To train others up to mastery.
To keep your hand over the whole.
To work in a spirit of sacrifice.
These things once firmly established, questions of procedure become simple. But a few detached hints may be given.
I shall string them together just as they come.
An Economy of Time in the Studio.—Have a portion of your studio or work-room wall lined with thin boarding—"picture-backing" of 1/8 inch thick is enough, and this is to pin things on to. The cartoon is what you are busy upon, but you must "think in glass" all the time you are drawing it. Have therefore, pinned up, a number of slips of paper—a foolscap half-sheet divided vertically into two long strips I find best.
On these write down every direction to the cutter, or the painter, or the designer of minor ornament, the moment it comes into your mind, as you work at the charcoal drawing. If you once let the moment pass you will never remember these things again, but you will have them constantly forced back upon your memory, by the mistranslations of your intention which will face you when you first see your work in the glass. This practice is a huge saving of time—and of disappointment. But you also want this convenient wall space for a dozen other needs; for tracings and shiftings of parts, and all sorts of essays and suggestions for alteration.
That we should work always.—I hope it is not necessary to urge the importance of work. It is not of much use to work only when we feel inclined; many people very seldom do feel naturally inclined. Perhaps there are few things so sweet as the triumph of working through disinclination till it is leavened through with the will and becomes enjoyment by becoming conquest. To work through the dead three o'clock period on a July afternoon with an ache in the small of one's back and one's limbs all a-jerk with nervousness, drooping eyelids, and a general inclination to scream. At such a time, I fear, one sometimes falls back on rather low and sordid motives to act as a spur to the lethargic will. I think of the shortness of the time, the greatness of the task, but also of all those hosts of others who, if I lag, must pass me in the race. Not of actual rivals—or good nature and sense of comradeship would always break the vision—but of possible and unknown ones whom it is my habit to club all together and typify under the style and title of "that fellow Jones." And at such a time it is my habit to say or think, "Aha! I bet Jones is on his back under a plane
tree!"—or thoughts to that effect—and grasp the charcoal firmer.
It is habits and dodges and ways of thinking such as these that will gradually cultivate in you the ability to "stand and deliver," as they say in the decorative arts. For, speaking now to the amateur (if any such, picture-painter or student, are hesitating on the brink of an art new to them), you must know that these arts are not like picture-painting, where you can choose your own times and seasons: they are always done to definite order and expected in a definite time; and that brings me to speak of the very important subject of "Clients."