This does not necessarily damp one's sketching ardour, but it is unfavourable to accuracy of outline, and especially so to purity of colouring.

However, we did not hesitate.
Eleanor went down to her study of birch-trees in the gorge, Clement climbed up the bank to get the most extended view of the Ewden Valley; I contented myself with sitting by the roadside in front of the same view, and Jack stayed with me.
He had come with us.

Not that he often went out sketching, but our descriptions of the beauty of the scenery had roused him to make another attempt for the "Household Album." Seldom lastingly provided, for his own part, with apparatus of any kind, Jack had a genius for purveying all that he required in an emergency.

On this occasion he had borrowed Mrs.Arkwright's paint-box (without leave), and was by no means ill supplied with pencils and brushes which certainly were not his own.

He had hastily stripped a couple of sheets from my block whilst I was dressing, and with these materials he seated himself on that side of me which enabled him to dip into my water-pot, and began to paint.
Not half-way through my outline, I was just beginning to realize the complexities of a bird's-eye view with your middle distance in a valley, and your foreground sloping steeply upwards to your feet, when Jack, washing out a large, dyed sable sky-brush in my pot, with an amount of splashing that savoured of triumph, said: "_That's_ done!" I paused in a vigorous mental effort to put aside my _knowledge_ of the relative sizes of objects, and to _see_ that a top stone of my foreground wall covered three fields, the river, and half the river's bank beyond.
"_Done ?_" I exclaimed.