Needless to say, distance does lend enchantment to the view in these thumbnail impressions, and they are far easier to draw when seen from a long distance. They are useful, too, for the few minutes' wait at a railway-station, or the short space of time spent at places when motoring. We can seize on a few of the salient or chief characteristics of the landscape and jot down tiny little pictures of houses and trees, hills and valleys, cliff-end and sea. The concentration necessary for these sketches will help us to grasp the chief characteristics of larger sketches.
A barn on the top of a sloping field, with a horse cropping the turf, and a morsel of a fence is as simple and direct a subject as one could find. Begin by sketching the slope of the ground, on which erect the shape of the barn, with its pointed roof, then the upright palings and short bushes, the horse with bent neck and the barrel shape of its rounded body.
Then as to the colour. A soft yellow light pervades sky, barn, grass, and horse, and on this float the rounded misty shapes of the grey clouds. The golden-brown roof is touched with cooler grey shadows on the near side, and the grass mingles with the reddish soil, something the same tint as the barn. The hedge is olive deepening to brown, and the flank and neck of the horse is a richer brown and olive sharpened with darker tints.
Light and shade out of doors is often most bewildering to the young student. The light is suffused, the air is clean and penetrating, shadows flicker and change.
Before beginning a sketch try to decide on the most definite bits of light and shade. Make a thumbnail sketch in the corner of your book if you will, in pencil or charcoal. Say to yourself, "The sun was out, the rays shone from that particular angle." Should you find the shadows and rays vanishing before the approach of large clouds, wait till the clouds pass. If, instead of passing, more clouds appear, then begin another sketch, for those clouds change the whole effect of the landscape. And how much they
