And never, never tinker with your sketch when you take it home.
Now, having given fair warning, let us proceed to details.
The secret of successful sketching is to arrive at your chosen place fresh and eager for work.
If you burden yourself with a lot of sketching paraphernalia, you will arrive with aching arms, hot and tired, and possibly cross. "Travel light when sketching" is a good motto. Take with you only essential sketching materials. A block or a book, and, if the book has limp covers, a piece of board or stiff cardboard on which to rest it, a pencil, india-rubber, paint-box, brushes, and a bottle of water are necessities. An easel, a camp-stool, a sketching umbrella, personally I should regard as superflous.
It is usually possible to hold your book in such a way that your paper is shaded by your shoulder, your hat, or the opposite page.
A stile, fence, stone, stump, or bank more often than not offers a convenient resting-place and saves you the trouble of carrying a camp-stool.
If the weather is damp, an ordinary newspaper carried under your sketch-book and folded and used as a cushion is a good precaution against catching colds; should the weather be very hot the same paper, folded and held fan-wise, shields the page from the glare of the sun.
