one: 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