Howard Pyle Quotes

I'm interested in the landscape of the face, the way in which light and shadow fall across the forms. That's really my subject matter.

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

You end up exhausted and spent, but later, in retrospect, you realize what it all was for. The parts fall into place, and you can see the whole picture and finally understand the role each individual part plays. The dawn comes, the sky grows light, and the colors and shapes of the roofs of houses, which you could only glimpse vaguely before, come into focus.

I used to analyze myself down to the last thread, used to compare myself with others, recalled all the smallest glances, smiles and words of those to whom I’d tried to be frank, interpreted everything in a bad light, laughed viciously at my attempts ‘to be like the rest’ –and suddenly, in the midst of my laughing, I’d give way to sadness, fall into ludicrous despondency and once again start the whole process all over again – in short, I went round and round like a squirrel on a wheel.

And I should mention the light which falls through the big windows this time of day italicizing everything it touches.

If Christ is not divine, every impulse of the Christian world falls to a lower octave, and light and love and hope decline.

The young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors.

There is a sun, a light that for want of another word I can only call yellow, pale sulphur yellow, pale golden citron. How lovely yellow is!

Every day a new picture is painted and framed, held up for half an hour, in such lights as the Great Artist chooses, and then withdrawn, and the curtain falls. And then the sun goes down, and long the afterglow gives light.

As fall the light autumnal leaves, one still the other following, till the bough strews all its honors on the earth below.

Nowadays, people shoot digitally and it's all in color, but you press a button and it all goes to black and white. But it's not lit for black and white. So, it's a tricky thing. If you're going do black and white, you better remember to separate things with light, because color ain't gonna be there.

I see less and less... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf.

We read the past by the light of the present, and the forms vary as the shadows fall, or as the point of vision alters.

Lighting is everything in a color.

Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained.

The stars looked like nail heads in the sky--pull a few of them out and the darkness would fall.

The vivacity and brightness of colors in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when it is illumined by the sun, unless the painting is placed in such a position that it will receive the same light from the sun as does the landscape.

Remember...we don't see objects, we see light. [...] Light can do anything water can do--flow, wash, trickle. It can do anything an artist can do--paint, burnish, carve. Candlelight falls, licks a face. There is always light in a room.

As you walk through life, always walk toward the light, and the shadows of life will fall behind you.

It is necessary to introduce light vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, and a sufficient amount of blues, to obtain an airy feeling.

Shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights.

I love to accent movement. The eye goes to where the white is - you know, the glove. And the feet, if you're dancing, you can put an exclamation point on your movement if it has a bit of light on it. So I wore the white socks. And for the design of the jacket, I would sit with the people who made the clothes and tell them where I wanted a button or a buckle or a design.

We think of color as a thing that we’re receiving. And if you go into one of the Skyspaces, you can see that it’s possible to change the color of the sky. Now, I obviously don’t change the color of the sky, but I changed the context of vision.

I suppose I envy painters because they can meditate on form and structure, on color and light, and not concern themselves with human torment and chaos. It is restful even to imagine expression without words.