No one can get anywhere without contemplation. Busy people who do not make contemplation part of their business do not do much for all their effort.

A genius is one who can see. The others can often “draw” remarkably well. Their kind of drawing, however, is not very difficult. They can change about. They can make their sight fit the easiest way for their drawing. As their seeing is not particular it does not matter. With the seer it is different. Nothing will do but the most precise statement.

Keep your old work. You did it. There are virtues and there are faults in it for you to study. You can learn more from yourself than you can from anyone else.

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.

When away from model draw from memory. Draw also opposite or very different views from what you had in the class.

No use trying to draw a thing until you have got all around it. It is only then that you comprehend a unity of which the parts can be treated as parts.

If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits—others who have wanted to do that thing—and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures and add your quota. Thus you may acquire from the experience of the race. And with this technical knowledge you may g

Don’t belong to any school. Don’t tie up to any technique.

Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. They can help you. All the past can help you.