118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are in haste, with
an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure
your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very
subtle; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so
everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you
are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is
both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the
gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the
sharp touches, on which the best of the detail depends, getting
gradually deadened by time, or to find the places where force was wanted
look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the
steady use of the pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it;
keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but
never being without this.

119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to
draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
note one or two points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and
the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of
beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:

120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account of their
associations; or at least do not draw them because you love them; but
merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw
places that you love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat
brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset
hedges; besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor to
make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your
progress. You ne