e of drawing guide lines
and taking measurements and blocking in your work. This is very
necessary in academic work, if rather fettering to expressive drawing;
but even in the most academic drawing the artistic intelligence must be
used, although that is not the kind of drawing this chapter is
particularly referring to.

Look well at the model first; try and be moved by something in the form
that you feel is fine or interesting, and try and see in your mind's eye
what sort of drawing you mean to do before touching your paper. In
school studies be always unflinchingly honest to the impression the
model gives you, but dismiss the camera idea of truth from your mind.
Instead of converting yourself into a mechanical instrument for the
copying of what is before you, let your drawing be an expression of
truth perceived intelligently.

Be extremely careful about the first few strokes you put on your paper:
the quality of your drawing is often decided in these early stages. If
they are vital and expressive, you have started along lines you can
develop, and have some hope of doing a good drawing. If they are feeble
and poor, the chances are greatly against your getting anything good
built upon them. If your start has been bad, pull yourself together,
turn your paper over and start afresh, trying to seize upon the big,
significant lines and swings in your subject at once. Remember it is
much easier to put down a statement correctly than to correct a wrong
one; so out with the whole part if you are convinced it is wrong. Train
yourself to make direct, accurate statements in your drawings, and don't
waste time trying to manoeuvre a bad drawing into a good one. Stop as
soon as you feel you have gone wrong and correct the work in its early
stages, instead of rushing on upon a wrong foundation in the vague hope
that it will all come right in the end. When out walking, if you find
you have taken a wrong road you do not, if you are wise, go on in the
hope that the wrong way will lead to the right one, but you turn round
and go back to the point at which you left the right road. It is very
much the same in drawing and painting. As soon as you become aware that
you have got upon the wrong track, stop and rub out your work until an
earlier stage that was right is reached, and start along again from this
point. As your eye gets trained you will more quickly perceive when you
have done a wrong stroke, and be able to correct it before having