f sketches: those made from nature to seize an
effect of some sort; and those made to work out or express tersely
some composition or scheme of color which you have in your mind. Both
are of great use to the student as well as essential to the work of
the artist.

[Illustration: =Sketch of a Hillside blocked in from Nature, First
Suggestion of Composition, etc.=]

The first conception of a picture is always embodied in the form of a
sketch, and the artist will make as many sketches as he thinks of
changes in his original idea. It is in this form that he works out
his picture problem. He is troubled here by nothing but the one thing
he has in mind at this time. It may be an arrangement of line or of
mass. He changes and rearranges it as he pleases, not troubling
himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of
color, nor of anything but that one of composition. It may be a scheme
of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble
the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of
color to the painter, and everything bends to that. When this has been
decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough
to think of other things. And think of other things he does, before he
makes his picture; but not in this sketch; in another sketch or other
sketches, each with its own problem, or in studies which will furnish
more material to be used later; or in the picture itself, where the
problem is the unity of the various ideas within the great whole in
the completed painting.

It is the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of
purpose. No picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards
built up on the same canvas or not. The sketch points the way. But all
the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition
or color; are not conceptions of the brain. There are suggestions
received from nature which the painter perceives rather than
conceives. Possibilities show themselves in these, but it is in the
sketch that they first become tangible and stable. This is the sketch
from nature, always the record of an impression, the note of an idea
hinted by one fact or condition seen more sharply or clearly than any
or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the moment.

The painter must always sketch from nature. Only by so doing can he be
constantly in touch with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected
by multitudinous f