i.

Endeavour to look at the subject or sitter from which you are painting,
as if it was a picture. This will in some degree render it more easy to
be copied.

In painting consider the object before you, whatever it may be, as more
made out by light and shadow than by lines.

A student should begin his career by a careful finishing and making out
the parts; as practice will give him freedom and facility of hand: a
bold and unfinished manner is commonly the habit of old age.

On painting a head--

Let those parts which turn or retire from the eye be of broken or mixed
colours, as being less distinguished and nearer the borders.

Let all your shadows be of one colour: glaze them till they are so.

Use red colours in the shadows of the most delicate complexions, but
with discretion.

Contrive to have a screen with red or yellow colour on it, to reflect
the light on the shaded part of the sitter's face.

Avoid the chalk, the brick dust, and the charcoal, and think on a pearl
and a ripe peach.

Avoid long continued lines in the eyes, and too many sharp ones.

Take care to give your figure a sweep or sway.

Outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the
background.

Never make the contour too coarse.

Avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make
parallels, triangles, etc.

The parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper
shadowed, and better seen.

Keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows.

Where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest
light.

Let nothing start out or be too strong for its place.

Squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine
line in comparison appears feeble and tottering.

* * * * *

One is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of
painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions.
Farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration
of the exhibitions at the Society of Arts from 1760, until the
foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, are both instructive and
amusing.

"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest
evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their
commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and
appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined
to subjects either gross or pueril