44

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.

[LETTER I.]

darkness, or power of dark relief from white — some
more, some less; and how this pitch or power of each
may be represented by equivalent values of grey, you
will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approxima-
tion by a glance of the eye, without any measuring
scale at all.

You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing
patterns, and any shapes of shade that you think
pretty, as veinings in marble or tortoiseshell, spots
in surfaces of shells, &c., as tenderly as you can, in
the darknesses that correspond to their colours; and
when you find you can do this successfully, it is
time to begin rounding.

EXERCISE VIII.

Go out into your garden, or into the road, and
pick up the first round or oval stone you can find,
not very white, nor very dark; and the smoother it
is the better, only it must not *shine*. Draw your
table near the window, and put the stone, which I

44

THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.

[LETTER I.

more, some less, and how this pitch or power of each
may be represented by equivalent values of grey, you
will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approxima-
tion by a glance of the eye, without any measuring
scale at all.

You must now go on for some time drawing
patterns and any shapes of shade that you think
pretty, as veinings in marble, or tortoiseshell, spots
in surfaces of shells, &c., as evenly as you can, in the
grays that correspond to their colours; and when
you find you can do this pretty successfully, it is
time for you to begin rounding.

Go out into your garden, or into the road, and
pick up the whitest round or oval stone you can find,
it need not be very white, if it is yellow or grey it
does not signify, and the smoother it is the better,
only it must not shine. Draw your table near the
window, and put the stone, which I will suppose is
about the size of a in Fig. 5. (it had better not be
much larger), on a piece of not very white paper, on
the table in front of you. Sit so that the light may
come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil

LETTER I.] ON FIRST PRACTICE.

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 considera-
tions enter into the business, which are by no means
confined to first practice, but extend to all prac-
tice; these (as this letter is long enough, I should
think, to satisfy even the most exacting of corre-
spondents) 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.