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WATER COLOUR SKETCHING. 
(Wirn Exutsits py AMATEURS. ) 
By the President, JAS. KAY, J.P. 24th March, 1903. 
‘* Now-a-days we seem determined that everything that can 
must be done by machine. This pertains not only to manu- 
factory but pervades our whole life, work and recreation. We 
speak by machine, we write by machine, we walk—or rather rush 
along the road—by machine, and besides stitching and knitting, 
sowing and reaping, we even play the piano by machine, and, 
worst of all, we make pictures by machine, and some very good 
people lay waste their artistic talent by becoming mere machine 
tenters, peeping behind three wooden legs, focussing, time taking, 
and then finishing their pictures in solitary confinement, in a 
dungeon dark and smelly. But they cannot, with all their 
machine manipulations, copy the colours of nature, so that, even 
in this age of machinery, we have left to us the art of colouring, 
and water colour sketching will probably remain with us as a 
practical Art for ages to come. 
There are many methods of sketching : sharp outlines, descrip- 
tive in a few strokes, after the manner of Pennell; shaded 
drawings, with great beauty of light and shade, after the manner 
of Herbert Railton ; or dashing charcoal or crayon sketches, after 
the style of George Sheffield, besides the beautiful blending by 
working with pastil, or the more enduring painting in oil. But 
there is no medium so handy, so effective, so truthful, or so 
beautiful as water colour. 
Your wants are few—paper, pencil, brushes, colour-box and 
water—the entire outfit can be carried in your top-coat pockets. 
One great charm about water colour sketching, is that everyone 
has a style of his own, and you can readily tell even the work of 
masters in the art, by their peculiar methods of treatment. 
Sketching is natural to everyone, being simply the exercise of 
one of the three great passions which govern all our actions. I 
refer to the passion of imitation. In sketching, we copy the form 
and colour of the scene before us as well as we can, or in other 
words, imitate the natural picture on paper or canvas, 
