CHAPTER XII
Sketching Out of Doors
TO the keen, enthusiastic young artist there is nothing more fascinating, more enthralling, than sketching out of doors.
A walk abroad among foreign scenes and strange people or a walk at home among one's own familiar haunts can be equally fruitful.
There are one or two points which need explaining, and one or two pitfalls of which the novice might be warned.
For the ardent young sketcher frequently digs a pit for his own feet. He begins a 'sketch,' but he pursues it into a finished study.
A sketch, it must be remembered, should be a sketch and nothing more. It is a trifle, an impression.
"How unfinished!" remarks some one, looking over the young artist's shoulder. Do not let the remark influence you against your better judgment.
Did you begin the sketch as an impression of a particular thing—the wind swaying a spray of flowers, a branch, or a tree, a cloud passing over a distant hill and blurring its contour, a scrap of rugged masonry, a sunny portion of a terrace, a garden seat, a toy flung on the grass, a fragment of a flower over which a bird or butterfly hovers? Then do not try to finish it. All the spirit of the sketch will vanish if you 'finish' one tiny portion at the expense of another part.
Experience, that hard taskmaster, and experience only, will teach you how far to carry your sketch.
But the main thing to remember is this. If you wish to sketch—sketch. Leave the finished study for other times.
