Quotes & Sayings About Drawing Artist

I have been surrounded by artists and paintings throughout my life. My father Ted Dyer is an artist, and from a very early age I have spent time painting and drawing. — John Dyer

Drawing is the cornerstone of the graphic, plastic arts. Drawing is the coordination of line, tone, and color symbols into formations that express the artist's thought. — John French Sloan

She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress in both drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she ever would submit to ... She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved. — Jane Austen

The average artist, if he chooses, could render an exact drawing of what he sees. Artistic work not only allows but demands some deviation from form and line. Just how far this may go depends on the viewpoint of each painter. — Edgar Alwin Payne

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

There is something about the act of studying an unclothed body, as an artist does, that allows a person to appreciate it as pure form, regardless of the kinds of traits traditionally regarded as imperfections. In a figure drawing class, an obese woman's folds of flesh take on a kind of beauty. You can look at a man's shrunken chest or legs or buttocks with tenderness. Age is not ugly, just poignant. — Joyce Maynard

Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer. — Peter Stanyer

It was never my goal to capitalize on punk. I could never make it as a commercial artist. I didn't back then and I still don't have the temperament and don't care for drawing or painting or making art for any other purposes other my own. — Raymond Pettibon

Be clear in your mind why learning to draw well is important. Drawing enables you to see in that special, epiphanous way that artists see, no matter what style you use to express your special insight. Your goal in drawing should be to encounter the reality of experience ... to see ever more clearly, ever more deeply. — Betty Edwards

The technical procedures doubtless release energies in the artist that remain unused in the much more lightweight processes of drawing or painting (remark on printmaking). — Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

I believe in spiritualism. It's like, when you listen to music or something and then you're sort of primed. If you're an artist, you're sort of primed and inspired, and you start drawing, you sort of have the spirit of what you're listening to, still in you. You just have sort of an inspiration. — Daniel Johnston

The drawing is also a reminder that there's an artist within each of us, and we must encourage that artist to do the work, to make something that matters, regardless of anything else that is going on. — Steven Pressfield

Now relax, think positively and begin
the smile of success awaits you. — Claudia Nice

I'm just working with ideas in my head and with drawings that the artists did. And suddenly to see these things come to life in movies - it's just wonderful. — Stan Lee

Beautiful colours can be bought in the shops on the Riatlo, but good drawing can only be bought from the casket of the artist's talent with patient study and nights with out sleep. — Tintoretto

From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing. — Hokusai Katsushika

What follows is the sum and substance of a remarkable year in a great artist's life -
Alexander Wainwright. He was at the pinnacle of his career when his art took a strange turn and I began to fear he had become possessed by some devil. But I was only beginning to understand the power of his passionate and hungry spirit, which nearly devoured him in his search for his new art - and his new life.

James Helmsworth, [art dealer for Alexander Wainwright] in The Drawing Lesson.

Enter for the giveaway of ten autographed copies of The Drawing Lesson, the first in The Trilogy of Remembrance starting on July 31st until August 31st, 2014. — Mary E. Martin

If you're drawing a Western town, you can duplicate that Western town from instinct alone. Some artists may take it from other illustrations or duplicate what you've drawn, but it will never have that gut reality that's instinctive in the artist. — Jack Kirby

The artist Paul Klee described drawing a picture as taking a line for a walk. I have borrowed his words to explain my approach to writing; when I write a novel it is like I am taking a thought for a walk. — Aminatta Forna

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist. — Georges Seurat

The ability to draw from life determines the artist's skill. This is why live drawing classes have always been at the top of the curriculum for properly structured academic workshops. — Igor Babailov

It's much more liberating as a artist to feel like you can approach each page and each panel with the way that inspires you the most. I think the thing that bogs down a lot of artists is that you're kind of stuck drawing in a style you've developed. — Daniel Clowes

As a child, I was obsessed with drawing things, like Mickey and Donald. And houses. My mother was worried I'd become an artist. — Michael Graves

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality. — Edgar Degas

With lead he shaded love into the woman's eyes. — Dean Koontz

Staring at a blank piece of paper, I can't think of anything original. I feel utterly uninspired and unreceptive. It's the familiar malaise of 'artist's block' and in such circumstances there is only one thing to do: just start drawing.

The artist Paul Klee refers to this simple act as 'taking a line for a walk', an apt description of my own basic practice: allowing the tip of a pencil to wander through the landscape of a sketchbook, motivated by a vague impulse but hoping to find something much more interesting along the way. Strokes, hooks, squiggles and loops can resolve into hills, faces, animals, machines -even abstract feelings- the meanings of which are often secondary to the simple act of making (something young children know intuitively). Images are not preconceived and then drawn, they are conceived as they are drawn. Indeed, drawing is its own form of thinking, in the same way birdsong is 'thought about' within a bird's throat. — Shaun Tan

I'm often wary of using the word 'inspiration' to introduce my work
it sounds too much like a sun shower from the heavens, absorbed by a passive individual enjoying an especially receptive moment. While that may be the case on rare occasions, the reality is usually far more prosaic. Staring at a blank piece of paper, I can't think of anything original. I feel utterly uninspired and unreceptive. It's the familiar malaise of 'artist's block' and in such circumstances there is only one thing to do: just start drawing. — Shaun Tan

And me I'm in my bedroom drawing in my notebook Because my hand thinks I'm an artist But my heart knows I'm a poet It's just words they mean so little to me. — Conor Oberst

I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely. — Giacomo Casanova

I really don't see any influence of my work on any artists. But I do think I've had an influence on drawings' being shown. I've had an influence on the economics of it. — Raymond Pettibon

The principle factor in my success has been an absolute desire to draw constantly. I never decided to be an artist. Simply, I couldn't stop myself from drawing. I drew for my own pleasure. I never wanted to know whether or not someone liked my drawings. I have never kept one of my drawings. I drew on walls, the school blackboard, odd bits of paper, the walls of barns. Today I'm still as fond of drawings as when I was a kid - and that was a long time ago - but, surprising as it may seem, I never thought about the money I would receive for my drawings. I simply drew them. — Winsor McCay

As a student I thought there was a formula of some kind that I would get hold of somewhere, and thereby become and artist. There is a formula, but it has not been in books. It is really plain old courage, standing on one's own feet, and forever seeking enlightenment; courage to develop your way, but learning from the other fellow; experimentation with your own ideas, observing for yourself, a rigid discipline of doing over that which you can improve. — Andrew Loomis

Drawing is giving a performance; an artist is an actor who is not limited by the body, only by his ability and, perhaps, experience. — Marc Davis

He granted its due share to everything equally, drawing from everything only what was beautiful in it, and in the end left himself only the divine Raphael as a teacher. So a great poetic artist, having read many different writings filled with much delight and majestic beauty, in the end might leave himself, as his daily reading, only Homer's Iliad, having discovered that there is nothing that has not already been reflected in its profound and great perfection. — Nikolai Gogol

People ask me, 'What happened in your life that might have pushed you as an artist to get to where you are today?' I always felt a little on the outside. And as such, you're always observing things. So, I'd be kind of re-creating these things in my mind, and I think drawing it was a way to deal with that. — Jim Lee

Evidently, a given object took no particular amount of time to draw; instead the artist took the time, or didn't take it, at pleasure. And,similarly, things themselves possessed no fixed and intrinsic amount of interest; instead things were interesting as long as you had attention to give them. How long does it take to draw a baseball mitt? As much time as you care to give it. Not an infinite amount of time, but more time than you first imagined. For many days, so long as you want to keep drawing that mitt, and studying that mitt, there will always be a new and finer layer of distinctions to draw out and lay in. Your attention discovers - seems thereby to produce - an array of interesting features in any object, like a lamp. — Annie Dillard

When I was in high school, I thought I might be an artist. I was very good at drawing and painting. — Roma Downey

We need all kinds of artists. We have no need to destroy drawing. We lose so much. This wouldn't happen in music. — David Hockney

Drawing or painting allows the artist to know himself as a whole person. — Joseph C Zinker

In printmaking, I essentially use the same process as in painting with one important exception ... to try, with sensitivity to the medium to emphasize what printing can do best ... better than say, painting or collaging or watercolour or drawing or whatever ... Otherwise, the artist expresses the same vision in graphics that he does in his other work. — Robert Motherwell

The role of the architect as artist is an ancient one, but it was de-emphasized with the rise of modernism, which rejected the drawing-based Beaux-Arts tradition in favor of a more technocratic approach. — Martin Filler

I had a fistfight with every kid on my block. I got about fifteen broken noses to prove it. Part of it was also because I was always drawing, and I always had an artist portfolio with me. But I was a tough kid. I won their respect. — George Lois

When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion. — Henri Matisse

Of all the creative acts performed by the artist, the most directly legible is drawing ... it is the act that is most directly and spontaneously governed by his nervous and muscular system. — Rene Huyghe

Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing. — Claes Oldenburg

The burden God places on each of us is to become who we are meant to be. We are most fully ourselves when Christ most fully lives in us and through us. The mother shines brightest with her child in her arms, the father when he forgives his wandering son, and the artist when he or she is drawing attention to grace, by showing the pinprick of light overcoming the darkness in the painting, or the story, or the song. The world knows darkness. Christ came into the world to show us light. I have seen it, have been blinded by it, invaded by it. I will tell its story. — Andrew Peterson

Few people know that I am also an artist; I truly enjoy sketching and drawing. — Sonakshi Sinha

I suppose I felt doomed to be an artist early on because of the way I drew all over the books that I needed for school, from ancient history to math. I was more interested in drawing in the margins than actually doing the work. — Nancy Spero

I like the idea of seeing a film that has the artist's hand in there,a film where you can see his strokes, you can see his working patterns. It's like going to a museum and seeing a Renoir drawing. You want to see their work and you want to see how they put it together. For me to see that in animation is really fresh, it's really exciting, it's really original. — Bill Plympton

Artists draw for themselves, If someone draws for them, theyre not an artist. An artist is someone who makes their own music and albums. Artist think music is a drawing, and they draw theirs. — Jay Park

Create with the heart; build with the mind. — Criss Jami

Because fashion essentially is art, and as an artist and someone who is also a musician and an artist in regards to drawing and painting, anything I can do that expresses my feelings is something I'm really drawn to. — Ruby Rose

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true. — John Berger

As for his hobby, drawing, he was better at that than most artists alive today and I always knew he was really a great young artist pretending to be withdrawn so people would leave him alone, also so people wouldn't ask him to get a job. — Jack Kerouac

The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch. — Criss Jami

From since I could remember I've always been an artist, drawing, painting and so forth. I would also always draw made up rock n' roll characters in a band who each had their own style and personalities. I think by accident I was already becoming a fashion designer. — Ashley Purdy

I write the book for one person - for Fiona [Staples, the artist]. I spend a lot of time just thinking how she'll react to things and manipulating her into drawing perverse, horrific things. It's a really weird job but I enjoy it. — Brian K. Vaughan

I would love to collaborate on a graphic novel with an artist - I'm terrible at drawing but I really love that genre. — Matthea Harvey

Lissa Treiman is an artist who submitted a guest strip to me back in 2008 and whose work I've followed since. She works in animation. When I first mentioned on Twitter that I was interested in writing a series but not drawing it, she got in touch. — John Allison

In children's art class we sat in a ring of kindergarten chairs and drew three daffodils that had just been picked out of the yard; and while I was drawing, my sharpened yellow pencil and the cup of the yellow daffodil gave off wiffs just alike. That the pencil doing the drawing should give off the same smell of the flower it drew seemed part of the art lesson - as shouldn't it be? Children, like animals use all their sense to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way, all over again. Here and there, it's the same world. Or now and then we'll hear from an artist who's never lost it. — Eudora Welty

Over the last forty years, many educators, decision-makers, and even some parents have come to regard the arts as peripheral, and let's face it, frivolous - especially the visual arts, with their connotation of "the starving artist" and the mistaken concept of necessary talent — Betty Edwards

And still, still, there is more to describe-
we paint because drawing breath is an agony
and exhaling an ecstasy
and somewhere in the space in-between
we think we once found a truth;
and the eternal part of us desires
to share this truth at all costs
only it's never quite how we pictured it,
and it's never quite received the way we want
and the paint drips with our own blood
the handles of our brushes are our own bones
our own tears become the words to our most beautiful love songs
and we know we'll never get it right before we die-

getting up every morning and facing our own limited truth
is a courage so divine
most men quell and women stay enslaved in silence. — Marie Anzalone

What attracted me was less art itself than the artist's life and all that it meant for me: the idea of creativity and freedom of expression and action. I had been attracted to painting and drawing for a long time, but it was not an irresistible passion; what I wanted, at all costs, was to escape the monotony of life. — Pierre Bonnard

If, in making a portrait, you hope to grasp the interior silence of a willing victim, it's very difficult, but you must somehow position the camera between his shirt and his skin. Whereas with pencil drawing, it is up to the artist to have an interior silence. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

It would be mistaken to suppose that any of the best photography is come at by intellection; it is like all art, essentially the result of an intuitive process, drawing on all that the artist is rather than on anything he thinks, far less theorizes about. — Helen Levitt

All intervening steps, scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work models, studies thoughts, conversations, are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product — Sol LeWitt

It wasn't that I wanted to be an artist. But when I took my first drawing class with the painter Doug Ohlson, I could never finish a drawing. — Lynne Tillman

I am only an artist, my job is to make drawings not to make sense. — William Kentridge

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. — John French Sloan

At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it. — Sean Bean

We all have an inner artist that has something to tell us if we allow it to come to the surface. — Bill Buchman

Whether it is drawing or painting, skilled Artists usually deliver a faster result without jeopardizing the quality, simply because they don't have to waste their time on fixing mistakes. — Igor Babailov

I never felt oppressed because of my gender. When I'm writing a poem or drawing, I'm not a female; I'm an artist. — Patti Smith

It [lighting the set up] is quite a process. It's like drawing. It's like being an artist. You pencil it in first, and then you ink it. When you're filming, it's like you're penciling it all in. You know where everything is going to go. But, that application of the final ink takes some time. — Robert Rodriguez

Unlike the photography and prints, I never catalogued, kept track of or exhibited the sketches. I sold some occasionally, but never saw myself as a graphic artist. They became more important to me thanks to the exhibition, however, and I realized that these drawings were quite interesting after all. — Gerhard Richter

A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs; a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work - related far more directly to the demands of communication. — John Berger

The process of drawing is ... the process of putting the visual intelligence into action, the very mechanics of visual thought. Unlike painting and sculpture ... the artist makes clear to himself and not to the spectator what he is doing. It is a soliloquy before it becomes communication. — Michael Ayrton

I've always considered myself a graphic artists - a draftsman - as opposed to a typist. I do still work on a drawing table. At times drawing on a computer feels like I'm drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch. — Michael Schwab

Indeed, an engineer designing a structure is not unlike an artist painting one. Both start with nothing but talent, experience, and inspiration. The fresh piece of paper on the drawing board is as blank as the newly stretched piece of canvas. — Henry Petroski

I prefer drawing the things I've written to handing them off to another artist. Turns out I'm a huge control freak - and because I write in thumbnails, the art is already happening by the time I start writing! — Raina Telgemeier

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

I am biased towards the belief that every painter must be grounded in strong and faultless drawing skills, and until one has not experimented with all styles of painting and has not comprehended their potentialities one's work is not complete. Even an abstract painter must know how to draw as well as a figurative artist. As for me, drawing has never created any problem, since I know how to draw anatomy correctly if I had to, I understand the function of muscle groups and sculpture. — Guity Novin

Drawing is the most inalienable medium. It is private; it practically doesn't have an audience in mind, just the artist's expression. — Betty Goodwin