Outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the background.
Never make the contour too coarse.
Avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make parallels, triangles, etc.
The parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper shadowed, and better seen.
Keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows.
Where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest light.
Let nothing start out or be too strong for its place.
Squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine line in comparison appears feeble and tottering.
One is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions. Farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration of the exhibitions at the Society of Arts from 1760, until the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, are both instructive and amusing.
"The history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. At their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the many was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas at this time (1819) the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. The loaf and cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste.