y hours' practice, will give
you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever you want to draw,
and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other people's work: of
which hours, if you have one to spare at present, we may as well begin
at once.

EXERCISE I.

Everything that you can see, in the world around you, presents itself to
your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours
variously shaded.[199] Some of these patches of colour have an
appearance of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk
has of threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs; but whether
this be the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of
a patch of some definite colour; and the first thing to be learned is,
how to produce extents of smooth colour, without texture.

This can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft at
the point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpractised
hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it
is better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and
fine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by
working over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be
properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the best
artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument,
in order thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be
content to do so for a considerable period.

Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of
colour, we must be able to lay on _one_ colour properly, in whatever
gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore,
first to lay on tints or patches of _grey_, of whatever depth we want,
with a pointed instrument. Take any finely-pointed steel pen (one of
Gillott's lithographic crow-quills is best), and a piece of quite
smooth, but not shining, note-paper, cream-laid, and get some ink that
has stood already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black,
and as thick as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and
draw four straight lines, so as to enclose a square or nearly a square,
about as large as _a_, Fig. 1. I say nearly a square, because it does
not in the least matter whether it is quite square or not, the object
being merely to get a space enclosed by straight lines.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

Now, try to fill in that square space with c