Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Subject has the variety of life.
Tradition is a prop for social security.
Be content with nothing less than perfection.
The play of sunlight is amusement enough for a lazy man.
The beauties of conception are always superior to those of expression.
Colour is as variable and evanescent in the form of pigment as in visible nature.
Difficulties will assail you only when you lack in concentration and persistence.
A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it.
The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence.
Drawing is the representation of form - the graphic expression of a visual experience.
The character of the subject must influence the choice of the method of its representation.
Rhythm is as necessary in a picture as pigment; it is as much a part of painting as of music.
For an intelligent estimate of your technique go to another artist working in the same medium.
Humility counts for much, but it may be that vanity does not dispossess that admirable quality.
The rewards of art are not always commensurate with its quality. It affords a precarious living.
Beauty may be perceived in any scene by one with sympathy and understanding. Beauty is in the mind.
Realism is condemned by those artists whose poverty of technique does not permit them to express it.
Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.
Water is the most expressive element in nature. It responds to every mood from tranquility to turbulence.
The beauty and wonders of nature are as alluring as the pursuit of Art, and made of me a landscape painter.
Luminosity is a quality dependent as much on technique as on the physical properties of individual pigments.
Beauty, pleasure, and the good things of life are intensified, and perhaps only exist, by reason of contrast.
I don't like to think that I am a slave to technique, or so inept that I have to restrict myself to one method.
It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.
The deserving are not always blest. That peculiar attribute known as personality is as potent a factor as genius.
The syllogism art for art's sake refers to that kind of painting which disregards, or is contrary to, public taste.
Many a painter has lived in affluence, in high esteem, who lacked the divine spark, and who is utterly forgotten to-day.
Do not think me fussy when I specify tidiness. It is essential... In printing, remember that cleanliness and order wait upon success.
In painting, whether colour reflection is apparent or not, every hue must echo neighbouring hues, so that homogeneity may be attained.
In large studio paintings... composition, or arrangement, may be better studied, and nearer perfection, washes may be more suavely graded.
Let it not be assumed that the artist is so smug as to dislike true criticism. No sincere artist was ever completely satisfied with his labour.
A landscape painting in which composition is ignored is like a line taken from a poem at random: it lacks context, and may or may not make sense.
The importance of colour is as nothing compared with that of form, chiaroscuro and arrangement. They are the true and enduring bases of pictorial art.
Etching will suggest subtle variations of tone, the most delicate shadings, all with black lines, which, as far as lines go, are unsurpassed for sheer beauty.
Aerial perspective has nothing to do with line, but concerns tones and colours, by the delicate manipulation of which an artist can suggest infinite distance.
Style is instinctive and few achieve it in a notable degree. Its development is not hastened by instruction. It comes or it doesn't. It will take care of itself.
It is evident that no derivative laws can teach the young student to see and apprehend colour in nature. His perception needs development as urgently as his muscles.
Any subject is suitable provided it is of sufficient interest, but the design must be very carefully considered, and plenty of time and thought given to its construction.
However exquisite the contours or the colours of clouds, trees, rivers or hills, may be in themselves, they must be sacrificed if they do not conform with the general plan.
While it is emotion that gives an impulse to the landscape painter, it is his style that inspires the critic's praise, and his subject that inveigles the untutored beholder.
A painter may be an abandoned mimic; at school he copies his teachers, which is only right, but he copies in turn every artist in town, which is not. He may do you that honour.
It is the sense of unfamiliar envelopment that is impressive, whether in the living grays of hoarfrost, the crimson of the heavens at sunset, or the golden suffusions of autumn.
It is remarkable how very individual technique becomes in watercolour. Every man of personality finally arrives at a method peculiarly his own, as unique as his own fingerprint.
A horizontal or vertical line lacks energy, compared with one that deviates from either. The difference between these graphic expressions is the difference between movement and repose.
There is the process of enlarging a watercolour, which actually amounts to copying its good points and improving its bad ones, and is interesting proportionately as the latter increase.
There must be a judicious arrangement of all the parts. Considered conversely, the artist's task is to fill his panel with a design that conforms to its shape and is beautiful in itself.
The sincere artist is usually his own best critic, but continuous and prolonged work on one painting will sometimes dull his judgment... The critic is in demand, but he must be competent.
The most interesting studio work, and perhaps the most practicable, is painting from pencil sketches and notes... It ensures the elimination of all facts but those essential to the effect.
The artist reserves the right to remove a blot on the landscape, to change positions of things, to suit his composition, providing only that he does not transgress the laws of probability.
Many of the old masters of watercolour painted from notes, with enthusiasm either unabated or renewed. It is hard to assume the same degree of concentration in the studio, but not impossible.