Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/117

DRAWING exquisite and subtle lines of the most beautiful, the most perfect thing in nature—the nude human figure. Therefore, although we take it for granted that the drawing of a landscape shall be good, it is not in the drawing of landscape itself that landscape drawing can best be learned. When the eye is once trained to see and feel the infinite delicacies of the human form, it will find no difficulties in any of the other forms of nature. A landscapist should, of course, familiarize himself with the character of the trees, the hills, the turn of winding streams and of hillside roads by making frequent pencil drawings from nature, but he should first of all learn to draw. Hence, when the student brings in badly drawn landscape studies, the only thing to do is to send him back to town; or, if he happens to be a capable [83]