teresting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,
try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your
experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look
of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of
tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to
prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,
however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your
Duereresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing
be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or
disguised.

115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with
a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of
gray, which will fix the pencil. While this fixing color is wet, take
out the higher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry,
scratch out the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes,
carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper is
to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well; for you can
get more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on
cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with body-color
white, unless you are consummately skillful. There is no objection to
your making your Duereresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend much on your
white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake.

116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for
Duereresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the
shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can
at once, and to get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more
color again and again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out your
chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the color off
here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the
wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it
off with your sponge, etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and
mark the outline characters vigorously,