printing consists in inking the plate all over and wiping off
until only the lines retain any ink, when the plate is put in a press
and an impression taken. Or some slight amount of ink may be left on the
plate in certain places where a tint is wanted, and a little may be
smudged out of the lines themselves to give them a softer quality. In
fact there are no end of tricks a clever etching printer will adopt to
give quality to his print.

[Sidenote: Paper.]

The varieties of paper on the market at the service of the artist are
innumerable, and nothing need be said here except that the texture of
your paper will have a considerable influence on your drawing. But try
every sort of paper so as to find what suits the particular things you
want to express. I make a point of buying every new paper I see, and a
new paper is often a stimulant to some new quality in drawing. Avoid the
wood-pulp papers, as they turn dark after a time. Linen rag is the only
safe substance for good papers, and artists now have in the O.W. papers
a large series that they can rely on being made of linen only.

It is sometimes advisable, when you are not drawing a subject that
demands a clear hard line, but where more sympathetic qualities are
wanted, to have a wad of several sheets of paper under the one you are
working on, pinned on the drawing-board. This gives you a more
sympathetic surface to work upon and improves the quality of your work.
In redrawing a study with which you are not quite satisfied, it is a
good plan to use a thin paper, pinning it over the first study so that
it can be seen through. One can by this means start as it were from the
point where one left off. Good papers of this description are now on the
market. I fancy they are called "bank-note" papers.

XXI

CONCLUSION

Mechanical invention, mechanical knowledge, and even a mechanical theory
of the universe, have so influenced the average modern mind, that it has
been thought necessary in the foregoing pages to speak out strongly
against the idea of a mechanical standard of accuracy in artistic
drawing. If there were such a standard, the photographic camera would
serve our purpose well enough. And, considering how largely this idea is
held, one need not be surprised that some painters use the camera;
indeed, the wonder is that they do not use it more, as it gives in some
perfection the mechanical accuracy which is all they seem to aim at in
their work. There may b