hem as material in color or black and white, and as
mental material by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained
in this way.

In making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself
by the difficulty and size of the thing you are studying. A study of
an interior or a landscape may occupy a week or two; one of a simple
object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a few
hours. But in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and
remember that what you are doing is neither a sketch nor a picture,
but the gathering of material which is to be useful, but which can be
useful only so far as it is accurate.

In making studies, don't try for surface finish; get the facts, and
leave all other qualities for the picture. Don't glaze and scumble,
but work as directly as you can. Study the structure and texture of
whatever you are doing. Understand it thoroughly as you go on, and
search out whatever is not clear to you. This is no place for effects;
nor for slighting or shirking. If you do not do work of this kind
thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all--better; for you are at
least not training yourself to be careless.

There are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study
is not that place.

Take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. Get all your foundation
work true. Have a good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and
then build your superstructure of careful study.

Don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here.
All that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to
have it. You can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but a
groundwork of exactness is not to be despised.

Be exact also with your values. If your study is not sure of its
values, it will weaken the results you should get from it later.

Make your studies in the same light as that which the picture will
represent. You can paint a picture under any light you please if your
studies give you the facts as to light and shade that the truth to
nature requires; but studies made in one light for a picture
representing another are useless to that picture.

No good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. When you
are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare
yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may
require. Don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and
your "general knowledge." Tha