Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.
Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.
Art is the response of the living to life. It is therefore the record left behind by civilization.
Artists are the only people in the world who really live. The others have to hope for heaven.
Be sensitive to your mistakes. Put it on the wall for a couple of weeks. It may be that you can learn more from the study of your own work than from others.
Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.
Don't be afraid to borrow. The great men, the most original, borrowed from everybody.
When you draw a crowd of people in a street or room or landscape, decide whether you want to say that the people dominate the place or that the place is more important than the people.
Assimilate all you can from tradition and then say things in your own way.
The artist seeks to record his awareness of order in life.
I always think of shade as being full of light. That is why I like to use the word shade rather than light and shadow. Shade seems to play over the thing, envelop it, better define it, while shadow seems to fall on the thing and stain the surface with darks.
In the hands of a master, light and shade is one of the great qualities of art.
Nature is what you see plus what you think about it.
The purpose of subject matter is to veil technique. The great artist uses the cloak of resemblance to hide the means.
Form your own color concept of things in nature. I have no rules for fine color to give you.
Draw places you have seen from memory. I used to paint things I had glimpsed through windows while riding in the elevated train.
Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind.
Originality is a quality that cannot be imitated. The technique of the language, on the other hand, is something that belongs to all who can understand it.
Painting is drawing, with the additional means of color.
Study the great brush drawings of the Chinese and Japanese... When we try to imitate their conventions for perspective, form and texture we lose the content, because those artists were part of an ancient tradition. Our tradition changes rapidly, our schools of thought come to fruition quickly and decay again. We see differently.
A good drawing has immense vitality because it is explanatory. In a good drawing even its faults have become virtues.
The subject may be of first importance to the artist when he starts a picture, but it should be of least importance in the finished product. The subject is of no aesthetic significance.
Most art students are generous till it comes to squeezing their colour on the palette... Many pictures haven't become works of art simply because the artist tried to save a nickel's worth of colour.
You can be a giant among artists without ever attaining any great skill. Facility is a dangerous thing. When there is too much technical ease the brain stops criticizing. Don't let the hand fall into a smart way of putting the mind to sleep.
Have a special interest, a positive prejudice about some clump of trees or one particular knoll, an excitement about them can spread through the whole composition, and so fire the rest of the things that you are only mildly interested in.
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