Blank Canvas Quotes

Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture. A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus. ~ Stephen Shore

People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt. For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd. ~ Hannah Kent

There is nothing magical about the flip of the calendar, but it represents a clean break, a new hope, and a blank canvas. ~ Jason Soroski

I'm constantly thinking about design, shapes, patterns and colors, so I just want to be more of a blank canvas. But there is a comfort in knowing what you're going to wear, and that probably comes from Catholic school, where I wore a uniform for 10 years. ~ Prabal Gurung

If the goal was to increase the love, rather than winning or dominating a constant opponent, I think we could actually imagine liberation from constant oppression. We would suddenly be seeing everything we do, everyone we meet, not through the tactical eyes of war, but through eyes of love. We would see that there's no such thing as a blank canvas, an empty land or a new idea - but everywhere there is complex, ancient, fertile ground full of potential. ~ Adrienne Maree Brown

Anita felt like she finally understood why love was symbolized by the grotesque pumping organ, always threatening to clog, or break, or attack. Because the heart was the body's engine, and love was an act of the body. Your mind could tell you who to hate or respect or envy, but only your body--your nostrils and your mouth and the wide, blank canvas of your skin--could tell you who to love. ~ Tommy Wallach

The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that's old people's hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that's what you've got, and then think about what you want to see. Not anyone else. ~ David LaChapelle

I'm ... getting there. I'm beginning to think that maybe it's okay to be a blank canvas. Maybe it's okay that my future is unknown. And maybe," I say with another smile, "it's okay to be inspired by the people who do know their future." "It goes both ways, you know." I link his icicle fingers through mine. "What does?" "Artists are inspired by blank canvases." My smile grows wider. ~ Stephanie Perkins

What makes people and companies and artistic directors and choreographers interested in working with dancers is the ability to kind of let go of everything you think you know and be a blank canvas. ~ Misty Copeland

I just get excited ... like a painter with a blank canvas. ~ Kenny Florian

A blank canvas...has unlimited possibilities. ~ Stephanie Perkins

My face is almost like a canvas - a blank canvas in the sense that the hair on my face is very, very fine and my skin is incredibly fair and my hair is quite dark, and that's very unusual. ~ Andrea Riseborough

You wind up creating from silence, like painting a picture on a blank canvas that could bring tears to somebody's eyes. As songwriters, our blank canvas is silence. Then we write a song from an idea that can change somebody's life. Songwriting is the closest thing to magic that we could ever experience. That's why I love songwriting. ~ Rodney Atkins

Many painters are afraid of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the truly passionate painter who dares-and who has once broken the spell of 'you can't.' ~ Vincent Van Gogh

The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas. ~ Damien Hirst

Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can. ~ Danny Kaye

Let's just say, if I weren't a model, I'd be a walking collage. I see my body as a blank canvas that's aching to be decorated; I find it all very fascinating. ~ Abbey Lee Kershaw

The discovery of useful forms is precious. Once found, they should never be abandoned for trivial reasons. It's easy to imagine today's art instructor cautioning Chopin that the Mazurka thing is getting a little repetitive, that the work is not progressing. Well, true, it may not have been progressing - but that's not the issue. Writing Mazurkas may have been useful only to Chopin - as a vehicle for getting back into the work, and as a place to begin making the next piece. For most artists, making good art depends upon making lots of art, and any device that carries the first brushstroke to the next blank canvas has tangible, practical value. Only ~ David Bayles

If life is a blank canvas and all people are artists, the big challenge we all face may be expressed this way: Will we ultimately produce something approaching a masterpiece, an acceptable but not particularly memorable work of art, or a creation that wouldn't even be purchased at a yard sale? ~ Mardy Grothe

When you're in your twenties and you haven't fully realized what you look for in a partner, the single market has about everything you can imagine and more. And you're like a blank canvas - everyone's like a blank canvas - as you discover how to paint a relationship together.

Later in life, when you've experienced love and heartbreak and you find yourself single again and returning to the spouseless market, you kind of figure out that what's left for you…is not a blank canvas for you to write your story on anymore. Every bachelor comes with a previous story, with drama and emotional baggage from their past relationships.

And you - you - have to deal with it all, measure the puzzle pieces and see if somehow they might fit within the gaps and cracks left by your own experiences. ~ Esther Rabbit

I was a masterpiece; a painting in itself. He was changing me, molding me, and making me into something brand new. I was a blank canvas when I came to him, ready to absorb all the paint he would slather on me. He kept going, adding layer upon layer, sometimes even shedding them just so I could turn out beautiful. And he was done now, ready to let me leave and display me on a wall for people to see. ~ Evelyn Deshane

I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then every once in awhile, I get to take on a whole new character. ~ Danny Pudi

But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now! ~ Damien Hirst

Life is a blank canvas, use your imagination to color. ~ Rupal Asodaria

Make sure that when you look at your plate, it's a beautiful blank canvas to start with, and you want lots of color on there. You want to make sure you have whole grains and protein. It should not be beige in color; it should be green and bright red, and orange and yellow. ~ Summer Sanders

TODAY your life is a blank canvas, it's up to you what to paint ~ Steven Aitchison

It seems strange that some artists fear a blank canvas, when it has been a major contributory factor to great paintings. ~ David Luiz

I'm lucky enough that there is never a blank canvas in front of me ... I have hundreds of projects that I want to do but I am running out of time. ~ George Lucas

My God, are you even real?" she whispered. Holding her gaze, a sad smile lifted his mouth. "I think I am." "You make me feel like I'm in a dream," Emily confessed, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Like I'm sleepwalking and I don't even know it." ... "I'm able to close my eyes and just ... trust you. You're the color on my blank canvas, the light in my dark, the air in my lungs, and I almost let you go. I almost erased us from ever happening. I can't imagine not having you here with me. Please tell me you know how much I love you, Gavin. I need to hear it right now. Please. ~ Gail McHugh

People know that I always do my hair and makeup, but I also love doing crafts. I love getting a blank canvas and painting something. ~ Maddie Ziegler

As I start each day I have a blank canvas. I will make every effort to fill it with color. ~ Wylie R. Weeks

The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Doing things like playing music, something that's so natural and basic to human function, running around in nature, eating delicious food. These things are intrinsic in basic, primordial to human beings, so that's sort of a way to return to a blank canvas, allowing my true personality to return. ~ Ezra Miller

I'm a blank canvas that I can paint however I desire. For the first time ever, I get to be the character in my own fantasy land. ~ E.K. Blair

Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerizes some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of `you can't' once and for all. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

It's a marvellous life, a gregarious life that we've had. We're very lucky in that way. Unlike writers or painters, we don't sit down in front of a blank canvas and say, 'How do I start? Where do I start?' ~ Albert Finney

For me, acting is about the art of it and it's about being on a film set and doing your thing, painting a blank canvas. ~ Shailene Woodley

If I was to die here, on this beach, I wanted to have them closed anyway. I wanted a blank canvas upon which I could paint my most treasured memories of Caleb. ~ Bella Forrest

As long as you're true to you, you believe it and you make others believe it, then what you're doing is just art. If you give everybody a blank canvas and some paint, not everybody's picture is going to be exactly the same, but it's still art. I just do what I do. ~ Jake Owen

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

In 2008 all the stars aligned perfectly for Obama's 6-point victory over John McCain. He was an inexperienced, untested neophyte, and successfully convinced enough voters to paint their own version of what hope-and-change was all about on the blank canvas he provided. ~ Bob Beauprez

Fame was not real. It was all a projection
fame made me a blank canvas that people projected their love, lust, troubles, self-worth, and desire upon. Fame and power do not change us; they amplify us. If we are insecure, we grow more so. If we are addictive, we become a greater addict and insatiable. If we are desirous of truth, we seek it more. If we are generous, we become more so. If we seek to fill holes through dishonest means, we have greater access to do so. Fame and power are masterful teachers. ~ Jewel

Will you answer me? You don't have to." But he would, because he loved her. The thought froze him for a second before he sank into it like a feather bed. Before it became the comfort that helped him figure out how to speak. He loved Chloe. He loved Chloe like a blank canvas and a finished piece and all the exhilarating, painful, stop-and-start moments in between. ~ Talia Hibbert

Tomorrow is a blank canvas and you are the artist. ~ Lamees Alhassar

It's like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don't need to see two. And that was in the back of my head, that I was really done artistically with what I had created or pastiched. ~ Steve Martin

An actor is an actor is an actor. The less personality an actor has off stage the better. A blank canvas on which to draw the characters he plays. ~ Arthur Lowe

Because eventually, no matter what the circumstances, he would see the real me. Josh is a beautiful, messy, passionate work of art, and I'm ... a blank canvas. There's nothing here to love. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Once you have a blank canvas in front of your eyes, you can think about how you want to paint it. ~ Prem Jagyasi

I love to create, and to me, the ultimate freedom of expression is a blank canvas or a block of clay to capture whatever emotions your imagination gives it. ~ Daniel Boulud

Death, like fiction, is brutal in its symmetry. Take this story and strip it down -all the way back- until you are left with two points. Two dots on a vast, blank canvas, separeted by a sea of white. Here, we have come to the first point, where the batj is drawn and the hand is reachinh for the razor blade. I will meet you at the next, by the axle of a screaming wheel, the revolution of a clock, the closing of an orbit. ~ Lang Leav

I was a blank canvas, no thoughts, no emotions, no needs or desires, just a square of white floating through a loud, chaotic world, and life would paint me with color and substance, smear and spread and colorize me. ~ Jasinda Wilder

My job is to be a blank canvas & embody the characters that I'm playing. ~ Charlize Theron

When I have a day off, I won't spend it at a Hollywood party. I'd rather be at home with paints and a blank canvas. ~ Viggo Mortensen

Don't even open the Prezi canvas until you have a plan ready. This will help ensure you're not overwhelmed or distracted by staring at the blank canvas. ~ Russell Anderson-Williams

It is human nature to take the most magical of worlds for granted, turning each one into a blank canvas upon which to paint the lives of those who would live there. Only an outsider can see a world's wonders for what they truly are. ~ Neal Shusterman

Every day is a blank canvas to use our free will to create something beautiful for our Creator. ~ Alisa Hope Wagner

Our town was rigid in many ways, in terms of the uniformity of things, the colors of skin, the makes of cars, the lushness of the lawns, but on top of that it was sort of a blank canvas, so
and again, I guess this is true of any child
I was ready to quickly accept the sudden and total substitutions of all I knew to be true. ~ Dave Eggers

By itself, tofu is like wet foam rubber, but you'd no more eat it by itself and expect fine dining than you would stare at a blank canvas and expect to see fine art. ~ Victoria Moran

As a creative person, you want to start with a blank canvas. ~ Bibhu Mohapatra

Human, you are a machine, an organism, an animal, a primate, an artist, an athlete, a thinker, a sponge, a spirit, a comedian, a connoisseur, a cycle of breath in and breath out, an inventor, an expressor, an orator, a lover, an explorer, a creator, evolved. Your mind paints the flowers and the sky using the mind's eye as a paintbrush and light as paint. Splashing life across the blank canvas of reality. That's what you do. Every moment of every day. ~ Laren Grey Umphlett

Even though I know who I am, musically I'm a blank canvas. I know what colors I want to use, but I don't know what picture I want to paint yet. ~ Becky G

Myron lay sprawled next to a knee-knockingly gorgeous brunette clad only in a Class-B-felony bikini, a tropical drink sans umbrella in one hand, the aqua clear Caribbean water lapping at his feet, the sand a dazzling white powder, the sky a pure blue that could only be God's blank canvas, the sun a soothing and rich as a Swedish masseur with a snifter of cognac, and he was intensely miserable. ~ Harlan Coben

Mr. and Mrs. Hankshaw were summoned from the waiting room where Saturday Evening Post fantasies had clouded their instinctive parental concern the way that Norman Rockwell's sentimental ideas cloud the purity of a blank canvas. ~ Tom Robbins

White is the absence of color. All the colors bounce off it. Nothing stays. Black absorbs all the colors. It is the culmination of color consumption. So really, I'm a blank canvas, and you are full of it. I think that fits. ~ K.F. Breene

Think of your day as a blank canvas, and everything you say, your art upon it. Then join your loved ones and friends, and create lasting beauty together, worthy of your inner Rembrandt. ~ Tom Althouse

The construction industry likes nothing more than a blank canvas onto which they can impose a brand new building, because that way they can make more money. ~ Jonathan Meades

A blank canvas is a playground for the imagination. ~ Marty Rubin

In a way, the blank canvas ... represents the infinity of trying to use color to express emotions - to assign a linguistic function to color. ~ Guido Molinari

An artist does his most difficult work when he steps back from the blank canvas and thinks about what he is going to create. ~ Michelangelo

Writing is like painting with words, the paper is the canvas, the pen is the brush, the words are the colors and the verbs, nouns and adjectives are the blending of the hues that add depth to the picture you are creating.
-Reed Abbitt Moore- ~ Reed Abbitt Moore

Literature is the noblest of all the arts. Music dies on the air, or at best exists only as a memory; oratory ceases with the effort; the painter's colors fade and the canvas rots; the marble is dragged from its pedestal and is broken into fragments. ~ Elbert Hubbard

A certain something, he felt, had managed to work its way in through a tiny opening and was trying to fill a blank space inside him. The void was not one that she had made. It had always been there inside him. She had merely managed to shine a special light on it. ~ Haruki Murakami

Life is a canvas, so make your life as an ageless art. Everybody will be able to look at it and enjoy it. And, with time, it will get more valuable. ~ Debasish Mridha

The fact is that blank pages inspire me with terror. What will I put on them? Will it be good enough? Will I have to throw it out? ~ Margaret Atwood

To live a good life: We have the potential for it. If we can learn to be indifferent to what makes no difference. This is how we learn: by looking at each thing, both the parts and the whole. Keeping in mind that none of them can dictate how we perceive it. They don't impose themselves on us. They hover before us, unmoving. It is we who generate the judgments - inscribing them on ourselves. And we don't have to. We could leave the page blank - and if a mark slips through, erase it instantly. Remember how brief is the attentiveness required. And then our lives will end. And why is it so hard when things go against you? If it's imposed by nature, accept it gladly and stop fighting it. And if not, work out what your own nature requires, and aim at that, even if it brings you no glory. None of us is forbidden to pursue our own good. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Gregori was as still as a statue, his face a blank mask, his silver eyes as empty as death, yet Shea gave him a wide berth. There was something dangerous in his utter stillness. Shea felt she had no way to sorting out the complexity of the Carpathian male's nature. Gregori was watching Raven through narrowed, restless eyes, eyes that saw far too much. Suddenly he cursed, low and vicious, startling from someone of his stature and power. "She should not put herself at risk. She is with child."
His eyes met Jacques', silver lightning and black ice. Total understanding between the two men. Shea merged her mind with Jacues' quickly to try to understand the hidden currents. Raven's pregnancy, if she was pregnant, changed everything as far as the men were concerned. Shea could see no evidence of a child - Raven appeared as slim as ever - but she couldn't believe the healer would be wrong. He seemed so infallible, so completely invincible. The child was everything, all-important to the men. It surprised, even shocked her, the way they regarded the pregnancy. It was a miracle to both of them. The baby was more important than their lives. Shea was confused. Despite Jacques' fractured memories, his protective streak was extremely strong.
"He's aware of his surroundings, but he can't move. Even his mind is locked and still. He is paralyzed somehow." Raven's voice startled Shea, brought her back to the stormy weather and their rescue mission. Raven was clearly speaking of Byron. ~ Christine Feehan

Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece. ~ Okakura Kakuzo

I no longer believe the conservative message that children are naturally selfish and destructive creatures who need civilizing by hierarchies or painful controls. On the contrary, I believe that hierarchy and painful controls create destructive people. And I no longer believe the liberal message that children are blank slates on which society can write anything. On the contrary, I believe a unique core self is born into every human being; the result of millennia of environment and heredity combined in an unpredictable way that could never happen before or again. ~ Gloria Steinem

There were a lot of botched kills throughout the eastern part of Kentucky when the work fell outside his control. Six or seven years ago, a man from Perry County was shot point blank in the head and left for dead in the middle of downtown. Problem was, the bullet had traveled between the man's scalp and his skull halfway across his head and exited the same way it had entered on the other side. The whole thing had left him with only fingernail-sized contusions on both sides of his head. He identified the guy who shot him and saw him arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
Now, it's true that a situation like that was a rare one, but part of doing a job right was minimizing the chance for something to go wrong. ~ Sheldon Lee Compton

On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice. ~ Albert Camus

The conjoined dogs were too distant to ascertain whether they had collars or tags, yet close enough that I could make out the expression on the face of the dominant dog above. It was blank and at the same time fervid - the same general expression as on a human being's face when he is doing something that he feels compulsively driven to do and yet does not understand just why he wants to do it. ~ David Foster Wallace

I'm a painter. I'm still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas. ~ Carolee Schneemann

Cease to regard the canvas as a surface on which to paint a picture, but instead as a surface on which to record an event ~ Harold Rosenberg

We all enter the world little plastic beings, with so much natural force, perhaps, but for the rest
blank; and the world tells uswhat we are to be, and shapes us by the ends it sets before us. To you it says
Work; and to us it says
Seem! To you it says
As you approximate to man's highest ideal of God, as your arm is strong and your knowledge great, and the power to labour is with you, so you shall gain all that human heart desires. To us it says
Strength shall not help you, nor knowledge, nor labour. You shall gain what men gain, but by other means. And so the world makes men and women. ~ Olive Schreiner

When I was little, I was out riding my brand-new blue bicycle when I decided to see how far I could keep going without looking back even once.
I could feel with my back how my neighborhood was receding, further and further away ... but I kept pedaling with all my might, my mind almost going blank. All I could hear was the sound of my own heart, thumping wildly in my ears. Even now, I remember it sometimes. What exactly was I trying to do that day? What was it that I wanted to prove?
It's no good. My mind just keeps fogging over. I have this irritating sound stuck in my head. What is it? This sound ... Ohh ... I know what it is.
This is ... the sound of emptiness. ~ Chica Umino

Neil watched him do it, trying to remember the last time someone gave him a gift and coming up blank. That his first one should be from Andrew was unsettling. ~ Nora Sakavic

In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him. He vomited into a blue plastic canister without breaking stride. ~ William Gibson

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me. ~ Anna Quindlen

It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them. ~ Truman Capote

I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the images that I see appear on my canvas. ~ Salvador Dali

Moon couldn't think of anything reassuring to say. They were trapped inside a leviathan, standing in a tunnel gnawed out by giant parasites. Going blank with terror was a perfectly rational way to react, especially for a groundling. ~ Martha Wells

It's time to tear up the canvas and start over. It's time for the overhaul of humanity. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

I'm not giving the president a blank check, period. ~ Jim McDermott

When we manage to make something pretty, it's only because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. ~ Andrew Peterson

...she had uncovered brushes to paint him with the rainbow when the world had left him blank. It served both a blessing and a curse to fall so deeply in love with a dream. ~ Sunny Nicolette

I just filled out my income tax forms. Who says you can't get killed by a blank? ~ Milton Berle

You visualize yourself as the person you want to be. You strive to make the ideal in your mind become a reality on the canvas of Time. ~ Wilferd Peterson

So if he'd been a plumber, ___ _____ would've been about toilets?
Left blank to avoid spoilers but this is just too funny ~ Jeri Smith-Ready

My eyes flew open and when they did, his dark ones, not looking detached, not blank, not impassive, but heated and turned on and God, could it be? Totally freaking sexy. ~ Kristen Ashley

Mary sat, quiet and attentive and blank. It wasn't like talking to a dumb seventh-grader, it was like talking to a pancake. ~ Robert B. Parker