Scale.—One point of great importance should be noticed. That is the effect on the observer of the size of any main mass or object with reference to the size of the canvas. This is analogous to what is called scale in architecture.
If the mass or object is justly proportioned to the whole surface of the canvas, and is treated in accordance with it, it will impose its own scale on all other objects. You can make a figure impress the observer as being life size, although it may really be only a few inches long. A house or castle coming into the picture may be made to give its scale to the surroundings, and make them seem small instead of itself seeming merely an object in a picture. This will be due to the placing of it on the canvas, largely, and more in this than in anything else. The manner of painting will also lend importantly to it; for an object to appear big must not be drawn nor painted in a little manner.
The placing of objects of a known size near, to give scale, is a useless expedient in such a case. At times it may be successful, often of use; but if the scale of the main object is false, the other object of known size, instead of giving size to the main one, as it is intended to do, will be itself dwarfed by it.
Placing.—This matter of placing is one which you should constantly practise. Make it a regular study when you are sketching from nature. Try to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your study of composition. In making a sketch, look for one main effect, and often have that effect the importance of some object, studying to give it scale by the placing and the treatment of it, and its relation to the things surrounding it in nature and on the canvas. In this way you will be studying composition in a most practical way.
Still Life.—For practical study of composition, the most useful materials you can have are to be found in still life. Nowhere can you have so great freedom of arrangement in the concrete. You can take as many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of actual objects. This you should constantly do, till composition is no more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work out freely and visibly intellectual æsthetic ideas almost unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the falsities of accidental combinations.
Don't Attempt too much.—Don't be too ambitious. Begin with simple arrangements, and add to them, studying the structure of each new combination and grouping. When you are going to paint, remember that too much of an undertaking will not give you any more beauty in the picture, and may lead to discouragement.
In the Chapter on "Still Life" I will explain more practically the means you may take, and how you may take them, to the end of making composition a practical study to you.