CHAPTER XVII
Materials
A LARGE stock-in-trade is a mistake. If you provide yourself with a lavish quantity of materials, you are probably handicapping, not helping, your studies.
Far better use a few tools, a few materials, than fly from one paper to another paper, from one pigment to another pigment, from chalk to charcoal, and charcoal to pastel.
To begin with, buying many expensive materials has the great disadvantage that it is likely to check your most valuable instinct for experiment.
If you stop to consider whether you are wasting good material, and the question arises, "Have you anything 'to show for' the expensive paper and paints?" the probabilities are that you will decide to finish a poor piece of work instead of flinging it aside in favour of a fresh start.
A few materials well chosen, a few tools well handled, are worth a whole shop-full used irresponsibly.
Buy a paper that will serve several purposes. Cartridge paper will 'take' pencil, chalk, or water-colour. It is a useful all-round paper. Therefore, I would advise a cartridge-paper sketch-book. Do not begin at the wrong end of this, or on the wrong side of your paper. Lay the tip of your finger upon the surface; you will soon detect that the right side has a smooth satiny surface. Michelet paper is suitable only for charcoal and crayon, and thick hand-made water-colour paper is rather unnecessarily expensive for the early stages.
If your mind is definitely settled on brushwork invest in a medium Whatman or O.W. paper, in sketch-book or block form. The block should not be smaller than 5 ½ by 7 inches.
