the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere with
the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to hew and shape
your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have got it as
right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest
your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the
pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen
point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part
of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the present
day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of shade; all
such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for your
exercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is better,
however, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does not in
the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but it
matters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place than
in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even line
slowly and in any direction; all _dashing_ lines, or approximations to
penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the
ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it
in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.

As soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you have
made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in the
_slowness_. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a
sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[201] the real
difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but
keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.

EXERCISE III.

Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares, and
chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for rest.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading
instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to
produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2., the dark tint passing gradually
into the lighter ones. Nearly _all_ expression of form, in drawing,
depends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is
always most skilful which passes from one tint into another _very
little_ paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your
work, as in Fig. 2., and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to
black, passing over