Ix our chats on flower- painting we have hitherto confined our attention 

 chiefly to the blooms, but I have been thinking for some time how 

 necessary it is, if we wish to be successful with our sketches from Nature, 

 to give some careful attention to the foliage as well. It is a subject in 

 which you will find most interesting material for study, and as much 

 variety as in the flowers themselves. Perhaps it is a detail that artists, 

 anxious to compose a group of bright colour, strong and arresting for 

 exhibition purposes, are rather apt to neglect. Very often a painter will 

 concentrate his whole attention on a mass of bloom, and when it comes 

 to painting the leaves accompanying the flowers, he will express them 

 with the merest blur of green. 



But even in the slightest sketch there must be a suggestion of their 

 form and character, and this suggestion, achieved in a most wonderful 

 manner with a few well-placed dabs of a brush when a practised hand 

 has guided it, is the outcome of much preliminary careful exercise and 

 studv. 



It is really rather a dangerous thing, I think, to try to imitate the 

 masterly " dashing " style of execution we admire in a sketch by a 

 skilled hand. At best our drawing, based 

 on the experience of others, can be nothing 

 but an imitation, and as such can only be 

 poor and weak. We have a far, far better ^ 



chance of ultimate success if we profit by " "■ 



our own observance and practice, and thus 

 form a style of our own, independent of the \ 



ideas of others. Don't try to be " dashy " 

 until the dashiness comes of itself By dint 

 of practice you are unconsciously learning not ,. ^ 



only to sec things correctly, but also the most » 



y 



Sycoiv^^t 



■■"■^i*^ 



75 



