William Morris Hunt Quotes

Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

I wish I was better at art. I love some of the great artists of the 19th century and, compared to them, I just feel I lack this technique that they had. They have so much skill.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

Painting it was hard graft. There are one and a half large tubes of white in the ground - yet that ground is very dark.

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.

And the part about being a professional artist is that you can tell, and you can do it over again, even if you can't say how you got there exactly.

Painting is as difficult as brain surgery. It's not that relaxing. But that's the discipline.

In the hands of a master, light and shade is one of the great qualities of art.

The technician should never forget that he is an artist, the artist never that he is a technician

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

The writer concerned more with technique than truth becomes a technician, not an artist.

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

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

If someone took the finest marble and knew how to shape it artfully: Prometheus' material was lowly clay, but his statues walked.

None of the arts are any good unless you really are great at them.

The hand that guides the brush has already caught and executed what floated before the mind at the same moment the mind began to form it, and in the end the pupil no longer knows which of the two-mind or hand -was responsible for the work.

He who pretends to be either painter or engraver without being a master of drawing is an imposter.

The perfection of an art consists in the employment of a comprehensive system of laws, commensurate to every purpose within its scope, but concealed from the eye of the spectator; and in the production of effects that seem to flow forth spontaneously, as though uncontrolled by their influence, and which are equally excellent, whether regarded individually, or in reference to the proposed result.

The brush is a more powerful and rapid tool than the point or the stump... the main thing that the brush secures is the instant grasp of the grand construction of a figure.

A competent portraitist knows how to imply the profile in the full face.

I take back all I ever said about the Old Masters. They give great lessons.

Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.