out attaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point
being, not that every line should be precisely what we intend or wish,
but that the line which we intended or wished to draw should be right.
If we always see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the
hand may stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it
does not matter how firm the hand is. Do not therefore torment yourself
because you cannot do as well as you would like; but work patiently,
sure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of
power; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a
more amusing exercise for you.

EXERCISE VI.

20. Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of
leaves, and which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall,
or other light ground: it must not be against strong light, or you will
find the looking at it hurt your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or
you will be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in
shade; and the sky blue, or gray, or dull white. A wholly gray or rainy
day is the best for this practice.

21. You will see that all the boughs of the tree are dark against the
sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map
with absolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the
roundness of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them
in with pencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct
and alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your
paper is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is
exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in
curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them
with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had
to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy
penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave
the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the
whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not
take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused
network or mist; leave them all out,[6] drawing only the main branches
as far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not
to draw a tree, but to learn how to do so. When you have got the thing
as nearly right as you can,--and it is better to make