OBSERVATIONS ON, AND RULES FOR, SKETCHING.


The following hints, tending to further the tyro's progress in the
delightful art of drawing, will not I trust prove unacceptable to such
of your readers as are interested in the subject. For my own use I
epitomized various directions relative to sketching, when I met with
them in Gilpin's "Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty," and I shall feel
particularly happy should my attempt at condensing much artistical
matter from that interesting volume prove useful to the _amateur_: the
_professor_ undergoes a regular, severe, but _essential_ course of study
in that beautiful art, which is to purchase for him fame and emolument;
but he who takes up his pencil merely for pastime, will do well to
regulate its movements by a few _rules_, not cumbrous to the memory, and
of easy application.--It is my intention briefly to state the object of
Gilpin's first and second essays; from the third I have deduced those
_rules for sketching_ which appeared most obviously to result from the
tenour of his observations:--

Essay 1st discusses the difference between _actual_ and _picturesque_
beauty; _smoothness_ is usually allowed to enter into our ideas of the
former, but _roughness_, or _ruggedness_ is decidedly _essential_ to the
latter: for example--The smooth shaven lawn, the neatly turned walk, the
classic marble portico, &c. &c. are _beautiful_; but the ruined castle,
the chasmed mountain, the tempestuous ocean, &c. are _picturesque_,
i.e. with appropriate accompaniments; for, after remarking that the
sublime and beautiful are, with many persons, the divisions of the
_picturesque_, our acute observer of nature adds, "sublimity alone
cannot make an object picturesque," it must in form, colour, or