"Creativity Takes Courage" - Matisse

"Use the Biggest brush you can for as long as you can!"

“It is not the form that dictates the color, but the color that brings out the form.” - Hans Hofmann

"Once we start to draw, all of a sudden we begin to see again." Frederick Franks, Zen Seeing, Zen Drawing

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" - Leonardo da Vinci

"Every composition needs a vertical, a horizontal and 2 diagonals" - Tatiana Anisimova

"I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing." Cezanne

“Value does the work and color takes the credit.” - Marie Wilkes

"A value study will save more time than it takes."

In painting, as in life, you can get away with a great deal as long as you have your values right. (Harley Brown)

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” - Picasso

Think pattern first, then drawing, then color. The character of your painting is resolved in the pattern scheme. (Edgar A. Whitney)

Plan like a turtle; paint like a rabbit. (Edgar A. Whitney)

We find beauty not in the thing itself, but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates. Junichiro Tanizaki

If, when facing the paper, you say to yourself, 'I'm an artist,' you haven't a clue as to what to do! If, however, you say, 'I am an entertainer, a shape maker and an expressive symbol collector,' you know the task ahead and how to proceed. (Edgar A. Whitney)

"You can't be at the pole and the equator at the same time. You must choose your own lie, as I hope to do, and it will probably be color." Vincent Van Gogh

"Seeing abstract value patterns, not just the literal subject, is one of the first and most difficult things for a growing artist to learn." Jane R. Hofstetter

"With this painting, I learned that when I simplify and spend more time editing, the message comes across more clearly." Francis Marte, first time award winner: Honorable Mention, Watercolor Artist magazine Showcase competition

"With watercolor, the cure is usually more harmful than the ailment." "Make your color choices consciously, not by default. Color is mood. Such a powerful tool should not be wasted." Elizabeth Kincaid, "Paint Watercolors that Dance with Light"

"The Artist draws not what he sees, but what he has to make others see." Edgar Degas

"We must not imitate the externals of nature with so much fidelity that the picture fails to evoke that wonderful teasing recurrence of emotion that marks the contemplation of a work of art." John E. Carlson, in Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, 1929

"I don't think there is any great painting that doesn't have good abstract qualities."

Alice Neel

“The great colorists didn’t try to achieve distinguished color by trial and error, and neither should you. Delacroix spent long hours at museums studying the colors of the masters. Van Gogh, a powerful and impulsive painter, respected orderly relationships of colors. Kandinsky used color as emotion – but he knew his color theory well. The more you experience color, the sooner your intuition acquires a solid foundation to spring from. Overcome lazy habits of seeing that lock you into your first impression. In time, you’ll become aware of the subtleties of color in everything you see. But don’t simply report what you see. Use color to express the forces that energize your subject.” Nita Leland

“Only those who love color are admitted to its beauty and imminent presence. It affords utility to all, but unveils its deeper mysteries only to its devotees.” Johannes Itten

“However painting my evolve, color will remain its prime material” Johannes Itten

“A painter is also master of his choice in a dominant color, which produces upon every object in his composition the same effect as if they were illuminated by a light of the same color, or, what amounts to the same thing, seen through a colored glass.” M. E. Chevreul

“When the impulses which stir us to profound emotion are integrated with the medium of expression, every interview of the soul may become art. This is contingent upon the mastery of the medium.” Hans Hoffman

“When arranging still life objects, observe the ONE RULE OF COMPOSITION. Look at what shapes are created and the larger configuration the objects form when grouped together. Place the objects in asymmetrical groups” The Simple Secret to Better Painting. Greg Albert.