Eugene Delacroix Quotes

Drawing teaches you to look at things properly and to understand form and structure.

It is by developing the individual that he is prepared for that wonderful manifestation of the human intelligence, which drawing constitutes. The ability to see reality in form, in color, in proportion, to be master of the movements of one's own hand - that is what is necessary.

There is more sensitivity in technique than in the rest of the picture.

Drawing is your understanding of form.

The painter who draws by practise and judgment of the eye without the use of reason is like the mirror which reproduces within itself all the objects which are set opposite to it without knowledge of the same.

Perspective was always important. There are some cartoonists who can stand at the foot of a building looking straight up and they'll capture it perfectly. And then there are those of us who do the same drawing and it's the goofiest-looking thing in the world. But after a while I guess you just learn what you're capable of and what you can and can't do.

I sketch the faces upside down because it's like drawing from the left side of the brain or the right side of the brain. I never took an art lesson in my life.

It is often said that Leonardo drew so well because he knew about things; it is truer to say that he knew about things because he drew so well.

When an artist paints a picture he does not want you to consider his personality as represented in that picture - he wants you to look at the beauty of that picture. No one cares who has painted the picture as long as it is beautiful.

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

Your eye is a muscle, you have to keep it in shape and the more you draw, the more you see.

Where the eye is focused, there the imagination finds its raw material. The right focus must be won at immense cost and discipline. Train the eye to see the good, and the imagination will follow suit.

If you want to get somewhere in this life, learn to draw beautiful women.

Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you have drawn from the model from memory as well.

The trouble is, we've been taught what to see and how to render what we see. If only we could be in the position of those men who did those wonderful drawings in Lascaux and Altimira!

There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are.

A man cannot paint portraits till he has seen faces.

An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.

To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back.

Color is an inborn gift, but appreciation of value is merely training of the eye, which everyone ought to be able to acquire.

If Picasso walked into Disney looking for a job, they would throw him out on the street. Couldn't draw good enough.

I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad. If my fanny squirms, it's bad. If my fanny doesn't squirm, it's good.

Experience is no more transferable in morals than in art.

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.

The drawings are terribly good.