Page:Pencil Sketching from Nature.djvu/20

 they are suggested by a few serrate lines and smartly accented dots.

In the center of the sketch, the planes which go to make the forms constructive in character, have been carefully considered, and by use of outline leading away from mass, the eye has suggested to it these planes even where there is little but blank paper. Lastly there is to be noted the sparing use of deep black which has here and there been spotted in near some white, to give depth to a shadow and sparkle to the sketch as a whole. By one device and another, the eye is led into the picture and coaxed to the center of interest, where the old Spanish garden clings to the crag in a blaze of August sunshine.

This analysis will show in a measure how such a sketch is to be made. The subject once chosen one notes lightly upon the paper a few dots and a line or two to mark the proportions of the most salient forms. (Figure 5). One must then determine upon the contrasts which one will show, must determine, in other words, whether one will draw the tree as a light or a dark mass, whether window or door shall gape cavernously or shall exist merely as a few well drawn lines. The light and dark planes of the model will condition certain of these contrasts but it must be understood that for the most part, the translation and representation of these tones is a matter of choice— of nice appreciation of "effect."

The center of interest will of course be the point to which attention is chiefly to be directed. Some moments may be advantageously spent in simply studying the model with a view to its simplification, to determining just how few things may be put into the sketch without its becoming empty and uninteresting. For the most