Page:The practice of water-colour painting (IA cu31924014501971).pdf/233

attractive phase of nature, and will be helpful as a guide in working out a more deliberate picture on some future occasion. The merest blot which sums up suggestively a big effect is more worth possessing than an unfinished study of detail which realises only part of the subject and conveys no intelligible impression of the broad aspect of the landscape.

Of course, the artist who intends to use his out-of-door sketches as material for more elaborate indoor work must do more than take notes of atmospheric effects; he must make studies – many careful and precise studies – of the smaller details which have to be introduced into the pictures he proposes to paint. Without a very thorough grasp of broad effects, however, he will not be able to combine these details properly, and to make them keep their right place in a painting slowly evolved and deliberately worked out. Details which demand more attention than they are entitled to receive are only defects in an otherwise well-constructed picture.

Roughly, the way to manage a landscape