to pose
a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. It was
right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked
up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in
concentrated lights. It is not right now. You cannot go back of your
century. To be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon.

Whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what
distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends
on the inherent character of it. That the difficulties as well as the
facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a
different application of the universal principles. Don't think that
landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of
green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a
smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that
the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the
more obvious right are more easily seen.

You must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the
different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what
common to all. You must find to what aesthetic qualities each most
readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and
what are the problems they offer.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE SKETCH

The sketch is the germ of the picture. It contains the idea which may
later become the finished work. In your sketches you gather effects
and suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. You do not work long
over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily. You do not make it
because you ought to, but because you see something in nature which
charms you; or because you have found an idea you wish to make a note
of.

Understand thoroughly the use and meaning of sketches, and you will
get more good from the making of them. For your sketching is an
important matter to your painting. You do not learn how to paint by
sketching; but you can learn a great many things, and some of them you
can learn no other way. A sketch is not a picture; neither is it a
study. Each of these things has its special purpose and function, and
its proper character.

A sketch is always a note of an idea--an idea seen or conceived.
Everything is sacrificed in the sketch to the noting of that idea. One
idea only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches.

There are two kinds o