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
subjec