Ellsworth Kelly Quotes

Drawing is the cornerstone of the graphic, plastic arts. Drawing is the coordination of line, tone, and color symbols into formations that express the artist's thought.

What is drawing? Not once in describing the shape of the mass did I shift my eyes from the model. Why? Because I wanted to be sure that nothing evaded my grasp of it... My objective is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my eyes see.

When I draw something, the brain and the hands work together.

All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation.

Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter's identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.

Drawing is the root of everything.

In drawing, I don't erase. I believe the original gesture has to be the best.

It is the brushwork of the right value and color which should produce the drawing.

Drawing is putting a line around an idea.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.

I'm really interested in making a mark on a paper and letting that be cursive shorthand for an idea - that's the origin of cartooning.

I had a natural feeling for sculpture, and the nudes are my sculpture.

Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite - getting something down.

I like creating images.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

To paint is a possessing rather than a picturing.

I paint landscapes, figuratives. I painted all my life. In fact, I started as a commercial artist.

The writing process isn't something I'm in love with. I'm an illustrator who writes.

When I came from horizontal vertical straight all old stuff then suddenly I go also again in curved lines. And there I submit to changes in the intensity of my hand leading a tool, you see.

The things that I paint are things that I know very well.

I suppose I consider my work a kind of picture making.

Whenever I do someone's portrait, I'm trying to locate the photo in the lens while reaching into that person psychologically. There's the magic! I don't always achieve it. It's a hit or a miss!

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit.

My drawings are the result of my sculpture.