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CHAPTER XIV

Action and Composition

WHEN I was very young I cherished intense admiration for a certain little friend who was fond of drawing birds—not single studies of birds, but birds in flight. Flick, flick, flick—so many swift touches of the pencil and the birds sprang into sight, crowds of little

Fig.87. Birds in Flight
Fig.87. Birds in Flight

birds with curved wings against solid chunks of rolling clouds. Have you not drawn them yourself? Have you not sometimes watched the birds crossing the sky and tried to follow their flight with a pencil?

Fishes are not so easily studied, but sometimes they can be observed in tanks, or in the wonderful Nature pictures of