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«Persistence Art Quotes

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Perspective Art Quotes

37 art quotes about Perspective | Submit more Perspective art quotes

Overlapping shapes are a safer indication of depth than is linear perspective. (Rex Brandt)

Perspective is a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress. (Georges Braque)

Aerial perspective = atmosphere... Light, color, detail, edges and contrast weaken as they flow into the distance. All living creatures subliminally understand this. (Harley Brown)

No power on earth can keep the picture from being three-dimensional once the first line is drawn or color-plane applied. (Sheldon Cheney)

Effective as perspective is... it becomes a deadening influence on an artist's natural way of seeing things once it is accepted as a system – as a mechanical formula. (Graham Collier)

Take hold of objects by their centres, not by their lines of contour... The contour accentuated uniformly and beyond proportion, destroys plasticity, bringing forward those parts of an object which are always most distant from the eye – namely its outlines. (Eugene Delacroix)

At a distance this fine oak seems to be of ordinary size. But if I place myself under its branches, the impression changes completely: I see it as big, and even terrifying in its bigness. (Eugene Delacroix)

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience. (George Eliot)

Certainly many painters who do not use perspective have also been the object of praise; however, they were praised with faulty judgement by men with no knowledge of the value of this art. (Piero della Francesca)

We shouldn't be dogmatic slaves to linear perspective, yet it is important to understand it. (Ron Gang)

Naturalistic art, as we know it, is an art which imitates the appearance of things, not as they are in reality, but as they appear at one moment from the point of view of a single spectator. This is the effect of perspective. Nothing of this sort existed in prehistory. (S. Giedion)

Perspective should be learned – and then forgotten. The residue – a sensitivity to perspective – helps perception, varying with each individual and determined by his responsive needs. (Nathan Goldstein)

There's no single vanishing point to get sucked into but rather a plane to linger over with different perspectives and focal points. (Alexander Gorlizki)

Even in certain kinds of impressionism, one can more or less imply perspective, but when you paint realistically, perspective has to be perfect. (Daniel E. Greene)

To increase the illusion of depth in your landscape… keep your active lines up front and slow the linear quality down in the distance. (Tony van Hasselt)

Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective. (Ernest Hemingway)

A mountain seen in the haze of distance must nevertheless look a solid heavy mountain. (Robert Henri)

Perspective is a law of optics... The Chinese did not have a system like it. Indeed, it is said they rejected the idea of the vanishing point in the eleventh century, because it meant the viewer was not there, indeed, had no movement, therefore was not alive. (David Hockney)

The vanishing point leads to the missiles of today, which can take us out of this world. It could be that the west's greatest mistakes were the 'invention' of the external vanishing point and the internal combustion engine. (David Hockney)

When I see these primitive effects coming into my pictures subconsciously, even though the perspective may be slightly out, I leave them in if it helps the general composition. (E. J. Hughes)

Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye. (Samuel Johnson)

Taking away the familiarity of the eye-level view and replacing it with the aerial viewpoint... opens up new possibilities for design. (Dale Laitenen)

People think one-point and two-point perspective is how the world actually looks, but of course, it isn't. It's a convention. (Roy Lichtenstein)

If you intend to make a living at drawing, by all means learn it [the rules of perspective] now, and do not have them bothering you and your work for the rest of your life. (Andrew Loomis)

Your eye level is your reference point for drawing the perspective lines. All lines above your eye level will go down to the horizon vanishing point and all lines below your eye level will go up to the horizon vanishing point. (Robert Lovett)

Vanishing points are illusive. They're all over the place. (Jerry Mclish)

For years I study. I look long at olive trees, all gray and silver, and watch the sunlight. Ah, yes, I am ver' lazy, but I see after I look long that it is perspective that give it this quality. Perspective, and absolute faith to the subject. (Ugo Mochi)

Aerial perspective has nothing to do with line, but concerns tones and colours, by the delicate manipulation of which an artist can suggest infinite distance. (Walter J. Phillips)

A vertical perspective is much different than the horizontal one. Better to stand than to lie. (Tanya Radic)

If the artist does not understand perspective and how to see and use it, all the applications of paint and ink and pencil will not overcome the lack of good perspective. (Helen Scott)

For more control in achieving depth in a landscape, divide the picture into a foreground, a middle ground and a background. Keep each of these separate with atmospheric perspective. (Ted Smuskiewicz)

What a delightful thing this perspective is! (Paolo Uccello)

Perspective is to painting what the bridle is to the horse, the rudder to a ship. (Leonardo da Vinci)

There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are. (Leonardo da Vinci)

You must look within for value, but must look beyond for perspective. (Denis Waitley)

Once you know the rules of perspective, it is the painter's choice to use the techniques or disregard them as a matter of intelligent design and style, but there will be no struggle to achieve the desired effect. (Coulter Watt)

Painting realistically without knowing perspective will get you a lot of criticism. (Mona Youssef)


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Editor: Robert Genn

Assistant Editor: Shawn Jackson

Associate Editors:

Scott Altman, Bonnie Austin, Karen Austin, Michele Becker, Joe Blodgett, Norman Brown, Alyce Bryson, Leanne Cadden, Penny Duane, Max Elliot, Derek Franklin, Sara Genn, Mardy Grothe, Harry Hartley, Sue Holland, Sue Legault, Tammy McManus, Eric Mewhinney, Bruce Miller, Laura Parrish, Andrea Pratt, Dan Roberts, Shirley Rochon, Gilbert Roy, John Sherlock, Victor Wong,
And many others who have so far contributed one quote or a few. Please join us and add more at

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Last modified: June 19, 2013