Howard Pyle Quotes

For me, drawing generates thinking and vice versa.

Something different happens to my brain when I put pen to paper: the pace of writing or drawing slows you down and gives you more time for thoughts to come in.

All there is to writing is having ideas. To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

If I get ideas independently of the act of writing, they never really fit. So for me, there's no hanging out, waiting for inspiration.

Painting is a medium in which the mind can actualize itself; it is a medium of thought. Thus painting, like music, tends to become its own content.

Once I can focus in on something, I just play it in my mind until an idea comes from out of nowhere, and it's usually the key to the whole song. It's the idea that matters. It's like electricity was around long before Edison harnessed it.

Painting is the intermediate somewhat between a thought and a thing.

Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them.

Rain on my head, call that brainstorming.

I pressed down the mental accelerator. The old lemon throbbed fiercely. I got an idea.

The problem is almost everybody is just recording the world with home photographic toys, not doing metaphor or ideas. We have a photographic culture that's not conditioned to think in terms of symbol.

Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak.

If I have an idea I want to put in a movie, I know what camera will make that look best, and I have ideas for future projects and stuff I'd like to build for those. I think it's just part of how I work, though.

Thought engenders thought. Place one idea on paper, another will follow it, and still another, until you have written a page; you cannot fathom your mind. There is a well of thought which has no bottom; the more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful it will be.

I never draw except with brush and paint.

When I am kicking around show ideas, or really any idea, usually an image comes to me. I don't really start with a character or a logline like, "What if the electricity turned off?"

Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.

I find drawing a useful outlet for ideas for which there is not time enough to realize as sculpture... And I sometimes draw just for its own enjoyment.

Flood your life with ideas from many sources. Creativity needs to be exercised like a muscle. If you don't use it, you'll lose it!

And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.

Thinking visually is my starting point, and then the writing happens.

I do a lot of research, I try to think about how it relates to music and I just do a ton of drawing. It's much easier to work your ideas out that way.

I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint.

I come alive when I'm painting. I like to work in oils and acrylics, and the full sensory engagement and self-expression is very stimulating to me.

I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don't, but I still always have a way of telling a story.