cept 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 valua