John Sloan Quotes

40 Sourced Quotes

The important thing is to keep on drawing when you start to paint. Never graduate from drawing.

John Sloan
In the hands of a master, light and shade is one of the great qualities of art.

John Sloan
Think of drawing as a way of talking about the things that interest you. Think of those wonderful documents, drawings made on scraps of paper by the lesser Dutch masters while they were wandering around market places and sitting in saloons.

John Sloan
Form your own color concept of things in nature. I have no rules for fine color to give you.

John Sloan
The emphasis on original, individual work in the past years has done a great deal to produce a crop of eccentric fakes and has carried art away from the stream of tradition. Tradition is our heritage of knowledge and experience. We can't get along without it.

John Sloan
Draw with the brush. Carve the form. Don't be carried away by subtleties of modeling and nice pigmentation at the expense of losing the form.

John Sloan
Don't be afraid to borrow. The great men, the most original, borrowed from everybody.

John Sloan
The artist does not see both eyes alike. There is always 'the eye' and the other eye... It adds life and plasticity to the drawing if the eye in the light is darker than the one in the shadow. It gives the head vividness.

John Sloan
Originality is a quality that cannot be imitated. The technique of the language, on the other hand, is something that belongs to all who can understand it.

John Sloan
Always think of drawing, getting the forms realized, emphasizing the design.

John Sloan
Art is the response of the living to life. It is therefore the record left behind by civilization.

John Sloan
There is a better chance of getting an exciting painting from a laboured study with texture than from a fine drawing without it.

John Sloan
Art is the result of a creative impulse derived out of a consciousness of life.

John Sloan
You can be a giant among artists without ever attaining any great skill. Facility is a dangerous thing. When there is too much technical ease the brain stops criticizing. Don't let the hand fall into a smart way of putting the mind to sleep.

John Sloan
Be sensitive to the qualities inherent in the medium. Paint honestly and avoid tricks.

John Sloan
A good drawing has immense vitality because it is explanatory. In a good drawing even its faults have become virtues.

John Sloan
Many great works of art have only form, the sculpture of the thing. Color as used to signify realization by men like Titian and Rembrandt, gives greater life and tactile experience to the work.

John Sloan
The subject may be of first importance to the artist when he starts a picture, but it should be of least importance in the finished product. The subject is of no aesthetic significance.

John Sloan
I always think of shade as being full of light. That is why I like to use the word shade rather than light and shadow. Shade seems to play over the thing, envelop it, better define it, while shadow seems to fall on the thing and stain the surface with darks.

John Sloan
To play your colors by eye is worse than playing the piano by ear.

John Sloan
Sets of lines can say something about the direction and nature of the light. They are used by great fresco painters as a sign for shade.

John Sloan
[As a painting teacher] I'm not flirting, playing around. I'm serious about it... If you don't want to be serious about playing [at art], do something of no account. Go into banking. Buy collar buttons at five cents a dozen and sell them for five cents a piece.

John Sloan
The idea of taking up art as a calling, a profession, is a mirage. Art enriches life. It makes life worth living. But to make a living at it—that idea is incompatible with making art.

John Sloan
On Diego Rivera:
... the one artist on this continent who is in the class of the old masters.

John Sloan
Every good picture leaves the painter eager to start again, unsatisfied, inspired by the rich mine in which he is working, hoping for more energy, more vitality, more time - condemned to painting for life.

John Sloan
It takes a great deal of strong personality to survive the art school training. Hard nuts that the art schools can't crack and devour get through and become artists.

John Sloan
Then there is this idea that the world owes you a living. Here is a little thought about that. It isn't particularly logical but it makes my point. You were paid when you were born, with the privilege of living. Death is all that is coming to you. Life came to you when you were born.

John Sloan
Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.

John Sloan
I have nothing to teach you that will help you to make a living.

John Sloan
In the habit of watching every bit of human life I can see about my windows, but I do it so that I am not observed at it.

John Sloan