ore, at
once, that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in
the reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor
markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature, you
are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in doing this find
that you cannot get the _projection_ of things sufficiently shown; but
never mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,
but great need that their relations of shade to each other should be
preserved. All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration
of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more
or less bad; a thoroughly fine drawing or painting will always show a
slight tendency towards _flatness_.

Observe, on the other hand, that however white an object may be, there
is always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must
therefore have a slight tone of grey over everything in your picture
except on the extreme high lights; even the piece of white paper, in
your subject, must be toned slightly down, unless (and there are a
thousand chances to one against its being so) it should all be turned so
as fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white
objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian,
you will soon understand this.[213]

As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush the
undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed to
draw more complicated and beautiful things.[214] And first, the boughs
of trees, now not in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the
first bit of branch or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut
off the ends of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only
about a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit
of branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw
it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above
all things, to get an accurate expression of its structure at the fork
of the branch. When once you have mastered the tree at its _armpits_,
you will have little more trouble with it.

Always draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you see
it. Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is
behind it, ugly or not, else you will never know whether the light and
shade are right; they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of
the background. An