The use of a lay figure will help you somewhat if you can get one
which is true in proportion. It will not help you much in the finer
modelling, but it will at least insure your structural lines being in
the right place, and that is as much as you can hope for without the
special study of the nude.

A lay figure is expensive, costing about three hundred dollars in this
country. You will hardly be apt to aspire to a full-sized one, as only
professional painters can afford to pay so much for accessories. But
small wooden ones are within the means of most people, and will be
found useful for the purpose I have mentioned, and one should be
obtained.

When you have assured yourself, as far as you can by its use with and
without special draperies, of the right action of your drawing, you
must do your painting from the draped model.

=The Model.=--Never paint without nature before you. If you paint the
figure, never paint without the model. For the sake of the study of
it, it goes without saying that you can learn to paint the figure only
by studying from the figure. But beyond that, for the sake of your
picture, you can have no hope of doing good work without working from
the actual object represented. The greatest masters have never done
pictures "out of their heads." The compositions and aesthetic qualities
came from their heads it is true, but they never worked these things
out on canvas without the aid of nature. And the greater the master,
the more humble was he in his dependence on nature for the truth of
his facts.

Much more, then, the student needs to keep himself rigidly to the
guidance of nature; and this he can only do by the constant use of the
model.

=One Figure or Many.=--Whether you have one or more figures, the
problem may be kept the same. The canvas must balance in mass and line
and in color. When you decide to make a picture with several figures,
study the composition first as if they were not _figures_, but groups
of masses and line. Get the whole to balance and compose, then decide
your color composition. Simplify rather than make complex. The more
you have of number, the more you should consider them as parts of a
whole. Keep the idea of grouping; combine the figures, rather than
divide them. Have every figure in some logical relation to its group,
and then the group in relation to the other parts. Don't string them
out or spot them about. Study the spaces between as well as the
spaces they