Drawings Quotes

“All art is but dirtying the paper delicately.”
― John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing

“Can I start by asking why your drawings abnormally suck?”
― Tite Kubo

“He sank back into his black-and-white world, his immobile world of inanimate drawings that had been granted the secret of motion, his death-world with its hidden gift of life. But that life was a deeply ambiguous life, a conjurer's trick, a crafty illusion based on an accidental property of the retina, which retained an image for a fraction of a second after the image was no longer present. On this frail fact was erected the entire structure of the cinema, that colossal confidence game. The animated cartoon was a far more honest expression of the cinematic illusion than the so-called realistic film, because the cartoon reveled in its own illusory nature, exulted in the impossible--indeed it claimed the impossible as its own, exalted it as its own highest end, found in impossibility, in the negation of the actual, its profoundest reason for being. The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible--therein lay its exhilaration and its secret melancholy. For this willful violation of the actual, while it was an intoxicating release from the constriction of things, was at the same time nothing but a delusion, an attempt to outwit mortality. As such it was doomed to failure. And yet it was desperately important to smash through the constriction of the actual, to unhinge the universe and let the impossible stream in, because otherwise--well, otherwise the world was nothing but an editorial cartoon.”
― Steven Millhauser, Little Kingdoms

“I'm a Baroque person. More than Baroque, I'm a Rococo person. I don't draw straight lines.”
― Nuno Roque

“Two artists had an art contest...It ended in a draw.”
― Santosh Kalwar, Gags and Extracts

“Daniel's desk by the window is piled high with his drawings. The artwork is everything. He thinks of himself as the act of drawing. His body of work is his life, it is his continuity. The drawings show outwardly that inner place where he is still alive, a thread to connect him with the world.”
― J.J. Brown, American Dream

“When mastering drapery drawings in Verrocchio's studio, Leonardo also pioneered sfumato, the technique of blurring contours and edges. It is a way for artists to render objects as they appear to our eye rather than with sharp contours. This advance caused Vasari to proclaim Leonardo the inventor of the 'modern manner' in painting, and the art historian Ernst Gombrich called sfumato 'Leonardo's famous invention, the blurred outline and mellowed colors that allow one form to merge with another and always leave something to our imagination.' The term 'sfumato' derives from the Italian word for 'smoke,' or more precisely the dissipation and gradual vanishing of smoke into thin air . . . With no sharp lines, enigmatic glances and smiles can flicker mysteriously.”
― Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci

“Oh, Lilias,” Uncle James groaned. “For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t you have drawn a flower or something?” He glanced at me and said, “I’m sorry – she’s going through a bit of a macabre phase at the moment. I suppose all children do at some point, don’t they?”

I nodded, but couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever gone around drawing grisly murder scenes and presenting them to people as gifts.”
― Alex Bell, Frozen Charlotte

“148She once said, "Just because you have talent doesn't mean you have to you have to do something with it.”
― Nanette Vonnegut, Drawings

“We must first admire the artist, the one who has completed all that nature has left aside, before being carried away by the beauty of art.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“This generation is destroyed by the so-called role models.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“Fashion design is usually based on passion. Most people can do this without any business experience. By simply relying on the creative part of their mind.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo

“He cooks from his heart. From his soul." A pause, where I took in his words. "That is, when he is not drawing."
That was a surprise. "Drawing?"
"He draws little comics," the bartender said. He disappeared down below the bar again. This time when he popped up, he was holding what looked like an old menu. "Look."
I took the menu and flipped through. Yes, it listed various dishes and their prices. But the artist---Luke---had doodled all over it, tiny pictures of the food, wavy lines of steam rising over bowls of rice specks and eggs, and slightly larger pictures of the people enjoying them as elaborate anime characters: their eyes enormous, little strings of drool slipping from the corners of mouth slashes, frizzled lines of movement showing their frenzy as they dove through the menu categories looking for more food.
"This is adorable," I said with some surprise. I hadn't pictured Luke, with his posh accent that slipped out when he wasn't paying attention and his buttoned-up fancy restaurants, drawing cartoons.
"Yes," the bartender said. "Adorable.”
― Amanda Elliot, Sadie on a Plate

“I set up the skin of Estelle's bird number 5, the marbled godwit---- a migratory visitor to Florida, like me. I draw the beak twice as long as the head, tapering down to the width of a knitting needle, then fill in the back and wings with terrazzo mottling, brown and black and white. It has long legs and an exquisite neck. I hope this bird gets a prominent place in the exhibit.
On my second sheet, a young woman kneels on black soil, her back to the viewer, dark hair in a chignon. She pulls at the weeds that crowd her precious bee balm, betony, dock, and rue. She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, avoiding the dirt on her glove.
I should go see my mother today, but to be honest, I don't feel like it. Yes, she's an oldish person, displaced from her home, who might count on someone to come and break her solitude. But that journal entry... I simmered while Loni played... gives new color to my lifelong weariness.
Godwit. I draw the bird flying blessedly north, displaying her gorgeous cinnamon wings.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“She's good at picking out clothes to send a certain message- even if the message of her drawings appears to be "stay away from me or I will chop off your head"...”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“Each pencil hides inside it thousands of drawings. The artist's job is to discover and make these views of new worlds visible.”
― Alejandro Mos Riera