parts of the object when you sight at them
across the coal. Measure horizontal and vertical proportions into
themselves and into each other. Height and breadth are checks to each
other. If the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the
smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each
other _as well as to breadth_. Measure these and you are sure of being
right.

=Steps.=--Divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. You will
find it a helpful thing in studying. You will do it quite naturally
later. Do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training.

_First step._--Measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole
group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme.

_Second step._--Outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines
possible. Give the general shape of the whole. This blocks it in.

_Third step._--Measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts
most prominent, if it be a single object. Measure its height and
breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the
dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. Enclose it in straight
lines as you did with the whole mass.

_Fourth step._--Find the more important of the lesser proportions in
each object, and block them out also. This should map out your drawing
exactly and with some completeness.

_Fifth step._--Lay in simple flat tones to fill in these outlines,
and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so.

_Sixth step._--This should leave your paper with a few large masses of
dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller
masses, giving more refinement to the whole. This also should so break
up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess.

_Seventh step._--Put in such accents of dark, or take out such of
light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing.

I do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but
it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less
modified, is practically the basis of all methods. In practised hands
it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. I have
seen most beautiful work done in this way.

=Home Study.=--It is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw
well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good
drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them.

Good drawing is a combination of ex