the greatest possible distance, yet so that every
part of the band may have visible change in it. The perception of
gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many
artists), and you will probably, for some time, think your gradation
skilful enough when it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece
of grey shaded riband, and comparing it with your drawing, you may
arrive, in early stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction
with it. Widen your band little by little as you get more skilful, so as
to give the gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the
same time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest
and the most beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and
try to consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a
piece of paper coloured blue, or grey, or purple, as it happens to be,
and observe how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the
space in the window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on
the outside and inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look
round and hollow;[202] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus
gradually you will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the
light as it increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your
eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.

But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects in
which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad
omen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of
by you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of
sky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the
corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to
gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as
_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without colour, no, nor with colour
either; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your
spots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the
sense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all
great painters, however delicate their perception of colour, are fond of
the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,
and in a woodc