DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0127
1. ON FIRST PRACTICE
89
intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those
vine leaves of his, as well as of the grass.
100. When you have got familiarised to his hrm manner,
you may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same
way; and when you are tired of the intense care required
for this, you may fall into a little more easy massing of the
leaves, as in Fig. 10 (p. 81). This is facsimiled from an
engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-
rate in manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it
is a good enough model for your times of rest; and when
you cannot carry the thing even so far as this, you may
sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16A taking care
always to have thorough command over your hand; that
is, not to let the mass take a free shape because your hand
ran glibly over the paper, but because in Nature it has
actually a free and noble shape, and you have faithfully
followed the same.
101. And now that we have come to questions of noble
shape, as well as true shape, and that we are going to
draw from Nature at our pleasure, other considerations
enter into the business, which are by no means confined
to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this
letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the
most exacting of correspondents) I will arrange in a second
letter; praying you only to excuse the tiresomeness of this
first one—tiresomeness inseparable from directions touching
the beginning of any art,—and to believe me, even though
I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,
Very faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
* This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like it.
You will find it explained presently.!
i [See below, § 104, p. 91.]
89
intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those
vine leaves of his, as well as of the grass.
100. When you have got familiarised to his hrm manner,
you may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same
way; and when you are tired of the intense care required
for this, you may fall into a little more easy massing of the
leaves, as in Fig. 10 (p. 81). This is facsimiled from an
engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-
rate in manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it
is a good enough model for your times of rest; and when
you cannot carry the thing even so far as this, you may
sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16A taking care
always to have thorough command over your hand; that
is, not to let the mass take a free shape because your hand
ran glibly over the paper, but because in Nature it has
actually a free and noble shape, and you have faithfully
followed the same.
101. And now that we have come to questions of noble
shape, as well as true shape, and that we are going to
draw from Nature at our pleasure, other considerations
enter into the business, which are by no means confined
to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this
letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the
most exacting of correspondents) I will arrange in a second
letter; praying you only to excuse the tiresomeness of this
first one—tiresomeness inseparable from directions touching
the beginning of any art,—and to believe me, even though
I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,
Very faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.
* This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it looks like it.
You will find it explained presently.!
i [See below, § 104, p. 91.]