Painting And Drawing Quotes

I work on words, mostly, toward them being poetry or short stories, and then some of those become songs. They all find their place in the world, but they all start off in the same place. I'm always painting and drawing as well, and it's an ongoing creative assignment. ~ P.J. Harvey

When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing. ~ David Hockney

When I'm painting and drawing I only do people. Acting is obviously portraiture - and writing is as well. ~ Antony Sher

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

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

As a teenager, I was really interested in drama and art. I did painting and drawing. I did some acting and loved theater. ~ Sarah Gavron

I liked painting and drawing, and I liked humanities mainly - poetry, literature - this speculative attitude toward life. ~ Rafael Moneo

I would always be painting and drawing. If I was stuck at home, I was in the basement working on a painting. ~ Terry Crews

They (his Street scene paintings and drawings) originated in the years 1911-14, in one of the loneliest times of my life, during which an agonizing restlessness drove me out onto the streets day and night, which were filled with people and cars. ~ Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

When Galileo made his astonishing discovery of mountains on the moon, his telescope didn't actually have enough magnifying power to support that finding. Instead, he recognized the zigzag pattern separating the light and dark areas of the moon. Other astronomers were looking through similar telescopes, but only Galileo "was able to appreciate the implications of the dark and light regions," Simonton notes. He had the necessary depth of experience in physics and astronomy, but also breadth of experience in painting and drawing. Thanks to artistic training in a technique called chiaroscuro, which focuses on representations of light and shade, Galileo was able to detect mountains where others did not. ~ Adam M. Grant

Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are ~ Susan Sontag

I've always loved painting and drawing. I wish I'd developed it more and exhibited. ~ Mary Quant

I grew up loving horses. I was relatively obsessed, starting with my rocking horse at age 2, all the way through my painting and drawing phase. ~ Diane Lane

I did photography, painting, and drawing, but I prefer sculpture. I like it because it's very physical. ~ P.J. Harvey

I've been painting and drawing and taking pictures as long as I've been writing music - and I've actually been drawing longer than I've been writing music. ~ Brandon Boyd

My drawings at first were made altogether in watercolors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish. ~ John James Audubon

When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know? ~ Dave Gibbons

You are a beautiful lady. I won't deny that. But there's a difference between admiring a painting and wanting to buy it. ~ Jaima Fixsen

Drawing is one of those things which sit on the uneasy bending line between instinct and instruction, where seeming perversity eventually trumps pleasure as the card players and the kibitzers interact and new thrills are sought. ~ Adam Gopnik

What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I'd just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents' house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don't know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I'd made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. ~ David Macaulay

Entering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide, low, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of the bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large oil painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted. ~ Herman Melville

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd
As herds of bellowing buses drive by
Love's anguish tightens your throat
As if you were never to be loved again
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery
You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer
You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles
The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life
It's a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

The young man being embraced by the Father is no longer just one repentant sinner, but the whole of humanity returning to God. The broken body of the prodigal becomes the broken body of humanity, and the baby-like face of the returning child becomes the face of all suffering people longing to reenter the lost paradise. Thus Rembrandt's painting becomes more than the mere portrayal of a moving parable. It becomes the summary of the history of our salvation. The light surrounding both Father and Son now speaks of the glory that awaits the children of God. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

In the domain of painting and statuary, the present-day credo of the worldly wise, especially in France, is this: ... I believe that art is, and can only be, the exact reproduction of nature ... An avenging God has heard the prayers of this multitude; Daguerre was his messiah. ~ Charles Baudelaire

The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body. ~ Lucian Freud

There was one painting, I remember, that showed a broad, clean sweep of sky and the ocean drawn out to the horizon, and the sand littered with seashells and crabs and mermaid's purses and bits of seaweed. A boy and girl were standing four feet apart, not facing each other, not acknowledging each other in any way, just standing,looking out at the water. I always liked that painting. I liked to think they had a secret. ~ Lauren Oliver

She was like an outline of the painting of the Holy Virgin that an artist has sketched in black and white, but not yet filled with colour. ~ Karen Maitland

I like doing clay work. It's different from drawing on a page because you have something to mold into different shapes. It's quite visual, it's a thing you can hold and feel, and that makes it different from drawing. ~ Bonnie Wright

I first came up with the idea for the colour-chart pictures back in 1966, and my preoccupation with the topic culminated in 1974 with a painting that consisted of 4,096 colour fields. Initially I was attracted by the typical Pop Art aestheticism of using standard colour-sample cards; I preferred the unartistic, tasteful and secular illustration of the different tones to the paintings of Albers, Bill, Calderara, Lohse, etc. ~ Gerhard Richter

I have no education, I have no academic background in painting or in music, but I write music and I compose music and I write and I sell paintings, and my rule is, well, they can't arrest me. ~ Anthony Hopkins

In the utter peace and stillness the world seemed holding its breath, a little apprehensively, drawing near to the fire to warm itself. There was none of that sense of urgeful, pushing life that robs even a calm spring day of the sense of silence; life was over and the year was just waiting, harboring its strength for the final storms and turmoil of its death. The warmth and the color of maturity was there, exultant and burning, visible to the eyes, but the prophecy of decay was felt in a faint shiver of cold at morning and evening and a tiny sigh of the elms at midnight when a wandering ghost of a wind plucked a little of their gold away from them. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

We cannot provide a definition of those products from which the age takes it name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture.

They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. The cleverer writers poked fun at their own work. Many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors.

In some periods interviews with well-known personalities on current problems were particularly popular. Noted chemists or piano virtuosos would be queried about politics, for example, or popular actors, dancers, gymnasts, aviators, or even poets would be drawn out on the benefits and drawbacks of being a bachelor, or on the presumptive causes of financial crises, and so on.

All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a subject of current topical interest.

It is very hard indeed for us to put ourselves in the place of those people so that we can truly understand them. But the great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness.

If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, the readers of many thousands of feature arti ~ Hermann Hesse

I have heard it said that a happy childhood is a curse, because what follows can never measure up. All I can say is, those people must want too much; they can't accept that life is a series of struggles and that happiness can be found in overcoming them, drawing strength from the reserves laid down in the good years. ~ Deborah Lawrenson

Movies are weird; it's like trying to make a painting with one hundred people. It's a weird world, but every job is weird; it's always a little bit hard, crazy and fun, a nice combination. ~ Dito Montiel

Billy stretched and yawned, his withered neck taut again for a few seconds. "I can feel the season changing," he said. "Drawing in. This weather change coming means the end of hot weather. Time I got out to Gaze Island and worked on me poor old father's grave. Put it off last year and the year before." Some sadness straining the words. Billy seemed stored in an envelope; the flap sometimes lifted, his flattened self sliding onto the table. ~ Annie Proulx

When I'm traveling the world, I don't ever look anymore at the geography - just enough to catch galleries and paintings. ~ Alber Elbaz

I placed the tubes of paint on the palette and selected a small canvas. I prepared the palette with an assortment of colors, then closed my eyes, remembering the way the moors had looked when I rode into town with Lord Livingston. He'd been so different on that drive into the village before he left for London. Had that been the side of him that Lady Anna had fallen in love with? I dipped my brush into the black paint and then mixed in some white until I'd created the right shade of gray, then touched the brush to the canvas. I loved the feeling of the paintbrush in my hand. He'd been kind to buy me the art supplies, but I remembered how he'd behaved in the dining room and at other times before that. 'How could he be so cruel, so unfeeling?'
Once I'd painted the clouds, I moved on to the hills, mixing a sage green color for the grass and then dotting the foreground with a bit of lavender to simulate the heather. I stepped back from the canvas and frowned. It needed something else. But what? I looked out the window to the orchard.
The Middlebury Pink. 'Who took the page from Lady Anna's book? Lord Livingston?' I dabbed my brush into the brown paint and created the structure of the tree. Next I dotted the branches with its heart-shaped leaves and large, white, saucer-size blossoms with pink tips. ~ Sarah Jio

When HSBC took the painting out of their building, they had to block the road and use a crane to bring the painting out from the window. They spent about 20,000 dollars just to get the painting out of the building! They said not to bring it back, and told Sotheby's to sell it immediately! ~ Liu Dan

And now?" I touched Baltic's cheek, drawing his attention away from tragic memories. "Is he being coldly mad now?"
"No. I thought at first he was, but I see now that the act of being raised as a shade has changed him, leached the madness out of him."
Behind us, present-day Constantine yelled, "You call me a douche canoe? I am not the douche canoe
you are. No, you are more than that
you are a douche speed-boat!"
"Most of the madness," Baltic qualified. ~ Katie MacAlister

In 1958 I finally found a large enough apartment on the Lower East Side, where I reverted to figure painting. I drew and painted quite a lot of figures and nudes. People would come and pose for me. ~ Claes Oldenburg

During an interview, former President George W. Bush discussed his painting hobby and said, 'Never paint your wife or your mother.' Then he added, 'Because it's almost impossible to get the paint out of their hair.' ~ Jimmy Fallon

He exists on two planes. He sees the story as He tells it, while He weaves it, shapes it, and sings it. And He stepped inside it. The shadows exist in the painting, the dark corners of grief and trial and wickedness all exist so that He might step inside them, so we could see how low He can stoop. In this story, the Author became flesh and wandered the stage with Hamlet, offering His own life. In this story, the Author heaped all that He loathed, all that displeased Him, all the wrongness of the world, onto Himself. ~ N.D. Wilson

A story is a magnificent painting that draws you in and captures your attention with words. ~ Liza M. Wiemer

Many of them were familiar from childhood with the fables of La Fontaine. Or they had read Voltaire or Racine or Molière in English translations. But that was about the sum of any familiarity they had with French literature. And none, of course, could have known in advance that the 1830s and '40s in Paris were to mark the beginning of the great era of Victor Hugo, Balzac, George Sand, and Baudelaire, not to say anything of Delacroix in painting or Chopin and Liszt in music. ~ David McCullough

The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. And the condition of the Negro is ever the cause for further discrimination. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

One ought not to judge her: all children are Heartless. They have not grown a heart yet, which is why they can climb high trees and say shocking things and leap so very high grown-up hearts flutter in terror. Hearts weigh quite a lot. That is why it takes so long to grow one. But, as in their reading and arithmetic and drawing, different children proceed at different speeds. (It is well known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else.) Some small ones are terrible and fey, Utterly Heartless. Some are dear and sweet and Hardly Heartless At All. September stood very generally in the middle on the day the Green Wind took her, Somewhat Heartless, and Somewhat Grown. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I think every painting should be the same size and the same color so they're all interchangeable and nobody thinks they have a better painting or a worse painting ... Besides even when the subject is different, people want the same painting. ~ Andy Warhol

Nearly always in Dutch painting and often in the works of Giorgione or Titian, it is entirely independent of anything definitely poetical in the subject, a kind of form and choice in workmanship which is itself entirely satisfying, and is (as the Greeks would say) an end in itself. ~ Oscar Wilde

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

Do activities you're passionate about - which make your heart and soul feel perky - including things like working out, cooking, painting, writing, yoga, hiking, walking, swimming, being in nature, being around art, or reading inspiring books. ~ Karen Salmansohn