than if one stem ran all the way
+up the center. Fig. 41 may thus be considered the simplest type of tree
+radiation, as opposed to leaf radiation. In this figure, however, all
+secondary ramification is unrepresented, for the sake of simplicity; but
+if we take one half of such a tree, and merely give two secondary
+branches to each main branch (as represented in the general branch
+structure shown at _b_, Fig. 18, p. 68), we shall have the form Fig. 42.
+This I consider the perfect general type of tree structure; and it is
+curiously connected with certain forms of Greek, Byzantine, and Gothic
+ornamentation, into the discussion of which, however, we must not enter
+here. It will be observed, that both in Figs. 41 and 42 all the branches
+so spring from the main stem as very nearly to suggest their united
+radiation from the root R. This is by no means universally the case; but
+if the branches do not bend towards a point in the root, they at least
+converge to some point or other. In the examples in Fig. 43, the
+mathematical center of curvature, _a_, is thus, in one case, on the
+ground, at some distance from the root, and in the other, near the top
+of the tree. Half, only, of each tree is given, for the sake of
+clearness: Fig. 44 gives both sides of another example, in which the
+origins of curvature are below the root. As the positions of such points
+may be varied without end, and as the arrangement of the lines is also
+farther complicated by the fact of the boughs springing for the most
+part in a spiral order round the tree, and at proportionate distances,
+the systems of curvature which regulate the form of vegetation are quite
+infinite. Infinite is a word easily said, and easily written, and people
+do not always mean it when they say it; in this case I _do_ mean it: the
+number of systems is incalculable, and even to furnish anything like a
+representative number of types, I should have to give several hundreds
+of figures such as Fig. 44.[60]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 43.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 44.]
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 45.]
+
+211. Thus far, however, we have only been speaking of the great
+relations of stem and branches. The forms of the branches themselves are
+regulated by still more subtle laws, for they occupy an intermediate
+position between the form of the tree and of the leaf. The leaf has a
+flat ramification; the tree a completely rounded one; the bough is
+neither rounded nor flat, but has a structure exactly balanced between
+the two, in a half-flattened, half-rounded flake, closely resembling in
+shape one of the thick leaves of an artichoke or the flake of a fir
+cone; by combination forming the solid mass of the tree, as the leaves
+compose the artichoke head. I have before pointed out to you the general
+resemblance of these branch flakes to an extended hand; but they may be
+more accurately represented by the ribs of a boat. If you can imagine a
+very broad-headed and flattened boat applied by its keel to the end of a
+main branch,[61] as in Fig. 45, the lines which its ribs will take,
+supposing them outside of its timbers instead of inside, and the general
+contour of it, as seen in different directions, from above and below,
+will give you the closest approximation to the perspectives and
+foreshortenings of a well-grown branch-flake. Fig. 25 above, p. 89, is
+an unharmed and unrestrained shoot of healthy young oak; and, if you
+compare it with Fig. 45, you will understand at once the action of the
+lines of leafage; the boat only failing as a type in that its ribs are
+too nearly parallel to each other at the sides, while the bough sends
+all its ramification well forwards, rounding to the head, that it may
+accomplish its part in the outer form of the whole tree, yet always
+securing the compliance with the great universal law that the branches
+nearest the root bend most back; and, of course, throwing _some_ always
+back as well as forwards; the appearance of reversed action being much
+increased, and rendered more striking and beautiful, by perspective.
+Fig. 25 shows the perspective of such a bough as it is seen from below;
+Fig. 46 gives rudely the look it would have from above.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 46.]
+
+212. You may suppose, if you have not already discovered, what
+subtleties of perspective and light and shade are involved in the
+drawing of these branch-flakes, as you see them in different directions
+and actions; now raised, now depressed: touched on the edges by the
+wind, or lifted up and bent back so as to show all the white under
+surfaces of the leaves shivering in light, as the bottom of a boat rises
+white with spray at the surge-crest; or drooping in quietness towards
+the dew of the grass beneath them in windless mornings, or bowed down
+under oppressive grace of deep-charged snow. Snow time, by the way, is
+one of the best for practice in the placing of tree masses; but you will
+only be able to understand them thoroughly by beginning with a single
+bough and a few leaves placed tolerably even, as in Fig. 38, p. 149.
+First one with three leaves, a central and two lateral ones, as at _a_;
+then with five, as at _b_, and so on; directing your whole attention to
+the expression, both by contour and light and shade, of the boat-like
+arrangements, which, in your earlier studies, will have been a good deal
+confused, partly owing to your inexperience, and partly to the depth of
+shade, or absolute blackness of mass required in those studies.
+
+213. One thing more remains to be noted, and I will let you out of the
+wood. You see that in every generally representative figure I have
+surrounded the radiating branches with a dotted line: such lines do
+indeed terminate every vegetable form; and you see that they are
+themselves beautiful curves, which, according to their flow, and the
+width or narrowness of the spaces they inclose, characterize the species
+of tree or leaf, and express its free or formal action, its grace of
+youth or weight of age. So that, throughout all the freedom of her
+wildest foliage, Nature is resolved on expressing an encompassing limit;
+and marking a unity in the whole tree, caused not only by the rising of
+its branches from a common root, but by their joining in one work, and
+being bound by a common law. And having ascertained this, let us turn
+back for a moment to a point in leaf structure which, I doubt not, you
+must already have observed in your earlier studies, but which it is well
+to state here, as connected with the unity of the branches in the great
+trees. You must have noticed, I should think, that whenever a leaf is
+compound,--that is to say, divided into other leaflets which in any way
+repeat or imitate the form of the whole leaf,--those leaflets are not
+symmetrical, as the whole leaf is, but always smaller on the side
+towards the point of the great leaf, so as to express their
+subordination to it, and show, even when they are pulled off, that they
+are not small independent leaves, but members of one large leaf.
+
+214. Fig. 47, which is a block-plan of a leaf of columbine, without its
+minor divisions on the edges, will illustrate the principle clearly. It
+is composed of a central large mass, A, and two lateral ones, of which
+the one on the right only is lettered, B. Each of these masses is again
+composed of three others, a central and two lateral ones; but observe,
+the minor one, _a_ of A, is balanced equally by its opposite; but the
+minor _b_ 1 of B is larger than its opposite _b_ 2. Again, each of these
+minor masses is divided into three; but while the central mass, A of A,
+is symmetrically divided, the B of B is unsymmetrical, its largest
+side-lobe being lowest. Again, in _b_ 2, the lobe _c_ 1 (its lowest lobe
+in relation to B) is larger than _c_ 2; and so also in _b_ 1. So that
+universally one lobe of a lateral leaf is always larger than the other,
+and the smaller lobe is that which is nearer the central mass; the lower
+leaf, as it were by courtesy, subduing some of its own dignity or power,
+in the immediate presence of the greater or captain leaf, and always
+expressing, therefore, its own subordination and secondary character.
+This law is carried out even in single leaves. As far as I know, the
+upper half, towards the point of the spray, is always the smaller; and a
+slightly different curve, more convex at the springing, is used for the
+lower side, giving an exquisite variety to the form of the whole leaf;
+so that one of the chief elements in the beauty of every subordinate
+leaf throughout the tree is made to depend on its confession of its own
+lowliness and subjection.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 47.]
+
+215. And now, if we bring together in one view the principles we have
+ascertained in trees, we shall find they may be summed under four great
+laws; and that all perfect[62] vegetable form is appointed to express
+these four laws in noble balance of authority.
+
+1. Support from one living root.
+
+2. Radiation, or tendency of force from some one given point, either in
+the root or in some stated connection with it.
+
+3. Liberty of each bough to seek its own livelihood and happiness
+according to its needs, by irregularities of action both in its play and
+its work, either stretching out to get its required nourishment from
+light and rain, by finding some sufficient breathing-place among the
+other branches, or knotting and gathering itself up to get strength for
+any load which its fruitful blossoms may lay upon it, and for any stress
+of its storm-tossed luxuriance of leaves; or playing hither and thither
+as the fitful sunshine may tempt its young shoots, in their undecided
+states of mind about their future life.
+
+4. Imperative requirement of each bough to stop within certain limits,
+expressive of its kindly fellowship and fraternity with the boughs in
+its neighborhood; and to work with them according to its power,
+magnitude, and state of health, to bring out the general perfectness of
+the great curve, and circumferent stateliness of the whole tree.
+
+216. I think I may leave you, unhelped, to work out the moral analogies
+of these laws; you may, perhaps, however, be a little puzzled to see the
+meaning of the second one. It typically expresses that healthy human
+actions should spring radiantly (like rays) from some single heart
+motive; the most beautiful systems of action taking place when this
+motive lies at the root of the whole life, and the action is clearly
+seen to proceed from it; while also many beautiful secondary systems of
+action taking place from motives not so deep or central, but in some
+beautiful subordinate connection with the central or life motive.
+
+The other laws, if you think over them, you will find equally
+significative; and as you draw trees more and more in their various
+states of health and hardship, you will be every day more struck by the
+beauty of the types they present of the truths most essential for
+mankind to know;[63] and you will see what this vegetation of the earth,
+which is necessary to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and
+then as food, and just as necessary to our joy in all places of the
+earth,--what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we
+contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or
+spoken for us, not in frightful black letters nor in dull sentences, but
+in fair green and shadowy shapes of waving words, and blossomed
+brightness of odoriferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintrusive wisdom,
+and playful morality.
+
+217. Well, I am sorry myself to leave the wood, whatever my reader may
+be; but leave it we must, or we shall compose no more pictures to-day.
+
+This law of radiation, then, enforcing unison of action in arising from,
+or proceeding to, some given point, is perhaps, of all principles of
+composition, the most influential in producing the beauty of groups of
+form. Other laws make them forcible or interesting, but this generally
+is chief in rendering them beautiful. In the arrangement of masses in
+pictures, it is constantly obeyed by the great composers; but, like the
+law of principality, with careful concealment of its imperativeness, the
+point to which the lines of main curvature are directed being very
+often far away out of the picture. Sometimes, however, a system of
+curves will be employed definitely to exalt, by their concurrence, the
+value of some leading object, and then the law becomes traceable enough.
+
+218. In the instance before us, the principal object being, as we have
+seen, the tower on the bridge, Turner has determined that his system of
+curvature should have its origin in the top of this tower. The diagram
+Fig. 34, p. 145, compared with Fig. 32, p. 137, will show how this is
+done. One curve joins the two towers, and is continued by the back of
+the figure sitting on the bank into the piece of bent timber. This is a
+limiting curve of great importance, and Turner has drawn a considerable
+part of it with the edge of the timber very carefully, and then led the
+eye up to the sitting girl by some white spots and indications of a
+ledge in the bank; then the passage to the tops of the towers cannot be
+missed.
+
+219. The next curve is begun and drawn carefully for half an inch of its
+course by the rudder; it is then taken up by the basket and the heads of
+the figures, and leads accurately to the tower angle. The gunwales of
+both the boats begin the next two curves, which meet in the same point;
+and all are centralized by the long reflection which continues the
+vertical lines.
+
+220. Subordinated to this first system of curves there is another, begun
+by the small crossing bar of wood inserted in the angle behind the
+rudder; continued by the bottom of the bank on which the figure sits,
+interrupted forcibly beyond it,[64] but taken up again by the water-line
+leading to the bridge foot, and passing on in delicate shadows under the
+arches, not easily shown in so rude a diagram, towards the other
+extremity of the bridge. This is a most important curve, indicating
+that the force and sweep of the river have indeed been in old times
+under the large arches; while the antiquity of the bridge is told us by
+a long tongue of land, either of carted rubbish, or washed down by some
+minor stream, which has interrupted this curve, and is now used as a
+landing-place for the boats, and for embarkation of merchandise, of
+which some bales and bundles are laid in a heap, immediately beneath the
+great tower. A common composer would have put these bales to one side or
+the other, but Turner knows better; he uses them as a foundation for his
+tower, adding to its importance precisely as the sculptured base adorns
+a pillar; and he farther increases the aspect of its height by throwing
+the reflection of it far down in the nearer water. All the great
+composers have this same feeling about sustaining their vertical masses:
+you will constantly find Prout using the artifice most dexterously (see,
+for instance, the figure with the wheelbarrow under the great tower, in
+the sketch of St. Nicholas, at Prague, and the white group of figures
+under the tower in the sketch of Augsburg[65]); and Veronese, Titian,
+and Tintoret continually put their principal figures at bases of
+pillars. Turner found out their secret very early, the most prominent
+instance of his composition on this principle being the drawing of Turin
+from the Superga, in Hakewell's Italy. I chose Fig. 20, already given to
+illustrate foliage drawing, chiefly because, being another instance of
+precisely the same arrangement, it will serve to convince you of its
+being intentional. There, the vertical, formed by the larger tree, is
+continued by the figure of the farmer, and that of one of the smaller
+trees by his stick. The lines of the interior mass of the bushes
+radiate, under the law of radiation, from a point behind the farmer's
+head; but their outline curves are carried on and repeated, under the
+law of continuity, by the curves of the dog and boy--by the way, note
+the remarkable instance in these of the use of darkest lines towards the
+light--all more or less guiding the eye up to the right, in order to
+bring it finally to the Keep of Windsor, which is the central object of
+the picture, as the bridge tower is in the Coblentz. The wall on which
+the boy climbs answers the purpose of contrasting, both in direction and
+character, with these greater curves; thus corresponding as nearly as
+possible to the minor tongue of land in the Coblentz. This, however,
+introduces us to another law, which we must consider separately.
+
+
+6. THE LAW OF CONTRAST.
+
+221. Of course the character of everything is best manifested by
+Contrast. Rest can only be enjoyed after labor; sound to be heard
+clearly, must rise out of silence; light is exhibited by darkness,
+darkness by light; and so on in all things. Now in art every color has
+an opponent color, which, if brought near it, will relieve it more
+completely than any other; so, also, every form and line may be made
+more striking to the eye by an opponent form or line near them; a curved
+line is set off by a straight one, a massy form by a slight one, and so
+on; and in all good work nearly double the value, which any given color
+or form would have uncombined, is given to each by contrast.[66]
+
+In this case again, however, a too manifest use of the artifice
+vulgarizes a picture. Great painters do not commonly, or very visibly,
+admit violent contrast. They introduce it by stealth, and with
+intermediate links of tender change; allowing, indeed, the opposition to
+tell upon the mind as a surprise, but not as a shock.[67]
+
+222. Thus in the rock of Ehrenbreitstein, Fig. 35, the main current of
+the lines being downwards, in a convex swell, they are suddenly stopped
+at the lowest tower by a counter series of beds, directed nearly
+straight across them. This adverse force sets off and relieves the great
+curvature, but it is reconciled to it by a series of radiating lines
+below, which at first sympathize with the oblique bar, then gradually
+get steeper, till they meet and join in the fall of the great curve. No
+passage, however intentionally monotonous, is ever introduced by a good
+artist without _some_ slight counter current of this kind; so much,
+indeed, do the great composers feel the necessity of it, that they will
+even do things purposely ill or unsatisfactorily, in order to give
+greater value to their well-doing in other places. In a skillful poet's
+versification the so-called bad or inferior lines are not inferior
+because he could not do them better, but because he feels that if all
+were equally weighty, there would be no real sense of weight anywhere;
+if all were equally melodious, the melody itself would be fatiguing; and
+he purposely introduces the laboring or discordant verse, that the full
+ring may be felt in his main sentence, and the finished sweetness in his
+chosen rhythm.[68] And continually in painting, inferior artists destroy
+their work by giving too much of all that they think is good, while the
+great painter gives just enough to be enjoyed, and passes to an opposite
+kind of enjoyment, or to an inferior state of enjoyment: he gives a
+passage of rich, involved, exquisitely wrought color, then passes away
+into slight, and pale, and simple color; he paints for a minute or two
+with intense decision, then suddenly becomes, as the spectator thinks,
+slovenly; but he is not slovenly: you could not have _taken_ any more
+decision from him just then; you have had as much as is good for you:
+he paints over a great space of his picture forms of the most rounded
+and melting tenderness, and suddenly, as you think by a freak, gives you
+a bit as jagged and sharp as a leafless blackthorn. Perhaps the most
+exquisite piece of subtle contrast in the world of painting is the arrow
+point, laid sharp against the white side and among the flowing hair of
+Correggio's Antiope. It is quite singular how very little contrast will
+sometimes serve to make an entire group of forms interesting which would
+otherwise have been valueless. There is a good deal of picturesque
+material, for instance, in this top of an old tower, Fig. 48, tiles and
+stones and sloping roof not disagreeably mingled; but all would have
+been unsatisfactory if there had not happened to be that iron ring on
+the inner wall, which by its vigorous black _circular_ line precisely
+opposes all the square and angular characters of the battlements and
+roof. Draw the tower without the ring, and see what a difference it will
+make.
+
+[Illustration: FIG. 48.]
+
+223. One of the most important applications of the law of contrast is in
+association with the law of continuity, causing an unexpected but gentle
+break in a continuous series. This artifice is perpetual in music, and
+perpetual also in good illumination; the way in which little surprises
+of change are prepared in any current borders, or chains of ornamental
+design, being one of the most subtle characteristics of the work of the
+good periods. We take, for instance, a bar of ornament between two
+written columns of an early fourteenth century MS., and at the first
+glance we suppose it to be quite monotonous all the way up, composed of
+a winding tendril, with alternately a blue leaf and a scarlet bud.
+Presently, however, we see that, in order to observe the law of
+principality, there is one large scarlet leaf instead of a bud, nearly
+half-way up, which forms a center to the whole rod; and when we begin to
+examine the order of the leaves, we find it varied carefully. Let A
+stand for scarlet bud, _b_ for blue leaf, _c_ for two blue leaves on one
+stalk, _s_ for a stalk without a leaf, and R, for the large red leaf.
+Then, counting from the ground, the order begins as follows:
+
+_b_, _b_, A; _b_, _s_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, A; and we think we
+shall have two _b_'s and an A all the way, when suddenly it becomes _b_,
+A; _b_, R; _b_, A; _b_, A; _b_, A; and we think we are going to have
+_b_, A continued; but no: here it becomes _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, A;
+_b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _c_, _s_; _b_, _s_; _b_, _s_; and we think we are
+surely going to have _b_, _s_ continued, but behold it runs away to the
+end with a quick _b_, _b_, A; _b_, _b_, _b_, _b_![69] Very often,
+however, the designer is satisfied with _one_ surprise, but I never saw
+a good illuminated border without one at least; and no series of any
+kind was ever introduced by a great composer in a painting without a
+snap somewhere. There is a pretty one in Turner's drawing of Rome with
+the large balustrade for a foreground in the Hakewell's Italy series:
+the single baluster struck out of the line, and showing the street below
+through the gap, simply makes the whole composition right, when
+otherwise it would have been stiff and absurd.
+
+224. If you look back to Fig. 48 you will see, in the arrangement of the
+battlements, a simple instance of the use of such variation. The whole
+top of the tower, though actually three sides of a square, strikes the
+eye as a continuous series of five masses. The first two, on the left,
+somewhat square and blank, then the next two higher and richer, the
+tiles being seen on their slopes. Both these groups being couples, there
+is enough monotony in the series to make a change pleasant; and the last
+battlement, therefore, is a little higher than the first two,--a little
+lower than the second two,--and different in shape from either. Hide it
+with your finger, and see how ugly and formal the other four battlements
+look.
+
+225. There are in this figure several other simple illustrations of the
+laws we have been tracing. Thus the whole shape of the walls' mass being
+square, it is well, still for the sake of contrast, to oppose it not
+only by the element of curvature, in the ring, and lines of the roof
+below, but by that of sharpness; hence the pleasure which the eye takes
+in the projecting point of the roof. Also, because the walls are thick
+and sturdy, it is well to contrast their strength with weakness;
+therefore we enjoy the evident decrepitude of this roof as it sinks
+between them. The whole mass being nearly white, we want a contrasting
+shadow somewhere; and get it, under our piece of decrepitude. This
+shade, with the tiles of the wall below, forms another pointed mass,
+necessary to the first by the law of repetition. Hide this inferior
+angle with your finger, and see how ugly the other looks. A sense of the
+law of symmetry, though you might hardly suppose it, has some share in
+the feeling with which you look at the battlements; there is a certain
+pleasure in the opposed slopes of their top, on one side down to the
+left, on the other to the right. Still less would you think the law of
+radiation had anything to do with the matter: but if you take the
+extreme point of the black shadow on the left for a center, and follow
+first the low curve of the eaves of the wall, it will lead you, if you
+continue it, to the point of the tower cornice; follow the second curve,
+the top of the tiles of the wall, and it will strike the top of the
+right-hand battlement; then draw a curve from the highest point of the
+angled battlement on the left, through the points of the roof and its
+dark echo; and you will see how the whole top of the tower radiates from
+this lowest dark point. There are other curvatures crossing these main
+ones, to keep them from being too conspicuous. Follow the curve of the
+upper roof, it will take you to the top of the highest battlement; and
+the stones indicated at the right-hand side of the tower are more
+extended at the bottom, in order to get some less direct expression of
+sympathy, such as irregular stones may be capable of, with the general
+flow of the curves from left to right.
+
+226. You may not readily believe, at first, that all these laws are
+indeed involved in so trifling a piece of composition. But, as you study
+longer, you will discover that these laws, and many more, are obeyed by
+the powerful composers in every _touch_: that literally, there is never
+a dash of their pencil which is not carrying out appointed purposes of
+this kind in twenty various ways at once; and that there is as much
+difference, in way of intention and authority, between one of the great
+composers ruling his colors, and a common painter confused by them, as
+there is between a general directing the march of an army, and an old
+lady carried off her feet by a mob.
+
+
+7. THE LAW OF INTERCHANGE.
+
+227. Closely connected with the law of contrast is a law which enforces
+the unity of opposite things, by giving to each a portion of the
+character of the other. If, for instance, you divide a shield into two
+masses of color, all the way down--suppose blue and white, and put a
+bar, or figure of an animal, partly on one division, partly on the
+other, you will find it pleasant to the eye if you make the part of the
+animal blue which comes upon the white half, and white which comes upon
+the blue half. This is done in heraldry, partly for the sake of perfect
+intelligibility, but yet more for the sake of delight in interchange of
+color, since, in all ornamentation whatever, the practice is continual,
+in the ages of good design.
+
+228. Sometimes this alternation is merely a reversal of contrasts; as
+that, after red has been for some time on one side, and blue on the
+other, red shall pass to blue's side and blue to red's. This kind of
+alternation takes place simply in four-quartered shields; in more subtle
+pieces of treatment, a little bit only of each color is carried into the
+other, and they are as it were dovetailed together. One of the most
+curious facts which will impress itself upon you, when you have drawn
+some time carefully from Nature in light and shade, is the appearance of
+intentional artifice with which contrasts of this alternate kind are
+produced by her; the artistry with which she will darken a tree trunk as
+long as it comes against light sky, and throw sunlight on it precisely
+at the spot where it comes against a dark hill, and similarly treat all
+her masses of shade and color, is so great, that if you only follow her
+closely, every one who looks at your drawing with attention will think
+that you have been inventing the most artificially and unnaturally
+delightful interchanges of shadow that could possibly be devised by
+human wit.
+
+229. You will find this law of interchange insisted upon at length by
+Prout in his Lessons on Light and Shade: it seems of all his principles
+of composition to be the one he is most conscious of; many others he
+obeys by instinct, but this he formally accepts and forcibly declares.
+
+The typical purpose of the law of interchange is, of course, to teach us
+how opposite natures may be helped and strengthened by receiving each,
+as far as they can, some impress or reflection, or imparted power, from
+the other.
+
+
+8. THE LAW OF CONSISTENCY.
+
+230. It is to be remembered, in the next place, that while contrast
+exhibits the _characters_ of things, it very often neutralizes or
+paralyzes their _power_. A number of white things may be shown to be
+clearly white by opposition of a black thing, but if we want the full
+power of their gathered light, the black thing may be seriously in our
+way. Thus, while contrast displays things, it is unity and sympathy
+which employ them, concentrating the power of several into a mass. And,
+not in art merely, but in all the affairs of life, the wisdom of man is
+continually called upon to reconcile these opposite methods of
+exhibiting, or using, the materials in his power. By change he gives
+them pleasantness, and by consistency value; by change he is refreshed,
+and by perseverance strengthened.
+
+231. Hence many compositions address themselves to the spectator by
+aggregate force of color or line, more than by contrasts of either; many
+noble pictures are painted almost exclusively in various tones of red,
+or gray, or gold, so as to be instantly striking by their breadth of
+flush, or glow, or tender coldness, these qualities being exhibited only
+by slight and subtle use of contrast. Similarly as to form; some
+compositions associate massive and rugged forms, others slight and
+graceful ones, each with few interruptions by lines of contrary
+character. And, in general, such compositions possess higher sublimity
+than those which are more mingled in their elements. They tell a special
+tale, and summon a definite state of feeling, while the grand
+compositions merely please the eye.
+
+232. This unity or breadth of character generally attaches most to the
+works of the greatest men; their separate pictures have all separate
+aims. We have not, in each, gray color set against somber, and sharp
+forms against soft, and loud passages against low: but we have the
+bright picture, with its delicate sadness; the somber picture, with its
+single ray of relief; the stern picture, with only one tender group of
+lines; the soft and calm picture, with only one rock angle at its flank;
+and so on. Hence the variety of their work, as well as its
+impressiveness. The principal bearing of this law, however, is on the
+separate masses or divisions of a picture: the character of the whole
+composition may be broken or various, if we please, but there must
+certainly be a tendency to consistent assemblage in its divisions. As an
+army may act on several points at once, but can only act effectually by
+having somewhere formed and regular masses, and not wholly by
+skirmishers; so a picture may be various in its tendencies, but must be
+somewhere united and coherent in its masses. Good composers are always
+associating their colors in great groups; binding their forms together
+by encompassing lines, and securing, by various dexterities of
+expedient, what they themselves call "breadth:" that is to say, a large
+gathering of each kind of thing into one place; light being gathered to
+light, darkness to darkness, and color to color. If, however, this be
+done by introducing false lights or false colors, it is absurd and
+monstrous; the skill of a painter consists in obtaining breadth by
+rational arrangement of his objects, not by forced or wanton treatment
+of them. It is an easy matter to paint one thing all white, and another
+all black or brown; but not an easy matter to assemble all the
+circumstances which will naturally produce white in one place, and brown
+in another. Generally speaking, however, breadth will result in
+sufficient degree from fidelity of study: Nature is always broad; and if
+you paint her colors in true relations, you will paint them in majestic
+masses. If you find your work look broken and scattered, it is, in all
+probability, not only ill composed, but untrue.
+
+233. The opposite quality to breadth, that of division or scattering of
+light and color, has a certain contrasting charm, and is occasionally
+introduced with exquisite effect by good composers.[70] Still it is
+never the mere scattering, but the order discernible through this
+scattering, which is the real source of pleasure; not the mere
+multitude, but the constellation of multitude. The broken lights in the
+work of a good painter wander like flocks upon the hills, not
+unshepherded, speaking of life and peace: the broken lights of a bad
+painter fall like hailstones, and are capable only of mischief, leaving
+it to be wished they were also of dissolution.
+
+
+9. THE LAW OF HARMONY.
+
+234. This last law is not, strictly speaking, so much one of composition
+as of truth, but it must guide composition, and is properly, therefore,
+to be stated in this place.
+
+Good drawing is, as we have seen, an _abstract_ of natural facts; you
+cannot represent all that you would, but must continually be falling
+short, whether you will or no, of the force, or quantity, of Nature.
+Now, suppose that your means and time do not admit of your giving the
+depth of color in the scene, and that you are obliged to paint it paler.
+If you paint all the colors proportionately paler, as if an equal
+quantity of tint had been washed away from each of them, you still
+obtain a harmonious, though not an equally forcible, statement of
+natural fact. But if you take away the colors unequally, and leave some
+tints nearly as deep as they are in Nature, while others are much
+subdued, you have no longer a true statement. You cannot say to the
+observer, "Fancy all those colors a little deeper, and you will have the
+actual fact." However he adds in imagination, or takes away, something
+is sure to be still wrong. The picture is out of harmony.
+
+235. It will happen, however, much more frequently, that you have to
+darken the whole system of colors, than to make them paler. You
+remember, in your first studies of color from Nature, you were to leave
+the passages of light which were too bright to be imitated, as white
+paper. But, in completing the picture, it becomes necessary to put color
+into them; and then the other colors must be made darker, in some fixed
+relation to them. If you deepen all proportionately, though the whole
+scene is darker than reality, it is only as if you were looking at the
+reality in a lower light: but if, while you darken some of the tints,
+you leave others undarkened, the picture is out of harmony, and will not
+give the impression of truth.
+
+236. It is not, indeed, possible to deepen _all_ the colors so much as
+to relieve the lights in their natural degree, you would merely sink
+most of your colors, if you tried to do so, into a broad mass of
+blackness: but it is quite possible to lower them harmoniously, and yet
+more in some parts of the picture than in others, so as to allow you to
+show the light you want in a visible relief. In well-harmonized pictures
+this is done by gradually deepening the tone of the picture towards the
+lighter parts of it, without materially lowering it in the very dark
+parts; the tendency in such pictures being, of course, to include large
+masses of middle tints. But the principal point to be observed in doing
+this, is to deepen the individual tints without dirtying or obscuring
+them. It is easy to lower the tone of the picture by washing it over
+with gray or brown; and easy to see the effect of the landscape, when
+its colors are thus universally polluted with black, by using the black
+convex mirror, one of the most pestilent inventions for falsifying
+Nature and degrading art which ever was put into an artist's hand.[71]
+For the thing required is not to darken pale yellow by mixing gray with
+it, but to deepen the pure yellow; not to darken crimson by mixing black
+with it, but by making it deeper and richer crimson: and thus the
+required effect could only be seen in Nature, if you had pieces of glass
+of the color of every object in your landscape, and of every minor hue
+that made up those colors, and then could see the real landscape through
+this deep gorgeousness of the varied glass. You cannot do this with
+glass, but you can do it for yourself as you work; that is to say, you
+can put deep blue for pale blue, deep gold for pale gold, and so on, in
+the proportion you need; and then you may paint as forcibly as you
+choose, but your work will still be in the manner of Titian, not of
+Caravaggio or Spagnoletto, or any other of the black slaves of
+painting.[72]
+
+237. Supposing those scales of color, which I told you to prepare in
+order to show you the relations of color to gray, were quite accurately
+made, and numerous enough, you would have nothing more to do, in order
+to obtain a deeper tone in any given mass of color, than to substitute
+for each of its hues the hue as many degrees deeper in the scale as you
+wanted, that is to say, if you wanted to deepen the whole two degrees,
+substituting for the yellow No. 5 the yellow No. 7, and for the red No.
+9 the red No. 11, and so on: but the hues of any object in Nature are
+far too numerous, and their degrees too subtle, to admit of so
+mechanical a process. Still, you may see the principle of the whole
+matter clearly by taking a group of colors out of your scale, arranging
+them prettily, and then washing them all over with gray: that represents
+the treatment of Nature by the black mirror. Then arrange the same group
+of colors, with the tints five or six degrees deeper in the scale; and
+that will represent the treatment of Nature by Titian.
+
+238. You can only, however, feel your way fully to the right of the
+thing by working from Nature.
+
+The best subject on which to begin a piece of study of this kind is a
+good thick tree trunk, seen against blue sky with some white clouds in
+it. Paint the clouds in true and tenderly gradated white; then give the
+sky a bold full blue, bringing them well out; then paint the trunk and
+leaves grandly dark against all, but in such glowing dark green and
+brown as you see they will bear. Afterwards proceed to more complicated
+studies, matching the colors carefully first by your old method; then
+deepening each color with its own tint, and being careful, above all
+things, to keep truth of equal change when the colors are connected with
+each other, as in dark and light sides of the same object. Much more
+aspect and sense of harmony are gained by the precision with which you
+observe the relation of colors in dark sides and light sides, and the
+influence of modifying reflections, than by mere accuracy of added depth
+in independent colors.
+
+239. This harmony of tone, as it is generally called, is the most
+important of those which the artist has to regard. But there are all
+kinds of harmonies in a picture, according to its mode of production.
+There is even a harmony of touch. If you paint one part of it very
+rapidly and forcibly, and another part slowly and delicately, each
+division of the picture may be right separately, but they will not agree
+together: the whole will be effectless and valueless, out of harmony.
+Similarly, if you paint one part of it by a yellow light in a warm day,
+and another by a gray light in a cold day, though both may have been
+sunlight, and both may be well toned, and have their relative shadows
+truly cast, neither will look like light; they will destroy each other's
+power, by being out of harmony. These are only broad and definable
+instances of discordance; but there is an extent of harmony in all good
+work much too subtle for definition; depending on the draughtsman's
+carrying everything he draws up to just the balancing and harmonious
+point, in finish, and color, and depth of tone, and intensity of moral
+feeling, and style of touch, all considered at once; and never allowing
+himself to lean too emphatically on detached parts, or exalt one thing
+at the expense of another, or feel acutely in one place and coldly in
+another. If you have got some of Cruikshank's etchings, you will be
+able, I think, to feel the nature of harmonious treatment in a simple
+kind, by comparing them with any of Richter's illustrations to the
+numerous German story-books lately published at Christmas, with all the
+German stories spoiled. Cruikshank's work is often incomplete in
+character and poor in incident, but, as drawing, it is _perfect_ in
+harmony. The pure and simple effects of daylight which he gets by his
+thorough mastery of treatment in this respect, are quite unrivaled, as
+far as I know, by any other work executed with so few touches. His
+vignettes to Grimm's German stories, already recommended, are the most
+remarkable in this quality. Richter's illustrations, on the contrary,
+are of a very high stamp as respects understanding of human character,
+with infinite playfulness and tenderness of fancy; but, as drawings,
+they are almost unendurably out of harmony, violent blacks in one place
+being continually opposed to trenchant white in another; and, as is
+almost sure to be the case with bad harmonists, the local color hardly
+felt anywhere. All German work is apt to be out of harmony, in
+consequence of its too frequent conditions of affectation, and its
+willful refusals of fact; as well as by reason of a feverish kind of
+excitement, which dwells violently on particular points, and makes all
+the lines of thought in the picture to stand on end, as it were, like a
+cat's fur electrified; while good work is always as quiet as a couchant
+leopard, and as strong.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+240. I have now stated to you all the laws of composition which occur to
+me as capable of being illustrated or defined; but there are multitudes
+of others which, in the present state of my knowledge, I cannot define,
+and others which I never hope to define; and these the most important,
+and connected with the deepest powers of the art. I hope, when I have
+thought of them more, to be able to explain some of the laws which
+relate to nobleness and ignobleness; that ignobleness especially which
+we commonly call "vulgarity" and which, in its essence, is one of the
+most curious subjects of inquiry connected with human feeling. Others I
+never hope to explain, laws of expression, bearing simply on simple
+matters; but, for that very reason, more influential than any others.
+These are, from the first, as inexplicable as our bodily sensations are;
+it being just as impossible, I think, to show, finally, why one
+succession of musical notes[73] shall be lofty and pathetic, and such as
+might have been sung by Casella to Dante, and why another succession is
+base and ridiculous, and would be fit only for the reasonably good ear
+of Bottom, as to explain why we like sweetness, and dislike bitterness.
+The best part of every great work is always inexplicable: it is good
+because it is good; and innocently gracious, opening as the green of the
+earth, or falling as the dew of heaven.
+
+241. But though you cannot explain them, you may always render yourself
+more and more sensitive to these higher qualities by the discipline
+which you generally give to your character, and this especially with
+regard to the choice of incidents; a kind of composition in some sort
+easier than the artistical arrangements of lines and colors, but in
+every sort nobler, because addressed to deeper feelings.
+
+242. For instance, in the "Datur Hora Quieti," the last vignette to
+Rogers's Poems, the plow in the foreground has three purposes. The first
+purpose is to meet the stream of sunlight on the river, and make it
+brighter by opposition; but any dark object whatever would have done
+this. Its second purpose is, by its two arms, to repeat the cadence of
+the group of the two ships, and thus give a greater expression of
+repose; but two sitting figures would have done this. Its third and
+chief, or pathetic, purpose is, as it lies abandoned in the furrow (the
+vessels also being moored, and having their sails down), to be a type of
+human labor closed with the close of day. The parts of it on which the
+hand leans are brought most clearly into sight; and they are the chief
+dark of the picture, because the tillage of the ground is required of
+man as a punishment: but they make the soft light of the setting sun
+brighter, because rest is sweetest after toil. These thoughts may never
+occur to us as we glance carelessly at the design; and yet their under
+current assuredly affects the feelings, and increases, as the painter
+meant it should, the impression of melancholy, and of peace.
+
+243. Again, in the "Lancaster Sands," which is one of the plates I have
+marked as most desirable for your possession: the stream of light which
+falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in
+need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the
+incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry sea-gull
+at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his
+feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected
+boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of
+the sea's advance just as surely as the abandoned plow told us of the
+ceased labor of the day.
+
+244. It is not, however, so much in the selection of single incidents of
+this kind, as in the feeling which regulates the arrangement of the
+whole subject, that the mind of a great composer is known. A single
+incident may be suggested by a felicitous chance, as a pretty motto
+might be for the heading of a chapter. But the great composers so
+arrange _all_ their designs that one incident illustrates another, just
+as one color relieves another. Perhaps the "Heysham," of the Yorkshire
+series, which, as to its locality, may be considered a companion to the
+last drawing we have spoken of, the "Lancaster Sands," presents as
+interesting an example as we could find of Turner's feeling in this
+respect. The subject is a simple north-country village, on the shore of
+Morecambe Bay; not in the common sense a picturesque village; there are
+no pretty bow-windows, or red roofs, or rocky steps of entrance to the
+rustic doors, or quaint gables; nothing but a single street of thatched
+and chiefly clay-built cottages, ranged in a somewhat monotonous line,
+the roofs so green with moss that at first we hardly discern the houses
+from the fields and trees. The village street is closed at the end by a
+wooden gate, indicating the little traffic there is on the road through
+it, and giving it something the look of a large farmstead, in which a
+right of way lies through the yard. The road which leads to this gate is
+full of ruts, and winds down a bad bit of hill between two broken banks
+of moor ground, succeeding immediately to the few inclosures which
+surround the village; they can hardly be called gardens: but a decayed
+fragment or two of fencing fill the gaps in the bank; a clothes-line,
+with some clothes on it, striped blue and red, and a smock-frock, is
+stretched between the trunks of some stunted willows; a _very_ small
+haystack and pig-sty being seen at the back of the cottage beyond. An
+empty, two-wheeled, lumbering cart, drawn by a pair of horses with huge
+wooden collars, the driver sitting lazily in the sun, sideways on the
+leader, is going slowly home along the rough road, it being about
+country dinner-time. At the end of the village there is a better house,
+with three chimneys and a dormer window in its roof, and the roof is of
+stone shingle instead of thatch, but very rough. This house is no doubt
+the clergyman's: there is some smoke from one of its chimneys, none from
+any other in the village; this smoke is from the lowest chimney at the
+back, evidently that of the kitchen, and it is rather thick, the fire
+not having been long lighted. A few hundred yards from the clergyman's
+house, nearer the shore, is the church, discernible from the cottages
+only by its low two-arched belfry, a little neater than one would expect
+in such a village; perhaps lately built by the Puseyite incumbent:[74]
+and beyond the church, close to the sea, are two fragments of a border
+war-tower, standing on their circular mound, worn on its brow deep into
+edges and furrows by the feet of the village children. On the bank of
+moor, which forms the foreground, are a few cows, the carter's dog
+barking at a vixenish one: the milkmaid is feeding another, a gentle
+white one, which turns its head to her, expectant of a handful of fresh
+hay, which she has brought for it in her blue apron, fastened up round
+her waist; she stands with her pail on her head, evidently the village
+coquette, for she has a neat bodice, and pretty striped petticoat under
+the blue apron, and red stockings. Nearer us, the cowherd, bare-footed,
+stands on a piece of the limestone rock (for the ground is thistly and
+not pleasurable to bare feet);--whether boy or girl we are not sure: it
+may be a boy, with a girl's worn-out bonnet on, or a girl with a pair of
+ragged trousers on; probably the first, as the old bonnet is evidently
+useful to keep the sun out of our eyes when we are looking for strayed
+cows among the moorland hollows, and helps us at present to watch
+(holding the bonnet's edge down) the quarrel of the vixenish cow with
+the dog, which, leaning on our long stick, we allow to proceed without
+any interference. A little to the right the hay is being got in, of
+which the milkmaid has just taken her apronful to the white cow; but the
+hay is very thin, and cannot well be raked up because of the rocks; we
+must glean it like corn, hence the smallness of our stack behind the
+willows; and a woman is pressing a bundle of it hard together, kneeling
+against the rock's edge, to carry it safely to the hay-cart without
+dropping any. Beyond the village is a rocky hill, deep set with
+brushwood, a square crag or two of limestone emerging here and there,
+with pleasant turf on their brows, heaved in russet and mossy mounds
+against the sky, which, clear and calm, and as golden as the moss,
+stretches down behind it towards the sea. A single cottage just shows
+its roof over the edge of the hill, looking seawards: perhaps one of the
+village shepherds is a sea captain now, and may have built it there,
+that his mother may first see the sails of his ship whenever it runs
+into the bay. Then under the hill, and beyond the border tower, is the
+blue sea itself, the waves flowing in over the sand in long curved lines
+slowly; shadows of cloud, and gleams of shallow water on white sand
+alternating--miles away; but no sail is visible, not one fisher-boat on
+the beach, not one dark speck on the quiet horizon. Beyond all are the
+Cumberland mountains, clear in the sun, with rosy light on all their
+crags.
+
+245. I should think the reader cannot but feel the kind of harmony there
+is in this composition; the entire purpose of the painter to give us the
+impression of wild, yet gentle, country life, monotonous as the
+succession of the noiseless waves, patient and enduring as the rocks;
+but peaceful, and full of health and quiet hope, and sanctified by the
+pure mountain air and baptismal dew of heaven, falling softly between
+days of toil and nights of innocence.
+
+246. All noble composition of this kind can be reached only by
+instinct; you cannot set yourself to arrange such a subject; you may see
+it, and seize it, at all times, but never laboriously invent it. And
+your power of discerning what is best in expression, among natural
+subjects, depends wholly on the temper in which you keep your own mind;
+above all, on your living so much alone as to allow it to become acutely
+sensitive in its own stillness. The noisy life of modern days is wholly
+incompatible with any true perception of natural beauty. If you go down
+into Cumberland by the railroad, live in some frequented hotel, and
+explore the hills with merry companions, however much you may enjoy your
+tour or their conversation, depend upon it you will never choose so much
+as one pictorial subject rightly; you will not see into the depth of
+any. But take knapsack and stick, walk towards the hills by short day's
+journeys,--ten or twelve miles a day--taking a week from some
+starting-place sixty or seventy miles away: sleep at the pretty little
+wayside inns, or the rough village ones; then take the hills as they
+tempt you, following glen or shore as your eye glances or your heart
+guides, wholly scornful of local fame or fashion, and of everything
+which it is the ordinary traveler's duty to see, or pride to do. Never
+force yourself to admire anything when you are not in the humor; but
+never force yourself away from what you feel to be lovely, in search of
+anything better; and gradually the deeper scenes of the natural world
+will unfold themselves to you in still increasing fullness of passionate
+power; and your difficulty will be no more to seek or to compose
+subjects, but only to choose one from among the multitude of melodious
+thoughts with which you will be haunted, thoughts which will of course
+be noble or original in proportion to your own depth of character and
+general power of mind; for it is not so much by the consideration you
+give to any single drawing, as by the previous discipline of your powers
+of thought, that the character of your composition will be determined.
+Simplicity of life will make you sensitive to the refinement and modesty
+of scenery, just as inordinate excitement and pomp of daily life will
+make you enjoy coarse colors and affected forms. Habits of patient
+comparison and accurate judgment will make your art precious, as they
+will make your actions wise; and every increase of noble enthusiasm in
+your living spirit will be measured by the reflection of its light upon
+the works of your hands.--Faithfully yours,
+
+                                                          J. RUSKIN.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [41] I give Rossetti this pre-eminence, because, though the leading
+    Pre-Raphaelites have all about equal power over color in the
+    abstract, Rossetti and Holman Hunt are distinguished above the rest
+    for rendering color under effects of light; and of these two,
+    Rossetti composes with richer fancy, and with a deeper sense of
+    beauty, Hunt's stern realism leading him continually into harshness.
+    Rossetti's carelessness, to do him justice, is only in water-color,
+    never in oil.
+
+  [42] All the degradation of art which was brought about, after the
+    rise of the Dutch school, by asphaltum, yellow varnish, and brown
+    trees would have been prevented, if only painters had been forced to
+    work in dead color. Any color will do for some people, if it is
+    browned and shining; but fallacy in dead color is detected on the
+    instant. I even believe that whenever a painter begins to _wish_
+    that he could touch any portion of his work with gum, he is going
+    wrong.
+
+    It is necessary, however, in this matter, carefully to distinguish
+    between translucency and luster. Translucency, though, as I have
+    said above, a dangerous temptation, is, in its place, beautiful; but
+    luster or _shininess_ is always, in painting, a defect. Nay, one of
+    my best painter-friends (the "best" being understood to attach to
+    both divisions of that awkward compound word,) tried the other day
+    to persuade me that luster was an ignobleness in anything; and it
+    was only the fear of treason to ladies' eyes, and to mountain
+    streams, and to morning dew, which kept me from yielding the point
+    to him. One is apt always to generalize too quickly in such matters;
+    but there can be no question that luster is destructive of
+    loveliness in color, as it is of intelligibility in form. Whatever
+    may be the pride of a young beauty in the knowledge that her eyes
+    shine (though perhaps even eyes are most beautiful in dimness), she
+    would be sorry if her cheeks did; and which of us would wish to
+    polish a rose?
+
+  [43] But not shiny or greasy. Bristol board, or hot-pressed
+    imperial, or gray paper that feels slightly adhesive to the hand, is
+    best. Coarse, gritty, and sandy papers are fit only for blotters and
+    blunderers; no good draughtsman would lay a line on them. Turner
+    worked much on a thin tough paper, dead in surface; rolling up his
+    sketches in tight bundles that would go deep into his pockets.
+
+  [44] I insist upon this unalterability of color the more because I
+    address you as a beginner, or an amateur: a great artist can
+    sometimes get out of a difficulty with credit, or repent without
+    confession. Yet even Titian's alterations usually show as stains on
+    his work.
+
+  [45] It is, I think, a piece of affectation to try to work with few
+    colors: it saves time to have enough tints prepared without mixing,
+    and you may at once allow yourself these twenty-four. If you arrange
+    them in your color-box in the order I have set them down, you will
+    always easily put your finger on the one you want.
+
+    Cobalt         Smalt                  Antwerb blue     Prussian blue
+    Black          Gamboge                Emerald green    Hooker's green
+    Lemon yellow   Cadmium yellow         Yellow ocher     Roman ocher
+    Raw sienna     Burnt sienna           Light red        Indian red
+    Mars orange    Extract of vermilion   Carmine          Violet carmine
+    Brown madder   Burnt umber            Vandyke brown    Sepia
+
+    Antwerp blue and Prussian blue are not very permanent colors, but
+    you need not care much about permanence in your work as yet, and
+    they are both beautiful; while Indigo is marked by Field as more
+    fugitive still, and is very ugly. Hooker's green is a mixed color,
+    put in the box merely to save you loss of time in mixing gamboge and
+    Prussian blue. No. 1 is the best tint of it. Violet carmine is a
+    noble color for laying broken shadows with, to be worked into
+    afterwards with other colors.
+
+    If you wish to take up coloring seriously you had better get Field's
+    "Chromatography" at once; only do not attend to anything it says
+    about principles or harmonies of color; but only to its statements
+    of practical serviceableness in pigments, and of their operations on
+    each other when mixed, etc.
+
+  [46] A more methodical, though under general circumstances uselessly
+    prolix way, is to cut a square hole, some half an inch wide, in the
+    sheet of cardboard, and a series of small circular holes in a slip
+    of cardboard an inch wide. Pass the slip over the square opening,
+    and match each color beside one of the circular openings. You will
+    thus have no occasion to wash any of the colors away. But the first
+    rough method is generally all you want, as, after a little practice,
+    you only need to _look_ at the hue through the opening in order to
+    be able to transfer it to your drawing at once.
+
+  [47] If colors were twenty times as costly as they are, we should
+    have many more good painters. If I were Chancellor of the Exchequer
+    I would lay a tax of twenty shillings a cake on all colors except
+    black, Prussian blue, Vandyke brown, and Chinese white, which I
+    would leave for students. I don't say this jestingly; I believe such
+    a tax would do more to advance real art than a great many schools of
+    design.
+
+  [48] I say _modern_, because Titian's quiet way of blending colors,
+    which is the perfectly right one, is not understood now by any
+    artist. The best color we reach is got by stippling; but this is not
+    quite right.
+
+  [49] See Note 6 in Appendix I.
+
+  [50] The worst general character that color can possibly have is a
+    prevalent tendency to a dirty yellowish green, like that of a
+    decaying heap of vegetables; this color is _accurately_ indicative
+    of decline or paralysis in missal-painting.
+
+  [51] That is to say, local color inherent in the object. The
+    gradations of color in the various shadows belonging to various
+    lights exhibit form, and therefore no one but a colorist can ever
+    draw _forms_ perfectly (see Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii. at
+    the end); but all notions of explaining form by superimposed color,
+    as in architectural moldings, are absurd. Color adorns form, but
+    does not interpret it. An apple is prettier because it is striped,
+    but it does not look a bit rounder; and a cheek is prettier because
+    it is flushed, but you would see the form of the cheek bone better
+    if it were not. Color may, indeed, detach one shape from another, as
+    in grounding a bas-relief, but it always diminishes the appearance
+    of projection, and whether you put blue, purple, red, yellow, or
+    green, for your ground, the bas-relief will be just as clearly or
+    just as imperfectly relieved, as long as the colors are of equal
+    depth. The blue ground will not retire the hundredth part of an inch
+    more than the red one.
+
+  [52] See, however, at the close of this letter, the notice of one
+    more point connected with the management of color, under the head
+    "Law of Harmony."
+
+  [53] See farther, on this subject, Modern Painters, vol. iv. chap.
+    viii. Sec. 6.
+
+  [54] See Note 7 in Appendix I.
+
+  [55] "In general, throughout Nature, reflection and repetition are
+    peaceful things, associated with the idea of quiet succession in
+    events; that one day should be like another day, or one history the
+    repetition of another history, being more or less results of
+    quietness, while dissimilarity and non-succession are results of
+    interference and disquietude. Thus, though an echo actually
+    increases the quantity of sound heard, its repetition of the note or
+    syllable gives an idea of calmness attainable in no other way; hence
+    also the feeling of calm given to a landscape by the voice of a
+    cuckoo."
+
+  [56] This is obscure in the rude wood-cut, the masts being so
+    delicate that they are confused among the lines of reflection. In
+    the original they have orange light upon them, relieved against
+    purple behind.
+
+  [57] The cost of art in getting a bridge level is _always_ lost, for
+    you must get up to the height of the central arch at any rate, and
+    you only can make the whole bridge level by putting the hill farther
+    back, and pretending to have got rid of it when you have not, but
+    have only wasted money in building an unnecessary embankment. Of
+    course, the bridge should not be difficultly or dangerously steep,
+    but the necessary slope, whatever it may be, should be in the bridge
+    itself, as far as the bridge can take it, and not pushed aside into
+    the approach, as in our Waterloo road; the only rational excuse for
+    doing which is that when the slope must be long it is inconvenient
+    to put on a drag at the top of the bridge, and that any restiveness
+    of the horse is more dangerous on the bridge than on the embankment.
+    To this I answer: first, it is not more dangerous in reality, though
+    it looks so, for the bridge is always guarded by an effective
+    parapet, but the embankment is sure to have no parapet, or only a
+    useless rail; and secondly, that it is better to have the slope on
+    the bridge and make the roadway wide in proportion, so as to be
+    quite safe, because a little waste of space on the river is no loss,
+    but your wide embankment at the side loses good ground; and so my
+    picturesque bridges are right as well as beautiful, and I hope to
+    see them built again some day instead of the frightful
+    straight-backed things which we fancy are fine, and accept from the
+    pontifical rigidities of the engineering mind.
+
+  [58] I cannot waste space here by reprinting what I have said in
+    other books; but the reader ought, if possible, to refer to the
+    notices of this part of our subject in Modern Painters, vol. iv.
+    chap xvii.; and Stones of Venice, vol. iii. chap. i. Sec. 8.
+
+  [59] If you happen to be reading at this part of the book, without
+    having gone through any previous practice, turn back to the sketch
+    of the ramification of stone pine, Fig. 4, p. 17, and examine the
+    curves of its boughs one by one, trying them by the conditions here
+    stated under the heads A and B.
+
+  [60] The reader, I hope, observes always that every line in these
+    figures is itself one of varying curvature, and cannot be drawn by
+    compasses.
+
+  [61] I hope the reader understands that these wood-cuts are merely
+    facsimiles of the sketches I make at the side of my paper to
+    illustrate my meaning as I write--often sadly scrawled if I want to
+    get on to something else. This one is really a little too careless;
+    but it would take more time and trouble to make a proper drawing of
+    so odd a boat than the matter is worth. It will answer the purpose
+    well enough as it is.
+
+  [62] Imperfect vegetable form I consider that which is in its nature
+    dependent, as in runners and climbers; or which is susceptible of
+    continual injury without materially losing the power of giving
+    pleasure by its aspect, as in the case of the smaller grasses. I
+    have not, of course, space here to explain these minor distinctions,
+    but the laws above stated apply to all the more important trees and
+    shrubs likely to be familiar to the student.
+
+  [63] There is a very tender lesson of this kind in the shadows of
+    leaves upon the ground; shadows which are the most likely of all to
+    attract attention, by their pretty play and change. If you examine
+    them, you will find that the shadows do not take the forms of the
+    leaves, but that, through each interstice, the light falls, at a
+    little distance, in the form of a round or oval spot; that is to
+    say, it produces the image of the sun itself, cast either vertically
+    or obliquely, in circle or ellipse according to the slope of the
+    ground. Of course the sun's rays produce the same effect, when they
+    fall through any small aperture: but the openings between leaves are
+    the only ones likely to show it to an ordinary observer, or to
+    attract his attention to it by its frequency, and lead him to think
+    what this type may signify respecting the greater Sun; and how it
+    may show us that, even when the opening through which the earth
+    receives light is too small to let us see the Sun Himself, the ray
+    of light that enters, if it comes straight from Him, will still bear
+    with it His image.
+
+  [64] In the smaller figure (32), it will be seen that this
+    interruption is caused by a cart coming down to the water's edge;
+    and this object is serviceable as beginning another system of curves
+    leading out of the picture on the right, but so obscurely drawn as
+    not to be easily represented in outline. As it is unnecessary to the
+    explanation of our point here, it has been omitted in the larger
+    diagram, the direction of the curve it begins being indicated by the
+    dashes only.
+
+  [65] Both in the Sketches in Flanders and Germany.
+
+  [66] If you happen to meet with the plate of Duerer's representing a
+    coat-of-arms with a skull in the shield, note the value given to the
+    concave curves and sharp point of the helmet by the convex leafage
+    carried round it in front; and the use of the blank white part of
+    the shield in opposing the rich folds of the dress.
+
+  [67] Turner hardly ever, as far as I remember, allows a strong light
+    to oppose a full dark, without some intervening tint. His suns never
+    set behind dark mountains without a film of cloud above the
+    mountain's edge.
+
+  [68]       "A prudent chief not always must display
+              His powers in equal ranks and fair array,
+              But with the occasion and the place comply,
+              Conceal his force; nay, seem sometimes to fly.
+              Those oft are stratagems which errors seem,
+              Nor is it Homer nods, but we that dream."
+
+                                                  _Essay on Criticism._
+
+  [69] I am describing from an MS., _circa_ 1300, of Gregory's
+    Decretalia, in my own possession.
+
+  [70] One of the most wonderful compositions of Tintoret in Venice,
+    is little more than a field of subdued crimson, spotted with flakes
+    of scattered gold. The upper clouds in the most beautiful skies owe
+    great part of their power to infinitude of divisions; order being
+    marked through this division.
+
+  [71] I fully believe that the strange gray gloom, accompanied by
+    considerable power of effect, which prevails in modern French art,
+    must be owing to the use of this mischievous instrument; the French
+    landscape always gives me the idea of Nature seen carelessly in the
+    dark mirror, and painted coarsely, but scientifically, through the
+    veil of its perversion.
+
+  [72] Various other parts of this subject are entered into,
+    especially in their bearing on the ideal of painting, in Modern
+    Painters, vol. iv. chap. iii.
+
+  [73] In all the best arrangements of color, the delight occasioned
+    by their mode of succession is entirely inexplicable, nor can it be
+    reasoned about; we like it just as we like an air in music, but
+    cannot reason any refractory person into liking it, if they do not:
+    and yet there is distinctly a right and a wrong in it, and a good
+    taste and bad taste respecting it, as also in music.
+
+  [74] "Puseyism" was unknown in the days when this drawing was made;
+    but the kindly and helpful influences of what may be called
+    ecclesiastical sentiment, which, in a morbidly exaggerated
+    condition, forms one of the principal elements of "Puseyism,"--I use
+    this word regretfully, no other existing which will serve for
+    it,--had been known and felt in our wild northern districts long
+    before.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+I.
+
+ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES.
+
+  NOTE 1, p. 42.--"_Principle of the stereoscope._"
+
+247. I am sorry to find a notion current among artists, that they can,
+in some degree, imitate in a picture the effect of the stereoscope, by
+confusion of lines. There are indeed one or two artifices by which, as
+stated in the text, an appearance of retirement or projection may be
+obtained, so that they partly supply the place of the stereoscopic
+effect, but they do not imitate that effect. The principle of the human
+sight is simply this:--by means of our two eyes we literally see
+everything from two places at once; and, by calculated combination, in
+the brain, of the facts of form so seen, we arrive at conclusions
+respecting the distance and shape of the object, which we could not
+otherwise have reached. But it is just as vain to hope to paint at once
+the two views of the object as seen from these two places, though only
+an inch and a half distant from each other, as it would be if they were
+a mile and a half distant from each other. With the right eye you see
+one view of a given object, relieved against one part of the distance;
+with the left eye you see another view of it, relieved against another
+part of the distance. You may paint whichever of those views you please;
+you cannot paint both. Hold your finger upright, between you and this
+page of the book, about six inches from your eyes, and three from the
+book; shut the right eye, and hide the words "inches from," in the
+second line above this, with your finger; you will then see "six" on one
+side of it, and "your," on the other. Now shut the left eye and open the
+right without moving your finger, and you will see "inches," but not
+"six." You may paint the finger with "inches" beyond it, or with "six"
+beyond it, but not with both. And this principle holds for any object
+and any distance. You might just as well try to paint St. Paul's at once
+from both ends of London Bridge as to realize any stereoscopic effect in
+a picture.
+
+
+  NOTE 2, p. 59.--"_Dark lines turned to the light._"
+
+248. It ought to have been farther observed, that the inclosure of the
+light by future shadow is by no means the only reason for the dark lines
+which great masters often thus introduce. It constantly happens that a
+local color will show its own darkness most on the light side, by
+projecting into and against masses of light in that direction; and then
+the painter will indicate this future force of the mass by his dark
+touch. Both the monk's head in Fig. 11 and dog in Fig. 20 are dark
+towards the light for this reason.
+
+
+  NOTE 3, p. 98.--"_Softness of reflections._"
+
+249. I have not quite insisted enough on the extreme care which is
+necessary in giving the tender evanescence of the edges of the
+reflections, when the water is in the least agitated; nor on the
+decision with which you may reverse the object, when the water is quite
+calm. Most drawing of reflections is at once confused and hard; but
+Nature's is at once intelligible and tender. Generally, at the edge of
+the water, you ought not to see where reality ceases and reflection
+begins; as the image loses itself you ought to keep all its subtle and
+varied veracities, with the most exquisite softening of its edge.
+Practice as much as you can from the reflections of ships in calm
+water, following out all the reversed rigging, and taking, if anything,
+more pains with the reflection than with the ship.
+
+
+  NOTE 4, p. 100.--"_Where the reflection is darkest, you will see
+     through the water best._"
+
+250. For this reason it often happens that if the water be shallow, and
+you are looking steeply down into it, the reflection of objects on the
+bank will consist simply of pieces of the bottom seen clearly through
+the water, and relieved by flashes of light, which are the reflection of
+the sky. Thus you may have to draw the reflected dark shape of a bush:
+but, inside of that shape, you must not draw the leaves of the bush, but
+the stones under the water; and, outside of this dark reflection, the
+blue or white of the sky, with no stones visible.
+
+
+  NOTE 5, p. 101.--"_Approach streams with reverence._"
+
+251. I have hardly said anything about waves of torrents or waterfalls,
+as I do not consider them subjects for beginners to practice upon; but,
+as many of our younger artists are almost breaking their hearts over
+them, it may be well to state at once that it is physically impossible
+to draw a running torrent quite rightly, the luster of its currents and
+whiteness of its foam being dependent on intensities of light which art
+has not at its command. This also is to be observed, that most young
+painters make their defeat certain by attempting to draw running water,
+which is a lustrous object in rapid motion, without ever trying their
+strength on a lustrous object standing still. Let them break a coarse
+green-glass bottle into a great many bits, and try to paint those, with
+all their undulations and edges of fracture, as they lie still on the
+table; if they cannot, of course they need not try the rushing crystal
+and foaming fracture of the stream. If they can manage the glass bottle,
+let them next buy a fragment or two of yellow fire-opal; it is quite a
+common and cheap mineral, and presents, as closely as anything can, the
+milky bloom and color of a torrent wave: and if they can conquer the
+opal, they may at last have some chance with the stream, as far as the
+stream is in any wise possible. But, as I have just said, the bright
+parts of it are _not_ possible, and ought, as much as may be, to be
+avoided in choosing subjects. A great deal more may, however, be done
+than any artist has done yet, in painting the gradual disappearance and
+lovely coloring of stones seen through clear and calm water.
+
+Students living in towns may make great progress in rock-drawing by
+frequently and faithfully drawing broken edges of common roofing slates,
+of their real size.
+
+
+  NOTE 6, p. 125.--"_Nature's economy of color._"
+
+252. I heard it wisely objected to this statement, the other day, by a
+young lady, that it was not through economy that Nature did not color
+deep down in the flower bells, but because "she had not light enough
+there to see to paint with." This may be true; but it is certainly not
+for want of light that, when she is laying the dark spots on a foxglove,
+she will not use any more purple than she has got already on the bell,
+but takes out the color all round the spot, and concentrates it in the
+middle.
+
+
+  NOTE 7, p. 138.--"_The law of repetition._"
+
+253. The reader may perhaps recollect a very beautiful picture of
+Vandyck's in the Manchester Exhibition, representing three children in
+court dresses of rich black and red. The law in question was amusingly
+illustrated, in the lower corner of that picture, by the introduction of
+two crows, in a similar color of court dress, having jet black feathers
+and bright red beaks.
+
+254. Since the first edition of this work was published, I have
+ascertained that there are two series of engravings from the Bible
+drawings mentioned in the list at p. 50. One of these is inferior to the
+other, and in many respects false to the drawing; the "Jericho," for
+instance, in the false series, has common bushes instead of palm trees
+in the middle distance. The original plates may be had at almost any
+respectable printseller's; and ordinary impressions, whether of these or
+any other plates mentioned in the list at p. 50, will be quite as useful
+as proofs: but, in buying Liber Studiorum, it is always well to get the
+best impressions that can be had, and if possible impressions of the
+original plates, published by Turner. In case these are not to be had,
+the copies which are in course of publication by Mr. Lupton (4 Keppel
+Street, Russell Square) are good and serviceable; but no others are of
+any use.--[Note of 1857.]
+
+I have placed in the hands of Mr. Ward (Working Men's College) some
+photographs from the etchings made by Turner for the Liber; the original
+etchings being now unobtainable, except by fortunate accident. I have
+selected the subjects carefully from my own collection of the etchings;
+and though some of the more subtle qualities of line are lost in the
+photographs, the student will find these proofs the best lessons in
+pen-drawing accessible to him.--[Note of 1859]
+
+
+II.
+
+THINGS TO BE STUDIED.
+
+255. The worst danger by far, to which a solitary student is exposed, is
+that of liking things that he should not. It is not so much his
+difficulties, as his tastes, which he must set himself to conquer: and
+although, under the guidance of a master, many works of art may be made
+instructive, which are only of partial excellence (the good and bad of
+them being duly distinguished), his safeguard, as long as he studies
+alone, will be in allowing himself to possess only things, in their way,
+so free from faults, that nothing he copies in them can seriously
+mislead him, and to contemplate only those works of art which he knows
+to be either perfect or noble in their errors. I will therefore set
+down, in clear order, the names of the masters whom you may safely
+admire, and a few of the books which you may safely possess. In these
+days of cheap illustration, the danger is always rather of your
+possessing too much than too little. It may admit of some question, how
+far the looking at bad art may set off and illustrate the characters of
+the good; but, on the whole, I believe it is best to live always on
+quite wholesome food, and that our enjoyment of it will never be made
+more acute by feeding on ashes; though it may be well sometimes to taste
+the ashes, in order to know the bitterness of them. Of course the works
+of the great masters can only be serviceable to the student after he has
+made considerable progress himself. It only wastes the time and dulls
+the feelings of young persons, to drag them through picture galleries;
+at least, unless they themselves wish to look at particular pictures.
+Generally, young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there
+is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of it; and
+they had better do that in the garden below. If, however, they have any
+real enjoyment of pictures, and want to look at this one or that, the
+principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests
+them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the
+least use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones),
+but what interests them; and therefore, though it is of great importance
+to put nothing but good art into their possession, yet, when they are
+passing through great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to
+look precisely at what pleases them: if it is not useful to them as art,
+it will be in some other way; and the healthiest way in which art can
+interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it
+represents something they like in Nature. If a boy has had his heart
+filled by the life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck
+portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in
+which he can begin the study of portraiture; if he loves mountains, and
+dwells on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a likeness to a
+Yorkshire scar or an Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which
+he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's mind is filled with
+dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because
+she thinks it must surely be like heaven, that is the right way for her
+to begin the study of religious art.
+
+256. When, however, the student has made some definite progress, and
+every picture becomes really a guide to him, false or true, in his own
+work, it is of great importance that he should never look, with even
+partial admiration, at bad art; and then, if the reader is willing to
+trust me in the matter, the following advice will be useful to him. In
+which, with his permission, I will quit the indirect and return to the
+epistolary address, as being the more convenient.
+
+
+  First, in Galleries of Pictures:
+
+1. You may look, with trust in their being always right, at Titian,
+Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, John Bellini, and Velasquez; the
+authenticity of the picture being of course established for you by
+proper authority.
+
+2. You may look with admiration, admitting, however, question of right
+and wrong,[75] at Van Eyck, Holbein, Perugino, Francia, Angelico,
+Leonardo da Vinci, Correggio, Vandyck, Rembrandt, Reynolds,
+Gainsborough, Turner, and the modern Pre-Raphaelites.[76] You had better
+look at no other painters than these, for you run a chance, otherwise,
+of being led far off the road, or into grievous faults, by some of the
+other great ones, as Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Rubens; and of being,
+besides, corrupted in taste by the base ones, as Murillo, Salvator,
+Claude, Gaspar Poussin, Teniers, and such others. You may look, however,
+for examples of evil, with safe universality of reprobation, being sure
+that everything you see is bad, at Domenichino, the Carracci, Bronzino,
+and the figure pieces of Salvator.
+
+Among those named for study under question, you cannot look too much at,
+nor grow too enthusiastically fond of, Angelico, Correggio, Reynolds,
+Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites; but, if you find yourself getting
+especially fond of any of the others, leave off looking at them, for you
+must be going wrong some way or other. If, for instance, you begin to
+like Rembrandt or Leonardo especially, you are losing your feeling for
+color; if you like Van Eyck or Perugino especially, you must be getting
+too fond of rigid detail; and if you like Vandyck or Gainsborough
+especially, you must be too much attracted by gentlemanly flimsiness.
+
+257. Secondly, of published, or otherwise multiplied, art, such as you
+may be able to get yourself, or to see at private houses or in shops,
+the works of the following masters are the most desirable, after the
+Turners, Rembrandts, and Duerers, which I have asked you to get first:
+
+
+  1. Samuel Prout.[77]
+
+All his published lithographic sketches are of the greatest value,
+wholly unrivaled in power of composition, and in love and feeling of
+architectural subject. His somewhat mannered linear execution, though
+not to be imitated in your own sketches from Nature, may be occasionally
+copied, for discipline's sake, with great advantage: it will give you a
+peculiar steadiness of hand, not quickly attainable in any other way;
+and there is no fear of your getting into any faultful mannerism as long
+as you carry out the different modes of more delicate study above
+recommended.
+
+If you are interested in architecture, and wish to make it your chief
+study, you should draw much from photographs of it; and then from the
+architecture itself, with the same completion of detail and gradation,
+only keeping the shadows of due paleness,--in photographs they are
+always about four times as dark as they ought to be,--and treat
+buildings with as much care and love as artists do their rock
+foregrounds, drawing all the moss, and weeds, and stains upon them. But
+if, without caring to understand architecture, you merely want the
+picturesque character of it, and to be able to sketch it fast, you
+cannot do better than take Prout for your exclusive master; only do not
+think that you are copying Prout by drawing straight lines with dots at
+the end of them. Get first his "Rhine," and draw the subjects that have
+most hills, and least architecture in them, with chalk on smooth paper,
+till you can lay on his broad flat tints, and get his gradations of
+light, which are very wonderful; then take up the architectural subjects
+in the "Rhine," and draw again and again the groups of figures, etc., in
+his "Microcosm," and "Lessons on Light and Shadow." After that, proceed
+to copy the grand subjects in the "Sketches in Flanders and Germany;" or
+"in Switzerland and Italy," if you cannot get the Flanders; but the
+Switzerland is very far inferior. Then work from Nature, not trying to
+Proutize Nature, by breaking smooth buildings into rough ones, but only
+drawing _what you see_, with Prout's simple method and firm lines. Don't
+copy his colored works. They are good, but not at all equal to his chalk
+and pencil drawings; and you will become a mere imitator, and a very
+feeble imitator, if you use color at all in Prout's method. I have not
+space to explain why this is so, it would take a long piece of
+reasoning; trust me for the statement.
+
+
+  2. John Lewis.
+
+His sketches in Spain, lithographed by himself, are very valuable. Get
+them, if you can, and also some engravings (about eight or ten, I think,
+altogether) of wild beasts, executed by his own hand a long time ago;
+they are very precious in every way. The series of the "Alhambra" is
+rather slight, and few of the subjects are lithographed by himself;
+still it is well worth having.
+
+But let _no_ lithographic work come into the house, if you can help it,
+nor even look at any, except Prout's, and those sketches of Lewis's.
+
+
+  3. George Cruikshank.
+
+If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of "Grimm's German
+Stories," which were illustrated by him long ago, pounce upon them
+instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to
+Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was
+invented. You cannot look at them too much, nor copy them too often.
+
+All his works are very valuable, though disagreeable when they touch on
+the worst vulgarities of modern life; and often much spoiled by a
+curiously mistaken type of face, divided so as to give too much to the
+mouth and eyes and leave too little for forehead, the eyes being set
+about two thirds up, instead of at half the height of the head. But his
+manner of work is always right; and his tragic power, though rarely
+developed, and warped by habits of caricature, is, in reality, as great
+as his grotesque power.
+
+There is no fear of his hurting your taste, as long as your principal
+work lies among art of so totally different a character as most of that
+which I Have recommended to you; and you may, therefore, get great good
+by copying almost anything of his that may come in your way; except only
+his illustrations, lately published, to "Cinderella," and "Jack and the
+Bean-stalk," and "Tom Thumb," which are much overlabored, and confused
+in line. You should get them, but do not copy them.
+
+
+  4. Alfred Rethel.
+
+I only know two publications by him; one, the "Dance of Death," with
+text by Reinick, published in Leipsic, but to be had now of any London
+bookseller for the sum, I believe, of eighteen pence, and containing six
+plates full of instructive character; the other, of two plates only,
+"Death the Avenger," and "Death the Friend." These two are far superior
+to the "Todtentanz," and, if you can get them, will be enough in
+themselves to show all that Rethel can teach you. If you dislike ghastly
+subjects, get "Death the Friend" only.
+
+
+  5. Bewick.
+
+The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly
+thing ever yet done in wood-cutting; it is worked just as Paul Veronese
+would have worked in wood, had he taken to it. His vignettes, though too
+coarse in execution, and vulgar in types of form, to be good copies,
+show, nevertheless, intellectual power of the highest order; and there
+are pieces of sentiment in them, either pathetic or satirical, which
+have never since been equaled in illustrations of this simple kind; the
+bitter intensity of the feeling being just like that which characterizes
+some of the leading Pre-Raphaelites. Bewick is the Burns of painting.
+
+
+  6. Blake.
+
+The "Book of Job," engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in
+certain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of
+obtaining certain effects of light it will also be a very useful example
+to you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake
+is greater than Rembrandt.
+
+
+  7. Richter.
+
+I have already told you what to guard against in looking at his works. I
+am a little doubtful whether I have done well in including them in this
+catalogue at all; but the imaginations in them are so lovely and
+numberless, that I must risk, for their sake, the chance of hurting you
+a little in judgment of style. If you want to make presents of
+story-books to children, his are the best you can now get; but his most
+beautiful work, as far as I know, is his series of Illustrations to the
+Lord's Prayer.
+
+
+  8. Rossetti.
+
+An edition of Tennyson, lately published, contains wood-cuts from
+drawings by Rossetti and other chief Pre-Raphaelite masters. They are
+terribly spoiled in the cutting, and generally the best part, the
+expression of feature, _entirely_ lost;[78] still they are full of
+instruction, and cannot be studied too closely. But observe, respecting
+these wood-cuts, that if you have been in the habit of looking at much
+spurious work, in which sentiment, action, and style are borrowed or
+artificial, you will assuredly be offended at first by all genuine work,
+which is intense in feeling. Genuine art, which is merely art, such as
+Veronese's or Titian's, may not offend you, though the chances are that
+you will not care about it; but genuine works of feeling, such as "Maud"
+or "Aurora Leigh" in poetry, or the grand Pre-Raphaelite designs in
+painting, are sure to offend you: and if you cease to work hard, and
+persist in looking at vicious and false art, they will continue to
+offend you. It will be well, therefore, to have one type of entirely
+false art, in order to know what to guard against. Flaxman's outlines to
+Dante contain, I think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and
+feebleness which it is possible for a trained artist, not base in
+thought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution. Base or
+degraded choice of subject, such as you will constantly find in Teniers
+and others of the Dutch painters, I need not, I hope, warn you against;
+you will simply turn away from it in disgust; while mere bad or feeble
+drawing, which makes mistakes in every direction at once, cannot teach
+you the particular sort of educated fallacy in question. But, in these
+designs of Flaxman's, you have gentlemanly feeling, and fair knowledge
+of anatomy, and firm setting down of lines, all applied in the
+foolishest and worst possible way; you cannot have a more finished
+example of learned error, amiable want of meaning, and bad drawing with
+a steady hand.[79] Retzsch's outlines have more real material in them
+than Flaxman's, occasionally showing true fancy and power; in artistic
+principle they are nearly as bad, and in taste, worse. All outlines from
+statuary, as given in works on classical art, will be very hurtful to
+you if you in the least like them; and _nearly_ all finished line
+engravings. Some particular prints I could name which possess
+instructive qualities, but it would take too long to distinguish them,
+and the best way is to avoid line engravings of figures altogether.[80]
+If you happen to be a rich person, possessing quantities of them, and if
+you are fond of the large finished prints from Raphael, Correggio, etc.,
+it is wholly impossible that you can make any progress in knowledge of
+real art till you have sold them all,--or burnt them, which would be a
+greater benefit to the world. I hope that, some day, true and noble
+engravings will be made from the few pictures of the great schools,
+which the restorations undertaken by the modern managers of foreign
+galleries may leave us; but the existing engravings have nothing
+whatever in common with the good in the works they profess to represent,
+and, if you like them, you like in the originals of them hardly anything
+but their errors.
+
+258. Finally, your judgment will be, of course, much affected by your
+taste in literature. Indeed, I know many persons who have the purest
+taste in literature, and yet false taste in art, and it is a phenomenon
+which puzzles me not a little; but I have never known any one with false
+taste in books, and true taste in pictures. It is also of the greatest
+importance to you, not only for art's sake, but for all kinds of sake,
+in these days of book deluge, to keep out of the salt swamps of
+literature, and live on a little rocky island of your own, with a spring
+and a lake in it, pure and good. I cannot, of course, suggest the choice
+of your library to you: every several mind needs different books; but
+there are some books which we all need, and assuredly, if you read
+Homer,[81] Plato, Aeschylus, Herodotus, Dante,[82] Shakspeare, and
+Spenser, as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of
+shelves to right and left of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among
+modern books avoid generally magazine and review literature. Sometimes
+it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism;
+but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead
+you. If you want to understand any subject whatever, read the best book
+upon it you can hear of: not a review of the book. If you don't like the
+first book you try, seek for another; but do not hope ever to understand
+the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that
+class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous
+of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and
+awe; it may contain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers
+coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or
+love something with your whole heart. It is not always easy to
+distinguish the satire of the venomous race of books from the satire of
+the noble and pure ones; but in general you may notice that the
+cold-blooded, Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment;
+and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the more
+you can restrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry,
+history, and natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the
+healthier your mind will become. Of modern poetry, keep to Scott,
+Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings, Thomas Hood,
+Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore, whose "Angel in the House" is
+a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess
+of quiet modern domestic feeling; while Mrs. Browning's "Aurora Leigh"
+is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has produced
+in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless;
+and Shelley, as shallow and verbose; Byron, until your taste is fully
+formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from the
+wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself;
+there is, perhaps, rather too much than too little in the world already.
+
+259. Of reflective prose, read chiefly Bacon, Johnson, and Helps.
+Carlyle is hardly to be named as a writer for "beginners," because his
+teaching, though to some of us vitally necessary, may to others be
+hurtful. If you understand and like him, read him; if he offends you,
+you are not yet ready for him, and perhaps may never be so; at all
+events, give him up, as you would sea-bathing if you found it hurt you,
+till you are stronger. Of fiction, read "Sir Charles Grandison," Scott's
+novels, Miss Edgeworth's, and, if you are a young lady, Madame de
+Genlis', the French Miss Edgeworth; making these, I mean, your constant
+companions. Of course you must, or will, read other books for amusement
+once or twice; but you will find that these have an element of
+perpetuity in them, existing in nothing else of their kind; while their
+peculiar quietness and repose of manner will also be of the greatest
+value in teaching you to feel the same characters in art. Read little at
+a time, trying to feel interest in little things, and reading not so
+much for the sake of the story as to get acquainted with the pleasant
+people into whose company these writers bring you. A common book will
+often give you much amusement, but it is only a noble book which will
+give you dear friends. Remember, also, that it is of less importance to
+you in your earlier years, that the books you read should be clever than
+that they should be right. I do not mean oppressively or repulsively
+instructive; but that the thoughts they express should be just, and the
+feelings they excite generous. It is not necessary for you to read the
+wittiest or the most suggestive books: it is better, in general, to hear
+what is already known, and may be simply said. Much of the literature of
+the present day, though good to be read by persons of ripe age, has a
+tendency to agitate rather than confirm, and leaves its readers too
+frequently in a helpless or hopeless indignation, the worst possible
+state into which the mind of youth can be thrown. It may, indeed, become
+necessary for you, as you advance in life, to set your hand to things
+that need to be altered in the world, or apply your heart chiefly to
+what must be pitied in it, or condemned; but, for a young person, the
+safest temper is one of reverence, and the safest place one of
+obscurity. Certainly at present, and perhaps through all your life, your
+teachers are wisest when they make you content in quiet virtue, and that
+literature and art are best for you which point out, in common life, and
+in familiar things, the objects for hopeful labor, and for humble love.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+  [75] I do not mean necessarily to imply inferiority of rank in
+    saying that this second class of painters have questionable
+    qualities. The greatest men have often many faults, and sometimes
+    their faults are a part of their greatness; but such men are not, of
+    course, to be looked upon by the student with absolute implicitness
+    of faith.
+
+  [76] Including, under this term, John Lewis, and William Hunt of the
+    Old Water-color, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of
+    still life, I believe, that ever existed.
+
+  [77] The order in which I place these masters does not in the least
+    imply superiority or inferiority. I wrote their names down as they
+    occurred to me; putting Rossetti's last because what I had to say of
+    him was connected with other subjects; and one or another will
+    appear to you great, or be found by you useful, according to the
+    kind of subjects you are studying.
+
+  [78] This is especially the case in the St. Cecily, Rossetti's first
+    illustration to the "Palace of Art," which would have been the best
+    in the book had it been well engraved. The whole work should be
+    taken up again, and done by line engraving, perfectly; and wholly
+    from Pre-Raphaelite designs, with which no other modern work can
+    bear the least comparison.
+
+  [79] The praise I have given incidentally to Flaxman's sculpture in
+    the "Seven Lamps," and elsewhere, refers wholly to his studies from
+    Nature, and simple groups in marble, which were always good and
+    interesting. Still, I have overrated him, even in this respect; and
+    it is generally to be remembered that, in speaking of artists whose
+    works I cannot be supposed to have specially studied, the errors I
+    fall into will always be on the side of praise. For, of course,
+    praise is most likely to be given when the thing praised is above
+    one's knowledge; and, therefore, as our knowledge increases, such
+    things may be found less praiseworthy than we thought. But blame can
+    only be justly given when the thing blamed is below one's level of
+    sight; and, practically, I never do blame anything until I have got
+    well past it, and am certain that there is demonstrable falsehood in
+    it. I believe, therefore, all my blame to be wholly trust-worthy,
+    having never yet had occasion to repent of one depreciatory word
+    that I have ever written, while I have often found that, with
+    respect to things I had not time to study closely, I was led too far
+    by sudden admiration, helped, perhaps, by peculiar associations, or
+    other deceptive accidents; and this the more, because I never care
+    to check an expression of delight, thinking the chances are, that,
+    even if mistaken, it will do more good than harm; but I weigh every
+    word of blame with scrupulous caution. I have sometimes erased a
+    strong passage of blame from second editions of my books; but this
+    was only when I found it offended the reader without convincing him,
+    never because I repented of it myself.
+
+  [80] Large line engravings, I mean, in which the lines, as such, are
+    conspicuous. Small vignettes in line are often beautiful in figures
+    no less than landscape; as, for instance, those from Stothard's
+    drawings in Rogers's Italy; and, therefore, I have just recommended
+    the vignettes to Tennyson to be done by line engraving.
+
+  [81] Chapman's, if not the original.
+
+  [82] Gary's or Cayley's, if not the original. I do not know which
+    are the best translations of Plato. Herodotus and Aeschylus can only
+    be read in the original. It may seem strange that I name books like
+    these for "beginners:" but all the greatest books contain food for
+    all ages; and an intelligent and rightly bred youth or girl ought to
+    enjoy much, even in Plato, by the time they are fifteen or sixteen.
+
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CORRECTION MADE TO THE ORIGINAL TEXT.
+
+Page 58: 'Thus, the outline a and the outline d.' 'd' replaced by 'b.'
+
+
+
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