Henri Matisse - Drawing Quotes

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Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence.

Henri Matisse
When an artist or student draws a nude figure with painstaking care, the result is drawing, and not emotion.

Henri Matisse
The future painter must feel what is useful for his development – drawing or even sculpture everything that will let him become one with Nature, identify himself with her, by entering into the things – which is what I call Nature – that arouse his feelings. I believe study by means of drawing is most essential. If drawing is of the Spirit and color of the Senses, you must draw first, to cultivate the spirit and to be able to lead color into spiritual paths.

Henri Matisse
Drawing with scissors: To cut to the quick in color reminds me of the direct cutting of sculptors.

Henri Matisse
Composition, the aim of which is expression, alters itself according to the surface to be covered. If I take a sheet of paper of given dimensions I will jot down a drawing which will have a necessary relation to its format – I would not repeat this drawing on another sheet of different dimensions, for instance on a rectangular sheet.... a drawing must have a power of expansion which can bring to life the space which surrounds it.

Henri Matisse
I try to condense the meaning of this body [of a woman] by drawing its essential lines. The charm will then become less apparent at first glance, but in the long run it will begin emanate from the new image. This image at the same time will be enriched by a wider meaning, a more comprehensively human one, while the charm, being less apparent, will not be its only characteristic. It will be merely one element in the general conception of the figure.

Henri Matisse
I shan't get free of my emotion by copying the tree faithfully, or by drawing its leaves one by one in the common language, but only after identifying myself with it.

Henri Matisse
To draw is to make an idea precise. Drawing is the precision of thought.

Henri Matisse
A colourist makes his presence known even in a simple charcoal drawing.

Henri Matisse