nce, and the
glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of
the bottoms of the objects. The drapery now helps in line also, and
gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole.
This group is about as well placed as these objects will come. There
is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity.

Of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with
only two things. But you must give them some relation both as to fact
and as to position. The same elements of unity and balance and line
come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as
elements in your group.

In this way study composition with still life. Move things about and
see how they look; use your eye and judgment. Get to see things
together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on
"Composition" to all sorts of things in nature.

=Scope of Study.=--Drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to
which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and
values with still life. The drawing is not so severe as that of the
antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to
draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you
please; and as I said at first, you need never lack an amiable model.

All sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life;
and of color and texture also. The study of surface and texture is
most important to you. If you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a
cow the first time; if you were to paint without previous experience
a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet
or satin dress, you would not succeed. These all involve problems of
skill and facility of representation. When you paint a portrait or
figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to
deal with, as new, problems of this sort. You should have arrived at
some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not
complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. This is where
still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier.

=Interest.=--But the use of this sort of painting is not only its
practical _use_. You need not feel that it is all drudgery--which is
something that most students do not love! You may make pictures with a
much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture,
and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful i