What ‘how to draw’ books look like
But why not this?
How d’ya like them apples?
A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree being looked at.
JOHN BERGER
If you hear a voice that says you can’t paint then paint in any way you can and the voice will fall silent.
Vincent Van Gogh
I discard a lot of the drawings that I do. Probably about 70%. I like to think that everything has the potential to be art or garbage, and it doesn’t matter which it is as long as the drawing in question is finished.
David Shrigley
Four-fifths of everybody’s work must be bad. But the remnant is worth the trouble for its own sake.
Rudyard Kipling
Ninety percent of everything is crap
Theodore Sturgeon (an American science fiction author)
Rembrandt
What is contemporary drawing?
When does a drawing become ART?
The creative writer does the same as the child at play; he creates a world of fantasy which he takes very seriously.
SIGMUND FREUD
Henry Moore original
Henry Moore original
CORRECTED!
Matisse original
CORRECTED!
Matisse original
CORRECTED!
Warhol original
CORRECTED!
What the fuck happened to you pal?
Picasso drawing (aged 53)
Picasso drawing (aged 15)
Did he get better or worse at drawing?
Exactitude is not truth.
HENRI MATISSE
PICASSO
INGRES
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
A photographer seeing Picasso.
A hyper-realist seeing Picasso.
Picasso seeing Picasso.
We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.
PABLO PICASSO
(Upon exiting the Lascaux cave, France)
Spot the Picasso
Which one of these is Pablo Picasso’s Fragments de corps de Femme?
PICASSO OR 7-YEAR-OLD CHILD?
BASQUAIT OR A CAVE PAINTING?
If it rains I draw the rain, if it snows I draw the snow.
David Hockney
A drawing of a tree shows, not a tree, but a tree being looked at.
JOHN BERGER
For me the difference between figurative and abstraction is not that important.
HIROE SAEKI
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.
HENRI MATISSE
Coleridge’s prescription for poetry, and obviously applicable to drawing, was likeness in unlikeness, a source of new imagery limited only by the human appetite for invention. At the same time large numbers of amateur artists strive vainly to gain proficiency in a kind of drawing which can end only in banality.
ROY OXLADE
The effort needed to see things without distortion takes something very like courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time; He has to look at life as he did when he was a child and, if he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.
HENRI MATISSE
Got to lose control before you take control.
PATTI SMITH
The development of western art has been characterised by a skill-based aesthetic. And within the dominant view of drawing the term skill has been subverted to mean simplistically, skill in representation.
ROY OXLADE
We choose an utterance, a gesture, a mark, and by these means we identify ourselves in the same moment discover and create ourselves.
Marilynne Robinson
It is true of art generally that it occurs along a continuum between expectation fulfilled, however surprisingly, and expectation disrupted, however profoundly.
Marilynne Robinson
The mind can never be satisfied, never. Beauty disciplines. It recommends a best word, a best line in and best place and makes the difference palpable between right and wrong.
Marilynne Robinson
The completion of a piece of art (an artifice) must have the look of teleology, an ending approached, not arbitrarily occurred.
Marilynne Robinson
I discard a lot of the drawings that I do. Probably about 70%. I like to think that everything has the potential to be art or garbage, and it doesn’t matter which it is as long as the drawing in question is finished.
David Shrigley
A drawing of a tree shows, not tree, but a tree being looked at.
We have learned nothing in twelve thousand years.
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.
Exactitue is not truth.
I discard a lot of the drawings that I do. Probably about 70%. I like to think that everything has the potential to be art or garbage, and it doesn’t matter which it is as long as the drawing in question is finished.
For me the difference between figurative and abstraction is not that important.
A drawing is simply a line going for a walk.
A line is a dot that went for a walk.
Coleridge’s prescription for poetry, and obviously applicable to drawing, was likeness in unlikeness, a source of new imagery limited only by the human appetite for invention. At the same time large numbers of amateur artists strive vainly to gain proficiency in a kind of drawing which can end only in banality.
The development of western art has been characterised by a skill-based aesthetic. And within the dominant view of drawing the term sill has been subverted to mean simplistically, skill in representation.
The development of western art has been characterised by a skill-based aesthetic. And within the dominant view of drawing the term sill has been subverted to mean simplistically, skill in representation.
The effort needed to see things without distortion takes something very like courage; and this courage is essential to the artist, who has to look at everything as though he saw it for the first time; He has to look at life as he did when he was a child and, if he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.
It is thus evident that the anatomical, organic inexactitude in these drawings has not harmed the expression of the intimate character and inherent truth of the personality, but on the contrary has helped to clarify it.
Guess the year of these drawings (hover to reveal)
Picasso
What is contemporary drawing?
