Seth Godin Quotes

Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.

In art, practice always comes before theory.

I am just beginning to understand what it is to paint. A painter should have two lives, one in which to learn, and one in which to practice his art.

I do not see in what manner practice alone can be sufficient for the production of correct, excellent, and finished pictures. Works deserving this character never were produced, nor ever will arise, from memory alone.

The Arts are learnt by reason and method; they are mastered by practice.

Art does not begin with imitation, but with discipline.

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

You have to make thousands and thousands of drawings before an illustration is perfected.

All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy — or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others. To develop ‘Hidden Art’ will also, of course, take time and energy – and the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, and what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

Don't only practise your art, but force your way into its secrets.

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

I do the same thing everyday. I go to work and paint. I try to turn out as many pictures as I can.

Confidence is a trait that has to be earned honestly and refreshed constantly; you have to work as hard to protect your skills as you did to develop them. . . The one thing that creative souls around the world have in common is that they all have to practice to maintain their skills. Art is a vast democracy of habit.

Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.

With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.

To create a work of art, great or small, is work, hard work, and work requires discipline and order.

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

Art is awkward until technique has become an unconscious habit.

I still come closest to success with drawing.

No writer, painter, or actor - no artist - is ever handed a sharp knife (although a few people are handed almighty big ones; the name we give to the artist with the big knife is 'genius'), and we hone with varying degrees of zeal and aptitude.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.