Quotations About Drawing

The essence of drawing is the line exploring space. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

Drawing is the honesty of art. To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours: drawing does not consist merely of line. Drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane and modeling. See what remains after that. Drawing includes three and a half quarters of the content of painting. ~ Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres

Paint as you see and be accurate in your drawing: the whole secret of your art is there. ~ William Bouguereau

Do not fail, as you go on, to draw something every day, for no matter how little it is, it will be well worthwhile, and it will do you a world of good. ~ Cennini

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover to your surprise that you have rendered something in its true character.~ Camille Pissarro.

I have learned that what I have not drawn I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle.~Frederick Franck, The Zen of Seeing.

There are no rules, only tools. ~ Glenn Vilppu

Drawing is . . . not an exercise of particular dexterity, but above all a means of expressing intimate feelings and moods. ~ Henri Matisse

From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs. but all I have done before the the age of seventy is not worth bothering with. At seventy five I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At a hundred I shall be a marvelous artist. At a hundred and ten 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 Hokosai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad Abgout Drawing.' ~ Hokusai, The Drawings of Hokosai

Drawing is deception. ~ Maurits Cornelius Escher

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. ~ Pablo Picasso

Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes. When the color achieves richness, the form attains its fullness also. ~ Paul Cézanne

If you can draw well, tracing won’t hurt; and if you can’t draw well, tracing won’t help. ~ Bradley Schmehl

Perspective is the rein and rudder of painting. ~ Leonardo da Vinci

I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful . ~ John Constable

Constant practice devoted to one subject often outdoes both intelligence and skill. ~ Cicero

Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it. ~ Rpbert Motherwell