Drawing Quotes - Page 15

• Most children are given far too much praise for their early drawings, so much so that they rarely learn the ability to refine their first crude efforts the way their early attempts at language are corrected.

  Charles de Lint

  Children, Effort, Too Much

  Charles De Lint (2000). “Triskell Tales: Twenty-two Years of Chapbooks”, Subterranean

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• All the old bogeys of 'dignified subject-matter,' of 'balanced compositions,' of 'correct drawing' were laid to rest. The artist was responsible to no one but his own sensibilities for what he painted and how he painted it.

  Ernst Gombrich

  Responsibility, Artist, Matter

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• The most beautiful colors laid on at random, give less pleasure than a black-and-white drawing.

  Aristotle

  Beautiful, Black And White, Color

  Aristotle, George Maximilian Anthony Grube, Donald J. Zeyl (1958). “On Poetry and Style”, p.14, Hackett Publishing

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• Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

  George Carlin

  Boards, Invention, Hmmm

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• Well, something must be done for May, The time is drawing nigh-- To figure in the Catalogue, And woo the public eye. Something I must invent and paint; But oh my wit is not Like one of those kind substantives That answer Who and What?

  Thomas Hood

  Eye, Done, Answers

  Thomas Hood (1862). “the works of thomas hood”, p.361

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• I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.

  Michelangelo

  Art, Men, Thinking

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• The trouble is, we've been taught what to see and how to render what we see. If only we could be in the position of those men who did those wonderful drawings in Lascaux and Altimira!

  Pablo Picasso

  Men, Taught, Wonderful

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• The light for drawing from nature should come from the North in order that it may not vary. And if you have it from the South, keep the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the whole day the light may not vary. The height of the light so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground of the same length as itself.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Order, Light, Shining

  Leonardo Da Vinci, General Press (2016). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”, p.183, GENERAL PRESS

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• The construction of the human figure, its tremendous variety of balance, of size, of rhythm, all those things make the human form much more difficult to get right in a drawing than anything else.

  Henry Moore

  Humanity, Balance, Size

  Andrew Causey, Henry Moore (2010). “The Drawings of Henry Moore”, Lund Humphries Pub Limited

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• I sometimes begin a drawing with no preconceived problem to solve, with only the desire to use pencil on paper... but as my eye takes in what is so produced, a point arrives where some idea crystallizes, and then a control and ordering begins to take place.

  Henry Moore

  Eye, Ideas, Desire

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• A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing.

  Henri Matisse

  Simple, Charcoal, Known

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

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• Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions, I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format.

  Henri Matisse

  Expression, Dimensions, Paper

  "Artists on Art - from the 14th - 20th centuries". Book edited by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, London, p. 410, 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), 1972.

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• I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

  Henri Matisse

  Tree, Copying, Emotion

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.149, Univ of California Press

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• Drawing is your understanding of form.

  Edgar Degas

  Understanding, Form

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• Cold calculation, random spots of color, mathematically exact construction (clearly shown or concealed), drawing that is now silent and now strident . . . . Is this not form?

  Giacomo Puccini

  Color, Cold, Silent

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• There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.

  John Ruskin

  Latin, Power, Wish

  John Ruskin (1859). “The Elements of Drawing: In Three Letters to Beginners”, p.4

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• I would rather teach drawing that my pupils may learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they may learn to draw.

  John Ruskin

  Teaching, May, Pupils

  John Ruskin (2012). “The Elements of Drawing”, p.13, Courier Corporation

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• I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again and new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed. What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Wall, Believe, Heart

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• I hope I shall be able to make some drawings in which there is something human.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Humanity, Able, Humans

  Vincent van Gogh, Vincent Willem Gogh (1927). “The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1872-1886: With a Memoir by His Sister-in-law, J. Van Gogh-Bonger ...”

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• When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly 'til there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Feelings, Typical, Ordinary

  Vincent van Gogh, Anthon Gerhard Alexander Rappard (ridder van), Anthon van Rappard (1936). “Letters to an artist: from Vincent van Gogh to Anton ridder van Rappard, 1881-1885”

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• Accurate drawing, accurate colour, is perhaps not the essential thing to aim at, because the reflection of reality in a mirror, if it could be caught, colour and all, would not be a picture at all, no more than a photograph.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Reflection, Reality, Mirrors

  Vincent van Gogh (2014). “Delphi Complete Works of Vincent van Gogh (Illustrated)”, p.2734, Delphi Classics

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• I want to do drawings which touch some people... In either figure or landscape I wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but serious sorrow.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Sadness, People, Sorrow

  Vincent van Gogh (1971). “Van Gogh's "diary"; the artist's life in his own words and art”

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• By drawing or exposing two or more patterns on the same bit of film I can create harmony and textual effects.

  Norman McLaren

  Two, Patterns, Film

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• There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like that... the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh.

  John Berger

  Artist, Intimacy, Vans

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• I use charcoal a lot. Partly because it has such a fantastic range but also because it is very easy to erase. For me, drawing is a lot to do with taking out, with returning to the white of the paper.

  John Berger

  White, Use, Paper

  "The Intimate Idealogue". Interview with Robert Enright, bordercrossingsmag.com. April 1995.

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