ill find this
basis of tone music, this crescendo and diminuendo throughout all his
later work (see illustration, page 215 [Transcribers Note: Diagram
XXVI]).

These are three of the more extreme types of trees to be met with in
art, but the variations on these types are very numerous. Whatever
treatment you adopt, the tree must be considered as a whole, and some
rhythmic form related to this large impression selected. And this
applies to all forms with serrated edges: some large order must be found
to which the fussiness of the edges must conform.

The subject of edges generally is a very important one, and one much
more worried over by a master than by the average student. It is
interesting to note how all the great painters have begun with a hard
manner, with edges of little variety, from which they have gradually
developed a looser manner, learning to master the difficulties of design
that hard contours insist on your facing, and only when this is
thoroughly mastered letting themselves develop freely this play on the
edges, this looser handling.

For under the freest painting, if it be good, there will be found a
bed-rock structure of well-constructed masses and lines. They may never
be insisted on, but their steadying influence will always be felt. So
err in your student work on the side of hardness rather than looseness,
if you would discipline yourself to design your work well. Occasionally
only let yourself go at a looser handling.

[Sidenote: Variety of Gradiation.]

Variety of gradation will naturally be governed largely by the form and
light and shade of the objects in your composition. But while studying
the gradations of tone that express form and give the modelling, you
should never neglect to keep the mind fixed upon the relation the part
you are painting bears to the whole picture. And nothing should be done
that is out of harmony with this large conception. It is one of the most
difficult things to decide the amount of variety and emphasis allowable
for the smaller parts of a picture, so as to bring all in harmony with
that oneness of impression that should dominate the whole; how much of
your scale of values it is permissible to use for the modelling of each
individual part. In the best work the greatest economy is exercised in
this respect, so that as much power may be kept in reserve as possible.
You have only the one scale from black to white to work with, only one
octave within the limits of