w the thinner stalks and leaves
gradually disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness where they
were, and make another study of the effect at each distance, taking care
to draw nothing more than you really see, for in this consists all the
difference between what would be merely a _miniature_ drawing of the
leaves seen _near_, and a _full-size_ drawing of the same leaves at a
distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would really appear
of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass held at the
same distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your drawing. You
can always ascertain this full size of any object by holding your paper
upright before you, at the distance from your eye at which you wish your
drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you have to draw,
and mark upon this edge the points where the outline of the object
crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You will always find it,
thus measured, smaller than you supposed.

When you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your own
drawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real trees,
because the black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and does not
shake, and is not confused by sparkles of lustre on the leaves,) you may
try the extremities of the real trees, only not doing much at a time,
for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex your sight. And
this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the outline itself; at
least the chemical action of the light in a photograph extends much
within the edges of the leaves, and, as it were, eats them away so that
no tree extremity, stand it ever so still, nor any other form coming
against bright sky, is truly drawn by a photograph; and if you once
succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you will find the result much
more lovely and interesting than any photograph can be.

All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the dark
form of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those sprays,
and in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much more
embarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some lustre, and _all_ are
more or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in any
given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and
foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or
hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves--often very