gone
very far along the wrong road.

Do not work too long without giving your eye a little rest; a few
moments will be quite sufficient. If things won't come, stop a minute;
the eye often gets fatigued very quickly and refuses to see truly, but
soon revives if rested a minute or two.

Do not go labouring at a drawing when your mind is not working; you are
not doing any good, and probably are spoiling any good you have already
done. Pull yourself together, and ask what it is you are trying to
express, and having got this idea firmly fixed in your mind, go for your
drawing with the determination that it shall express it.

All this will sound very trite to students of any mettle, but there are
large numbers who waste no end of time working in a purely mechanical,
lifeless way, and with their minds anywhere but concentrated upon the
work before them. And if the mind is not working, the work of the hand
will be of no account. My own experience is that one has constantly to
be making fresh effort during the procedure of the work. The mind is apt
to tire and needs rousing continually, otherwise the work will lack the
impulse that shall make it vital. Particularly is this so in the final
stages of a drawing or painting, when, in adding details and small
refinements, it is doubly necessary for the mind to be on fire with the
initial impulse, or the main qualities will be obscured and the result
enfeebled by these smaller matters.

Do not rub out, if you can possibly help it, in drawings that aim at
artistic expression. In academic work, where artistic feeling is less
important than the discipline of your faculties, you may, of course, do
so, but even here as little as possible. In beautiful drawing of any
facility it has a weakening effect, somewhat similar to that produced by
a person stopping in the middle of a witty or brilliant remark to
correct a word. If a wrong line is made, it is left in by the side of
the right one in the drawing of many of the masters. But the great aim
of the draughtsman should be to train himself to draw cleanly and
fearlessly, hand and eye going together. But this state of things cannot
be expected for some time.

Let painstaking accuracy be your aim for a long time. When your eye and
hand have acquired the power of seeing and expressing on paper with some
degree of accuracy what you see, you will find facility and quickness of
execution will come of their own accord. In drawing of any express