Page:A Treatise on Painting.djvu/288

 blended shadows, particularly in those parts where the inside of the room appears less obscure, because there the shadows are almost imperceptible: the cause of which we shall explain in its proper place.

 

Do not make the boundaries of your figures with any other colour than that of the back-ground, on which they are placed; that is, avoid making dark outlines.   The extremities of objects which are at some distance, are not seen so distinctly as if they were nearer. Therefore the painter ought to regulate the strength of his outlines, or extremities, according to the distance.

The boundaries which separate one body from another, are of the nature of mathematical lines, but not of real lines. The end of any colour is only the beginning of another, and it ought not to be called a line, for nothing interposes between them, except the termination of the one against the other, which being nothing in itself, cannot be perceivable; Rh