me books; and you will see it
reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its
own colour mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw
these reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted,
as you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the
lustre to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects
in general practice; only you should do one or two in order to
understand the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as
you cannot avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the
shining of silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression
of their folds. Observe, also, that there are very few things which are
totally without lustre: you will frequently find a light which puzzles
you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another
object.

And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the
point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I
give you leave to use the brush with one colour,--sepia, or blue-black,
or mixed cobalt and blue-black, or neutral tint; and this will much
facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminarily, you must do
one or two more exercises in tinting.

EXERCISE IX.

Prepare your colour as before directed. Take a brush full of it, and
strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush gets dry
sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper
very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number of more
or less minute interstices in the colour. The lighter and faster every
dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry, and as soon as it is dry,
with little colour in your brush, so that you can bring it to a fine
point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make the
whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more colour,
always trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly applied
colour exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new colour
dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first. Retouch
it, therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A very
small bit of colour thus filled up with your very best care, and brought
to look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you
better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in carelessly;
so do it with your best patience, not