make your outlines
as _equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two
following purposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II.,
for if you cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to
terminate your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is
absent; or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are
pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined,
for the most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer
one being shown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more
distant one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required
to round each tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot
often get time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each
tree as is done by Duerer in Fig. 13, you will get a most useful
memorandum of their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only
observe in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick
one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of
Duerer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately
descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a
shape, definitely observed and set down; it contains a true
"signalement" of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of
hedge, all round that village. If you have not time to draw thus
carefully, do not draw at all--you are merely wasting your work and
spoiling your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice you
may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet;
except sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell you
presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to
objects which have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone,
when it rises against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline
folds in drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at
all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no
good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute.
You see, in that wood-cut of Duerer's, his reason for even limiting
himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains,
is that he may leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more
by the dark sky and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real
and sunny only by the addition of these shades.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.]