Page:Drawing for Beginners.djvu/262

 Nothing cramps the style more effectually than block or book of a minute size.

Buy pencils of a medium quality&mdash;HB, B, or BB. BBB's are useful for soft and sympathetic studies, for rich shadows and textures.

Rubber of soft crumbly substance is preferable to hard or gummy rubbers; ink-eraser should never be used, it destroys the surface of the paper.

A sketch-book, a pencil, a piece of paper, and a knife&mdash;these are all that are required for a start.

If you wish to draw on a larger scale, you must buy paper by the sheet, which necessitates a drawing-board, drawing-pins, and an easel. Easels are stocked in every quality, size, shape, and description, and listed in all the colourmen's catalogues.

For water-colour painting you require a small colour-box (japanned boxes are lighter and more useful for sketching purposes than wooden boxes), a moderate range of colours, and a couple of good camel-hair or sable brushes.

Good brushes are essential. You can trim your pencil, your chalk, your charcoal to suit your various needs, but you must abide by the brush. A brush that spreads and splits, or that moults its hair over the paper, will be of little use. A large full brush and a small brush will suffice for every purpose. Or, if preferred, one full brush of a medium size (number five or six) with a fine point will do the work of two.

When choosing a brush dip it in a pan of water and roll the point on the hand or on a piece of paper, to make certain that it has a good point.

The old-fashioned hard cakes of paint had many excellent qualities; the colours were lasting and good, but the rubbing process was certainly tedious, and they are seldom seen nowadays. The half-pans of moist paint have taken their place; they are not wasteful, provided they are used with ordinary care. On the other hand, tubes of paint&mdash;bearing in mind that we invariably squeeze out more colour than is necessary&mdash;are, most decidedly, extravagant.