Joshua Reynolds Quotes

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

In the world of reality the more beautiful a work of art, the longer, we may be sure, was the time required to make it, and the greater the number of different minds which assisted in its development.

Creating art is a habit, one that we practice daily or hourly until we get good at it

In art, practice always comes before theory.

I had wrung impressionism dry and I finally came to the conclusion that I know neither how to paint nor how to draw.

You're only kidding yourself if you put creativity before craft.

What is drawing? How does one get there? It's working one's way through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. How can one get through that wall? - since hammering on it doesn't help at all. In my view, one must undermine the wall and grind through it slowly and patiently.

I think that an artist should be a skilled craftsman.

Focus on your music and not technology.

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

It takes skill to bring something you've imagined into the world: to use words to create believable lives, to select the colors and textures of paint to represent a haystack at sunset, to combine ingredients to make a flavorful dish. No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repitition, through a blend of learning and reflection that's both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time. . . . If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

The brush is a more powerful and rapid tool than the point or the stump... the main thing that the brush secures is the instant grasp of the grand construction of a figure.

A work of art is not a matter of thinking beautiful thoughts or experiencing tender emotions , but of intelligence, skill, taste, proportion, knowledge, discipline and industry; especially discipline.

And the part about being a professional artist is that you can tell, and you can do it over again, even if you can't say how you got there exactly.

With practice the craft will come almost of itself, in spite of you and all the more easitly if you think of something besides technique.

The Arts are learnt by reason and method; they are mastered by practice.

Art is awkward until technique has become an unconscious habit.

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

I still come closest to success with drawing.

If art is the bridge between what you see in your mind and what the world sees, then skill is how you build that bridge.

The living model never answers well the idea or impressions the painter wishes to express; one must, therefore, learn to do without one, and for that, you must acquire facility, furnish one's memory to the point of infinitude, and make numerous drawings after the old masters.

I am not concerned with simply surviving. I am very concerned about improving. I start each day by examining yesterday's work and looking for areas where I can improve. I am always trying to draw the characters better, and trying to design each panel somewhat in the manner a painter would treat his canvas.

Self-expression without craft is for toddlers.

You don't know how much artists go through to make it look so easy. It's all in the practice.