Page:Drawing for Beginners.djvu/186

 If you wish to draw a tall subject, such as a tree, a narrow building, an upright flower or figure, hold your sketch-book in an upright position. If you intend drawing a long-shaped subject, a reclining figure of a person or animal, a wide-spreading building, a stretch of low-lying ground, hold the book open at the full width of the page. Beginners are prone to dash at a subject, and, finding they have drawn it on a smaller scale than they intended, add other details until the page is filled.

But why fill the whole page? An artist's sketch-book is a book of scraps. He seldom carries his sketches up to the margin of his paper. One page may, and often does, carry an amazing variety of subjects.

If you decide to do a small sketch keep to that intention. Should you feel unhappy because a wide margin surrounds your small sketch, frame the sketch with a lightly drawn pencil line.

It is astonishing how important are these apparently trivial matters, how much they influence the sketch for good or ill.

We will presume that you have arrived at your destination and are sitting in a shady place, faced with a bewildering number of beautiful things. After fixing and unfixing your mind many times you at length decide to draw something