thing and everything is available for
still life. You should be constantly on the lookout for interesting
objects of all kinds. Try to get a collection which has as much
variety in form, size, and surface as you can. Old things are
generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things
the best. An object is not intrinsically better because of its being
more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities,
as of color or history, because of its age.

What you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things
you get. The cost is not of any importance at all. You can pick up
things for a few cents which will be most useful. Have all sorts of
things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. Have metals and glass,
and books and plaques. They all come in, and they add to the variety
and interest of your compositions.

=Draperies.=--The study of drapery particularly is facilitated by
still-life study. You can arrange your draperies so that they are an
essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to
paint from them, and need not be moved at all. This fact of "staying
power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to
the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in
any other kinds of work. The value of the antique in drawing lies in
its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. In still life you
have the same, with color added. You can give all your attention and
time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day
if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you
left it to-day. This as it applies to drapery is only the more useful.
You can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. To
study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question,
because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be
gotten into exactly the same lines again.

Still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into
any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture.

In draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you
have of the more massive objects,--variety of surface, of color, and
of texture. Do not have all velvet and silk. These are very useful and
beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk.
Satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by
men, and so you should study