Leonardo da Vinci Quotes

The sculptor must paint with his chisel; half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness.

The artist does not see both eyes alike. There is always 'the eye' and the other eye... It adds life and plasticity to the drawing if the eye in the light is darker than the one in the shadow. It gives the head vividness.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

The only principle in art is to copy what you see. Dealers in aesthetics to the contrary, every other method is fatal.

Much of life becomes background, but it is the province of art to throw buckets of light into the shadows and make life new again.

However minutely labored the picture may be in the detail, the whole will have a false and even an unfinished appearance, at whatever distance, or in whatever light it can be shown.

All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.

The Lord of Light in his wisdom made us male and female, two parts of a greater whole. In our joining there is power. Power to make life. Power to make light. Power to cast shadows.

Shadow is the obstruction of light. Shadows appear to me to be of supreme importance in perspective, because, without them opaque and solid bodies will be ill defined; that which is contained within their outlines and their boundaries themselves will be ill-understood unless they are shown against a background of a different tone from themselves.

Even if the painting is green, well then! The 'subject' is the green. There is always a subject; it's a joke to suppress the subject, it's impossible.

Even in the darkness, his smile threw shadows.

It seemed to me that it was possible to translate light, forms, and character using nothing but color, without recourse to values.

If one could only reproduce nature, and always with less beauty than the original, why paint at all?

I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.

If God created shadows it was to better emphasise the light.

How vain is painting, which is admired for reproducing the likeness of things whose originals are not admired.

But let's speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera.

Originally, the lyrics to "Girl" were really upbeat, and then it didn't work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you're doing something happy and light, you need the shadows.

A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.

Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.

A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter.

Paint your picture by means of the lights. Lights define texture and color - shadows define form.

God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

The essence of a sculpture must enter on tip-toe, as light as animal footprints on snow.