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Indian Ink, and then, preparatory to painting, to moisten the Canvass with Drying oil, wiping off what is superfluous. In such a preparation the brush passes freely with but little Colour, and the entire effect may be quickly produced & the drawing corrected; both of which are objects of more importance in the beginning of a Portrait, then the first possession of a solid mass of colour, which might be less true, & procured at a greater expense of time, & with greater & more unpleasant effort. This process is most conveniently accomplished when a preparatory study is first made on paper or Canvass, & transferred by tracing - thus allowing time for a correct drawing, before the next sitting, which is to commence the Colouring from life. An absorbent Canvass is preferred when the artist desires to load his Picture with Colour in the first sitting; this might always be well if the Sitter presented, at this first sitting, the best appearance, which however, never can be decided without more observation and study.

Though a Head may be finished in One Colouring, especially in a long Summer's day, it is not so durable as when executed with several coats. Bright effects can only be produced by successive Coats of paint in the lights, and glazings in the darks, producing the requisite degree of solid impasto in one, and the appearance of transparency in the other.
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Practice of the Old Masters.

Those writers on painting who found their theoretic opinions on the examination of painting by the old Masters, and who are influenced by similar opinions pronounced by former writers, without practice themselves, appear to be in error when they suppose that the practice of the old Flemish painters was to being their Colouring which was on a white non-absorbing ground by thin transparent washes of shadow Colours, laid on with a thick vehicle, and then to charge the light with Masses of solid colour. After a drawing is made on such a ground, it would be the dictate of reason to tinge the whole composition, lights as well as shadows, with a slight glazing that should not obliterate the drawing, but remove the