ly on them. You can pack them better, and you can frame
them more conveniently, because one frame will always do for many
pictures. Perhaps there is no one piece of advice which I can give you
which will be of more practical use outside of the principles of
painting, than this of keeping to a few well-chosen sizes of canvas,
and the keeping of a number of each always on hand.

It is all well enough to talk about not showing one's work too soon.
But we all do, and always will like to see our work under as favorable
conditions as possible. And a good frame is one of the favorable
conditions. But good frames are expensive, and it is a great advantage
to be able to have a frame always at hand which you can see your work
in from time to time; and if you only work on four sizes of canvas,
say, then four frames, one for each size, will suit all your pictures
and sketches. Use the same sizes for all kinds of work too, and the
freedom will come, as I say, in the working on those sizes.

Don't have odd sizes about. You can just as well as not use the
regular sizes and proportions which colormen keep in stock, and there
is an advantage in being able to get a canvas at short notice, and it
will be one of your own sizes, and will fit your frame. All artists
have gone through the experience of eliminating odd sizes from their
stock, and it is one of the practical things that we all have to come
down to sooner or later, and the sooner the better,--to have the sizes
which we find we like best, not too many, and stick to them. I would
have you take advantage of this, and decide early in your work, and so
get rid of one source of bother.

=Rough and Smooth.=--The best canvas is of linen. Cotton is used for
sketching canvas. But you would do well always to use good grounds to
work on. You can never tell beforehand how your work will turn out;
and if you should want to keep your work, or find it worth while to go
on with it, you would be glad that you had begun it on a good linen
canvas. The linen is stronger and firmer, and when it has a "grain,"
the grain is better.

=Grain.=--The question of grain is not easy to speak about without the
canvas, yet it is often a matter of importance. There are many kinds
of surface, from the most smooth to the most rugged. Some grain it is
well the canvas should have; too great smoothness will tend to make
the painting "slick," which is not a pleasant quality. A grain gives
the canvas a "tooth," and