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Skill Art Quotes

45 art quotes about Skill | Submit more Skill art quotes

Stale water is a poor drink. Stale skill is worse. And the man who walks in his own footsteps only ends where he began. (Lloyd Alexander)

Whether it is drawing or painting, skilled Artists usually deliver a faster result without jeopardizing the quality, simply because they don't have to waste their time on fixing mistakes. (Igor Babailov)

Artists get better by sharpening their skills or by acquiring new ones; they get better by learning to work, and by learning from their work. (David Bayles)

Skills aren't enough on their own. Emotion has to come through. But when you've got the various skills sewn up, that's one thing you don't have to worry about. (Zoe Benbow)

Take time learning new skills and principles... Knowledge acquired quickly, flies out the window. In art the tortoise wins. (Harley Brown)

A man is more than the sum of all the things he can do. (Bill Clinton)

Art has knowledge and skills, and to come to know them is to be implicitly against a culture that is against knowledge - today's mass culture, which aims to produce a lot of consuming morons. (Matthew Collings)

One must develop skills that stretch capacities, that make one more than what one is. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

Most people still don't think of qualities like happiness as being a skill, that can be enhanced through training. (Richard J. Davidson)

If you are not skillful enough to sketch a man jumping out of a window in the time it takes him to fall from the fourth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce great works. (Eugene Delacroix)

Skill is fine, and genius is splendid, but the right contacts are more valuable than either. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As each new skill is learned, you will merge it with those previously learned until, one day, you are simply drawing - just as, one day, you found yourself simply driving without thinking about how to do it. (Betty Edwards)

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have it, it requires ten times as much skill to keep it. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

A little skill in antiquity inclines a man to Popery. (Thomas Fuller)

'Tis skill, not strength, that governs a ship. (Thomas Fuller)

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it. (James A. Garfield)

Art is skill; that is the first meaning of the word. (Eric Gill)

Drawing need not be the bones of art, but skill must always be the skeleton of accomplishment. (Adam Gopnik)

Technique and skills must be absorbed and wrapped up and put away to become such an integral part of yourself that they will be revealed in your work without your thought... (Shoji Hamada)

Skill and confidence are an unconquered army. (George Herbert)

Force has no place where there is need of skill. (Herodotus)

Skills can be found, like lost items that have always belonged to you. If the spirit of learning is there, the passion of creation will never die. (Melissa Jean)

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill. (Helen Keller)

Rarely is competent work done without years of preparation and hard won skill - unless you are painting in mid-20th century to early 21st century style when quality is considered an embarrassment. I do believe an MFA student at Columbia (or was it Yale?) referred to it as de-skilling. (Sharon Knettell)

All human beings have an innate desire to overcome suffering, to find happiness. Training the mind to think differently, through meditation, is one important way to avoid suffering and be happy. (Dalai Lama)

Once your eye and hand are trained to the skills of your craft, then it becomes possible - like driving - to go on autopilot and leave the world behind. (Mary Lapos)

Skills build confidence, so work to improve your drawing or refine your painting... techniques. (Nita Leland)

Who has skill in the art of music is of good temperament and fitted for all things. (Martin Luther)

I use all my skills that I can muster up, but the fun thing is that I find some untapped skills every once in a while. I get that from my daddy. (Reba McEntire)

All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing. (Moliere)

You can't express inspiration without skill. (Stephen Nachmanovitch)

Drawing wakes up the senses and skills, and work is sharpened in other mediums. (Timothy Nero)

You learn the essential skills, how to manipulate the brush and how to handle paint, and you study the works of artists you admire. After a while, though, you have to be yourself. That's scary, but satisfying. (T. M. Nicholas)

If skill could be gained by watching, every dog would become a butcher. (Turkish proverb)

Learn to hide your need and show your skill. (Jim Rohn)

Every good piece of art... involves first essentially the evidence of human skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it. (John Ruskin)

Skill is the unified force of experience, intellect and passion in their operation. (John Ruskin)

I don't look for skill in art... Skill has nothing to do with technical proficiency... I'm interested in people who rethink skill, who redefine or re-imagine it: an engineer, say, who builds rockets from rocks. (Jerry Saltz)

Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing. (Gail Sheehy)

Let the technical skills you acquire guide your hand but also have the courage to listen to your heart. (Ted Smuskiewicz)

If you use all your acquired skills and allow a bit of latitude in the 'doing' and not just the thinking, then you will produce some interesting results. (Ken Strong)

The skills that got you out of Egypt aren't the same skills that will get you to the promised land. (Dan Sullivan)

Compositional skills do not exempt one from anxieties and doubt. They are ever present and are as frightening as political, economical or emotional chaos... (Frank Webb)

Fundamentals are like learning the alphabet. Once you learn them, you develop your own handwriting style and now have something to say that is your unique point of view. Some of the writings get scrapped and some are saved for their beauty and poetic flow where all the elements seem to pull together. (Esther J. Williams)

There's a renaissance going on that is bringing a new appreciation and prosperity to those who use old-fashioned skill and patience to create wonderful things. (Barbara Winter)


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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: May 21, 2013