on of their
cause, as in Fig. 22. _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
it would appear, as in Fig. 22. _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of grey on the light
hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.]

Studies of this kind are easily made when you are in haste, with an F.
or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to ensure your
drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle;
they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The
pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are master of the
pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is both, and will draw a
line with the precision of the one and the gradation of the other;
nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches, on which
the best of the detail depends, getting gradually deadened by time, or
to find the places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a
fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the steady use of the pen, or
brush, and colour, whenever time admits of it; keeping only a small
memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed
pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but never being
without this.

Thus much, then, respecting the _manner_ in which you are at first to
draw from nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
note one or two points respecting your _choice_ of subjects for study,
and the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius