Ruskin, John: The elements of drawing: in three letters to beginners (London, 1857)

138

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING. [letter ii.

after you have gained experience, but they are a
little against you in early attempts at tinting; still
you must fight through the difficulty, and get the
power of producing delicate gradations with brown
or grey, like those of the photograph.

Now observe; the perfection of work would be
tinted shadow, like photography, without any ob-
scurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long as
your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your
art is not perfect, though it may be first-rate of its
kind. But to get complete results in tints merely,
requires both long time and consummate skill; and
you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with
a tint dashed over or under them, get more ex-
pression of facts than you could reach in any other
way, by the same expenditure of time. The use
of the Liber Studiorum print to you is chiefly as
an example of the simplest shorthand of this
kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing
with the most siibtle natural effects; for the firm
etching gets at the expression of complicated
details, as leaves, masonry, textures of ground,