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THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING, [letter nr.

LETTEE IL

SKETCHING FROM NATURE.

My dear Header, — The work we have already gone
through together has, I hope, enabled you to draw with
fair success, either rounded and simple masses, like
stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like those
of leaves; provided only these masses or complexities
will stay quiet for you to copy, and do not extend
into quantity so great as to baffle your patience. But
if we are now to go out to the fields, and to draw
anything like a complete landscape, neither of these
conditions will any more be observed for us. The
clouds will not wait while we copy their heaps or
clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to
shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still
leaving light where its tremulous edge had rested
the moment before, and involving in eclipse ob-