It has been remarked by sketchers, amateurs, and artists by profession,
that, upon a sketching expedition, "their hands are not in" for some
days. I doubt if the fault be so much in the hand as in the eye; for
in most cases the hand had come from the immediate practice of the
studio: but the eye is distracted by the many beauties which now force
themselves into observation, and which in the home-practice, and in
following the mind's bent on the canvass, the memory did not vividly
present as not wanted. It is more difficult, therefore, at first to
generalise, to escape the fascinations of local form and colour, which
keep the eye from the instant acknowledgment of a whole. We are thus
at first apt to begin with the detail, instead of leaving it to the
last, by which means we have more than we want, or less accurately and
accommodatingly what is wanted. When we have learned again to reject,
and to see, we are surprised with a facility we at first despaired of.
We do, then, because we know what to do.