John Ruskin Quotes

When I was three or four, I was really good at drawing and painting, and everyone used to say, "You're going to go to art college." I didn't really know what that meant.

I was taught to draw very well when I was in school at Boston. And I grew to enjoy drawing so much that I never stopped.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

There is a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree.

The art of drawing which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing...should be taught to every child just as writing is.

Teaching people to draw is teaching people to look

I've been painting since I was a kid.

I have sketched since a young age, so there's always been an artistic side, a visual side to my personality.

Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.

The enemy of art is the enemy of nature; art is nothing but the highest sagacity and exertion of human nature; and what nature will he honour who honours not the human?

Children should learn to draw as they learn to write, and such a mystery should not be made of it. They should be encouraged, not flattered... then [later in life] double the effort is required to get the facility which might have been gained insensibly.

An amateur may not be an artist, though an artist should be an amateur.

Observe Everything. Communicate Well. Draw, Draw, Draw.

Drawing is the root of everything.

A good teacher is like a good artist. They go right to the most difficult part of whatever's going on.

Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful.

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.

My son's a painter. All through school his teachers tell him he's a genius. I tell him to paint me an apple that looks like an apple before he paints me one that doesn't. Go where you can go, but start from someplace recognizable.

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!

I never retouch a sketch: I take a canvas the same size, as I may change the composition somewhat. But I always strive to give the same feeling, while carrying it on further.

I'm good at line-drawing, and some of my color stuff is okay. So I just do it for record covers.

It is the end of art to inoculate men with the love of nature. But those who have a psssion for nature in the natural way, need no pictures nor gallereies. Spring is their designer, and the whole year their artist.

I think the best thing I learned from drawing comics is that it's a great exercise in concision.

I used to teach on a college level, and I've taught in schools where kids just wanted to be artists, and I used to be furious with them if they didn't read, because they just seemed so - their education seemed so thin if all they could do was pick up a paint-loaded brush and fling it at a canvas. I mean, there was nothing to express there, except maybe their own personal feelings. But if they're not - if they don't have a grounding in the way these things have been expressed by other people down through the centuries, then they're lost.