The text explains the importance of sketching lightly before completing a painting to ensure proper proportions and achieve an effective composition. It describes how to create and adjust sketches using soft charcoal and outlines how to progressively practice drawing by copying finished works. The importance of consistent practice is emphasized to gain skill and eventually draw from good paintings.
Method for Learning
Randomly sketch on a small canvas to indicate approximately the effect the painting will have when executed in large.
Before deciding to finish part of a painting, it is natural to check if it is proportional to the rest of the painting. However, this is impossible without comparing the parts together, and this comparison can only be done by having all of them present before your eyes. Therefore, they must be distributed in their places to reveal the main masses, but this must be done as quickly and precisely as possible; this is called a sketch. It should be made, as we have said, very lightly with soft charcoal and with almost imperceptible strokes, so that when you want to fix the outline and finish each part in detail, you can easily erase these strokes with a piece of bread, though a slight trace remains on the paper. Note that to sketch, you need to keep your body straighter and be slightly farther from what you are drawing than usual, so that without raising or lowering your head, you can see the original and the sketch at a single glance to compare them together.
Regarding the order to follow in studies, you must first copy drawings that are well finished, and with a pencil on white paper, to more easily understand all the work; then copy various drawings on all kinds of paper. After at least one year of dedicated practice and having acquired some ease in handling, it will be appropriate to draw from good paintings, remembering to revisit previous works from time to time.