Portrait Painting Quotes

NEXT LIFE. My embroidery studio on the main street of Bayeux will be just one part of my Institute of Slow Information. I will also teach letter writing, listening, miniature portrait painting, and the art of doing one thing at a time. ~ Vivian Swift

I remembered that Johnson had declared portrait painting to be an improper employment for a woman. "Public practice of any art and staring in men's faces is very indelicate in a female," he had said.
Well I'd seen Dr. Johnson's face in the book's frontispiece and I couldn't imagine anyone male or female wanting to stare into it for any length of time - the man was an absolute toad. ~ Alan Bradley

The tradition of portrait painting, to embellish or idealize the subject, remains the aim of everyday and of commercial photography, but it has had a much more limited career in photography considered as art. Generally speaking, the honors have gone to the Cordelias. ~ Susan Sontag

It is remarkable that circumcision, which is invariably practiced by thE
Mahometans, and forms a distinguishing rite of their faith, to which all
proselytes must conform, is neither mentioned in the Koran nor the
Sonna. It seems to have been a general usage in Arabia, tacitly adopted
from the Jews, and is even said to have been prevalent throughout the
East before the time of Moses.

It is said that the Koran forbids the making likenesses of any living
thing, which has prevented the introduction of portrait-painting among
Mahometans. The passage of the Koran, however, which is thought to
contain the prohibition, seems merely an echo of the second commandment, held sacred by Jews and Christians, not to form images or pictures
for worship. One of Mahomet's standards was a black eagle. Among the most distinguished Moslem ornaments of the Alhambra at Granada is a fountain supported by lions carved of stone, and some Moslem monarchs have had their effigies stamped on their coins. ~ Washington Irving

He's often wished that he could capture the full essence of each woman's laugh on canvas, but he settles instead, on watching how, when a woman chuckles, her head moves slightly to the left or right so that the light grazes it at a new angle and creates a new pattern of highlight and shadow. It's this subtle shifting that he finds astounding - how everything and nothing can be written on a face through its lines, through the way skin around the eyes crinkle or how the shifting of a mouth belies joy or sarcasm or simple placation. He wonders what Vermeer might have said to that girl with the pearl earring, what words could have stirred in her that wanton expression, because even amateurs understand that faces allow an entry point and that negative space is the key to any good painting: what isn't included is sometimes more important than what is. ~ Adam Gallari

True Discipleship makes a man and woman a project or an portrait painting to completion

With a careful detail and awareness of every stroke of the brush until the vision comes to pass ~ Louis

There are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk. ~ Charles Dickens

All I care about these days is painting - photography has never been more than a way into painting, a sort of instant drawing. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

I thought, enough of this, I'm not an abstract painter, what the hell am I going to do? Should I get a job in a shoe store, sell real estate, or what? I was really depressed by the whole thing, because I felt like a painter, yet I couldn't make paintings. ~ Ralph Goings

Color is the essence of painting, which the subject always killed. ~ Kazimir Malevich

You'll find more emotions of words in those crumpled & rolled papers thrown in the dustbin than the edited script you jolted down last night in your folder. More splashes of paints lay scattered around your drawing paint-plate, the brushes equally messed up with their romance with the colours before the actual finishing of a fine portrait. Your draft box breathes more words than the real, grammatically -groomed post on your blog. The room smells more of the combined samples of vividly used tropical, musky, floral essences mixed in different ratios to get the exotic cologne at the end.
Gist is spending that extra cent to obtain a perfect blend. That extra counts to the journey of a masterpiece which later finds itself an identity of an extra-ordinary creation.
You're that 'extra' to me who glorifies my existence and makes me feel like a clone-sister of masterpiece or rather a mistress-piece!!!

- Shonali Dey (Shon Alley) ~ Shonali Dey

If you can make a little painting for the ears with a few words, well, I like words: I like cutting them up and finding different ways of saying the same thing. I get into a spell, and it all comes easy. I don't labor over it. I go inside the song. I think you make yourself an antenna for songs, and songs want to be around you. And then they bring other songs along, and then they're all sittin' around, and they're drinking your beer, and they're sleeping on the floor. And they are using the phone. They're rude, thankless little f-ers. ~ Tom Waits

But short films are not inferior, just different. I think the short gives a freedom to film-makers. What's appealing is that you don't have as much responsibility for storytelling and plot. They can be more like a portrait, or a poem. ~ Jane Campion

I click to buy it and I'm furious to discover that it's not available in Ireland and they won't post it from abroad and the only place that sells it is Harrods and it's impossible for me to go to Harrods because it's like being trapped in an Escher painting. ~ Marian Keyes

When confronted by a 'believer' it is easy for me to contrast the views of the skeptic with those of the rationalist. I simply reach into my pocket and pull out my change.

Holding a quarter aloft, I say, 'This is a most remarkable coin, for it is heavier than all the sins of humanity committed since the beginning of the human race.'

I then hold up a nickel and say, 'This coin is even more amazing, as it is brighter and shinier than the flames that proceeded from the Burning Bush discovered on Mt. Sinai by Moses.'

Then I raise a penny and state, 'This portrait of President Lincoln is more realistic and true-to-life than any portrait of Satan ever painted.'

And finally, I hold out a bright, shiny dime and say, 'And this dime is the most amazing of all because it is heavier and contains more precious metals than all the gold bricks in the streets of Heaven.'

I end with 'Give to Caesar what is his, and hold the rest of it dear - for it is all you see and touch - and the Christian god can take care of all his things, for they amount to less than this 41 cents I hold here in my hand. ~ E. Haldeman-Julius

The self-deception of slave owners and proponents of slavery is well documented by the historians Eugene Genovese and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in their book Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South. Slavery was not perceived by most slaveholders in the nineteenth century to be an exploitation of humans by other humans for economic gain; instead, slaveholders painted a portrait of slavery as a paternalistic and benign institution in which the slaves themselves were seen as not so different from all laborers - black and white - who toiled everywhere in both free and slave states; further, the South's "Christian slavery" was claimed to be superior. ~ Michael Shermer

What's that?' Thaniel said, curious. The postmarks and stamps weren't English or Japanese.

'A painting. There's a depressed Dutchman who does countryside scenes and flowers and things. It's ugly, but I have to maintain the estates in Japan and modern art is a good investment. ~ Natasha Pulley

Life batters and shapes us in all sorts of ways before it's done, but those original selves which we were born with, and which I believe we continue in some measure to be no matter what, are selves which still echo with the holiness of their origin. I believe that what Genesis suggests is that this original self, with the print of God's thumb still upon it, is the most essential part of who we are and is buried deep in all of us as a source of wisdom and strength and healing which we can draw upon or, with our terrible freedom, not draw upon as we choose. I think that among other things all real art comes from that deepest self – painting, writing music, dance, all of it that in some way nourishes the spirit and enriches the understanding. I think that our truest prayers come from there too, the often unspoken, unbidden prayers that can rise out of the lives of unbelievers as well as believers whether they recognize them as prayers or not. And I think that from there also come our best dreams and our times of gladdest playing and taking it easy and all those moments when we find ourselves being better or stronger or braver or wiser than we are. ~ Frederick Buechner

I know this is a bit redundant, but it is really hard to explain just how loud Tiger Stadium is when you're standing on the field. The crowd is moving and swaying so much, and in so many directions, it makes the stands look blurry, like a pointillist painting. ~ Wright Thompson

The details were saccharine, but they could not obscure the force and beauty of the painting. ~ Teju Cole

I feel that, as an actor, you're constantly working to become better, which I love, but with painting, I can fail on my own terms. There's a freedom in that, so that's why I love to paint. ~ J. August Richards

As strange as it may sound, our experience of a Chagall painting actually depends to some extent on whether our language has a word for blue. ~ Guy Deutscher

Philologists, who chase A painting syllable through time and space Start it at home, and hunt it in the dark, To Gaul, to Greece, and into Noah's Ark. ~ William Cowper

I never smiled much." His voice was a low purr in the shadows.
"Don't be silly," she replied, taking a step closer to the next portrait
and farther away from him. "You smile all the time."
"At you," he conceded, "with you, because of you. ~ Olivia Parker

Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors. ~ Edward Norton

A poem is like a painting. ~ Horace

I can tell really early on in a painting if I'm going to toss it or not. ~ Grimes

It's a waste of time to think that if you colored a painting red what might have happened if you painted it black. ~ Yoko Ono

It's probably hard for anyone looking at my landscapes today to realize that I was once regarded as a rebel, a dangerous influence; that I've been told I was on the verge of insanity, that my painting was nothing but meaningless daubs. Lawren Harris, the man most responsible for drawing the Group of Seven together, was accused of something perilously close to treason - his paintings, said his severest critics, were discouraging immigration. ~ A. Y. Jackson

Sometimes, dear brother, I know so well what I want. I am quite able to do without God, both in my life and in my painting, but what I cannot do without, unwell as I am, is something greater than myself, which is my life, the power to create. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Life The machine The human soul A 75mm breech My portrait ~ Blaise Cendrars

Every song has a composer, every book has an author, every car has a maker, every painting has a painter, and every building has a builder. So it isn't irrational to take this simple logic a little further and say that nature must have had a Maker. It would be irrational to believe that it made itself. ~ Ray Comfort

I am trying to get my paintings a bit lighter in tone, as some of my recent oils have been mistaken for night scenes. ~ E. J. Hughes

I do see myself as the heir to a vast, great, rich culture of painting - of art in general - which we have lost, but which places obligations on us. ~ Gerhard Richter

Something sacred, that's it. We ought to be able to say that such and such a painting is as it is, with its capacity for power, because it is "touched by God." ~ Pablo Picasso

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. ~ Bridget Riley

Could you imagine people eating a painting
if they could introduce a painting into their bodies? It's probably the artist's dream, and we have the opportunity to do so. ~ Ferran Adria

Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us. ~ Pablo Picasso

So, did I work with Warhol? I worked with him less on that play then I did on other things. He actually did a portrait of my rabbit and some other stuff. Warhol was definitely ... Warhol. ~ Harvey Fierstein

Don't fall in love with a woman who reads, a woman who feels too much, a woman who writes...
Don't fall in love with an educated, magical, delusional, crazy woman. Don't fall in love with a woman who thinks, who knows what she knows and also knows how to fly; a woman sure of herself.
Don't fall in love with a woman who laughs or cries making love, knows how to turn her spirit into flesh; let alone one that loves poetry (these are the most dangerous), or spends half an hour contemplating a painting and isn't able to live without music.
Don't fall in love with a woman who is interested in politics and is rebellious and feel a huge horror from injustice. One who does not like to watch television at all. Or a woman who is beautiful no matter the features of her face or her body.
Don't fall in love with a woman who is intense, entertaining, lucid and irreverent. Don't wish to fall in love with a woman like that. Because when you fall in love with a woman like that, whether she stays with you or not, whether she loves you or not, from a woman like that, you never come back. ~ Martha Rivera-Garrido

I like setting up problems for the viewer, like how do you visually deal with a ring when what's usually in the center of a painting is very important? It's like the main course isn't there and you're having to deal with everything around what would normally be the main course. ~ Robert Mangold