GLEANINGS ON THE WAY: Limits

"Limit gives form to the limitless." Pythagoras

"The fewer limitations the artist imposes on his work, the less chance he has for artistic success." Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Without firm limits there is no play." Rem Koolhaus

"It's a paradox: When you have complete freedom, you often freeze up and do nothing." Carla Sonheim: Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY: Simplifying

"Look for the major shapes to help you simplify your subject. Pretend you're doing a collage rather than a sketch." Cathy Johnson, "Sketching in Nature"

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY: Ruskin's Saw

"Everything that you can see in the world around you presents itself to your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours variously shaded." John Ruskin 1857. Oft today an assumed principle, rarely is it known he was the source.

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Tone value is the commonest problem in drawing." Norman Battershill Draw Trees

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Don't draw everything you see or your picture will look cluttered and fussy." Norman Battershill "Draw Trees"

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Trees are at every season among the loveliest of living things. To draw them successfully you first need to understand the form and structure. You can most easily learn to do that by observing and sketching leafless branches in winter. It takes a lot of practice and patience. Move from parts of trees, to single trees, and then to groups."
Norman Battershill, "Draw Trees"

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Each drawing you do will change you in some way."

Danny Gregory

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Approach your subject as if it were a still life."

Rex Brandt

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"The painter must leave the beholder something to guess."

E.H. Combrich

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Exactly right is all wrong."

Ed Whitney

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"It's your eyeballs that need training, your eyeballs and whatever is connecting them to your hand."

Danny Gregory

"KEEPING AT IT"

"Everybody's got five minutes."

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to the ship."  Leonardo da Vinci

Found by FF

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

“You have to produce a hundred pieces of junk before you can start producing something that approaches art.”  Sven Geier 

Found by EV

GLEANINGS ON THE WAY

"The wonderful becomes familiar and the familiar wonderful."  (about artistic looking)  Edward R. Tufte

Found by FF