205+ EXCLUSIVE Drawing Quotes by Famous Artists - BayArt (2024)

Drawing has been understood in different ways at different times and is difficult to define. But drawing quotes are about the experiences of artists, thoughts on drawing, and inspire us to create.

Drawing is a way to express profound emotion without words. So, art quotes and photography catch phrases will empower you to find your own voice.

Top 10 Drawing Quotes

I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing. Vincent van Gogh

My idea of Heaven is to wake up, have a good breakfast, and spend the rest of the day drawing. Peter Falk

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil. Balthus

The first writing of the human being was drawing, not writing. Marjane Satrapi

Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see to see correctly and that means a good deal more than merely looking with the eye. Kimon Nicolaides

Drawing is the only thing I’ve found in which I can lose myself completely. I love it. It started as something that relaxed me, but now it’s a struggle because I’m pushing myself. The day-to-day sketching is fraught. Peter Capaldi

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing. Vincent Van Gogh

Drawing is the artist’s most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality. Edgar Degas

Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter’s identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing. Fernando Botero

In drawing, one must look for or suspect that there is more than is casually seen. George Bridgman

As one of the most appreciated and celebrated artist all over the world, inspirational Frida Kahlo quotes will encourage you to find beauty in everything.

Best Drawing Quotes

Drawing includes three and a half quarters of the content of painting…Drawing contains everything, except the hue. Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres

I draw like other people bite their nails. Pablo Picasso

All the visible world is only light on form. Andrew Loomis

It is only by drawing often, drawing everything, drawing incessantly, that one fine day you discover, to your surprise, that you have rendered something in its true character. Camille Pissarro

Drawing is vision on paper. Andrew Loomis

I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart. Vincent van Gogh

I love the quality of pencil. It helps me to get to the core of a thing. Andrew Wyeth

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation. Henri Cartier Bresson

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make. David Hockney

If I could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint. Edward Hopper

You can’t do sketches enough. Sketch everything and keep your curiosity fresh. John Singer Sargent

Creativity takes courage. Henri Matisse

Drawing is the basis of art. A bad painter cannot draw. But one who draws well can always paint. Arshile Gorky

I have learned that what I have not drawn, I have never really seen, and that when I start drawing an ordinary thing, I realize how extraordinary it is, sheer miracle. Frederick Franck

Drawing is not what one sees but what one can make others see. Edgar Degas

Drawing is putting a line (a)round an idea. Henri Matisse

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. Andy Warhol

In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. Pablo Picasso

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. Salvador Dali

How you draw is a reflection of how you feel about the world. You’re not capturing it, you’re interpreting it. Juliette Aristides

If you can draw well, tracing won’t hurt; and if you can’t draw well, tracing won’t help. Bradley Schmehl

The ability to draw depends on one’s ability to see the way an artist sees. Betty Edwards

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

The painter draws with his eyes, not with his hands. Maurice Grosser

Originality depends only on the character of the drawing and the vision peculiar to each artist. Georges Seurat

Drawing used to be a civilized thing to do, like reading and writing. It was taught in elementary schools. It was democratic. It was a boon to happiness. Michael Kimmelman

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel. Piet Mondrian

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing. Salvador Dali

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. Francis Bacon

A drawing is simply a line going for a walk. Paul Klee

See Also

33 Drawing Quotes to Inspire Your Art Journal Pages

Drawing takes time. A line has time in it. David Hockney

Drawing is the discipline by which I constantly rediscover the world. Frederick Franck

To create one’s own world takes courage. Georgia O’Keeffe

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. Alberto Giacometti

The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Auguste Rodin

It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience. Berthe Morisot

To be an artist is to believe in life. Henry Moore

Every good painter paints what he is. Jackson Pollock

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. Edgar Degas

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing. Georgia O’Keeffe

My attitude towards drawing is not necessarily about drawing. It’s about making the best kind of image I can make, it’s about talking as clearly as I can. Jim Dine

What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough. Eugene Delacroix

Drawing at its best is not what your eyes see but what our mind understands. Millard Sheets

Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. Marc Chagall

Don’t be an art critic, but paint, there lies salvation. Paul Cezanne

Life obliges me to do something, so I paint. Rene Magritte

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing. Marc Chagall

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way things I had no words for. Georgia O’Keeffe

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. Pablo Picasso

A Good artist has less time than ideas. Martin Kippenberger

Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. Andy Warhol

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality. Frida Kahlo

I paint for myself. I don’t know how to do anything else, anyway. Also I have to earn my living, and occupy myself. Francis Bacon

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working. Pablo Picasso

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art. Paul Cezanne

Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it. Salvador Dali

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real. Lucian Freud

We all inhabit the same world, but we can experience it quite differently by seeing things through artistic eyes. So, quotes about eyes help you look at things in a new way.

Inspirational Quotes on Drawing

Getting motivated to create isn’t difficult, but sometimes we just need a little push. Cute quotes for drawing help you find artistic inspiration.

There is no must in art because art is free. Wassily Kandinsky

Real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as on a root. Gilbert K Chesterton

If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all. Michelangelo

Colour is my daylong obsession, joy and torment. Claude Monet

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye.. it also includes the inner pictures of the soul. Edvard Munch

A pencil is quiet, clean, odorless, inexpensive, and lightweight. I can slip it in my pocket and take it with me everywhere my secret friend. Sherry Camby

Painting is a means of self-enlightenment. John Olsen

I don’t say everything, but I paint everything. Pablo Picasso

Do not fail, as you go on, to draw something every day, for no matter how little it is, it will be well worthwhile, and it will do you a world of good. Cennino Cennini

A mistake in drawing becomes difficult to detect when the eye is familiar with it. Walter J. Phillips

An artist must have his measuring tools not in the hand, but in the eye. Michelangelo Buonarroti

The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting. Vincent Van Gogh

The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it. Banksy

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. Twyla Tharp

Drawing and color are not separate at all; in so far as you paint, you draw. The more the color harmonizes, the more exact the drawing becomes. Paul Cezanne

An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. Charles Horton Cooley

There’s no retirement for an artist, it’s your way of living so there’s no end to it. Henry Moore

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. Leonardo da Vinci

If drawing belongs to the world of spirit and color to that of the senses, you must draw first to cultivate the spirit. Henri Matisse

Drawing is a form of probing. And the first generic impulse to draw derives from the human need to search, to plot points, to place things and to place oneself. John Berger

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache. David Hockney

A drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk Jr

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad. Robert Henri

Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and color are not distinct, everything in nature is colored. Paul Cezanne

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

Drawing is the cornerstone of the graphic, plastic arts. Drawing is the coordination of line, tone, and color symbols into formations that express the artist’s thought. John French Sloan

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. John W. Gardner

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster and leaves less room for lies. Le Corbusier

Above and beyond drawing my creations, I try to incorporate some kind of message. I try not to end as merely a question but try to provide a conclusion within the work. Natsuki Takaya

By drawing our senses of perception inward, we are able to experience the control, silence, and quietness of the mind. BKS Iyengar

Drawing a good picture is like telling a really good lie the key is in the incidental detail. Shaun Tan

For me drawing is an attempt to understand what I feel about the world I live in. Brian Froud

Drawing things makes them seem more real and makes me feel more alive. It also makes me pin down and remember things landscapes, season, weather, occasions, incidents, people that would otherwise have melted from my memory. David Gentleman

Drawing teaches habits of close observation that will always be useful. Susanna Clarke

Technique should be taught, not as an end in itself, but as something related to individual expression, as a means toward an end. One cannot separate technique from expression. There is only expression. Kimon Nicolaides

Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic. Keith Haring

Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn. Norman McLaren

Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention. Robert Henri

Drawing is giving a performance; an artist is an actor who is not limited by the body, only by his ability and, perhaps, experience. Marc Davis

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption. James Thurber

Drawing is like the first kiss. It carries within it the deepest emotion and the challenge of the first step. It is the first cry after birth. Ala Bashir

Drawing is speaking to the eye; talking is painting to the ear. Joseph Joubert

The process of drawing is, before all else, the process of putting the visual intelligence into action, the very mechanics of visual thought. Unlike painting and sculpture it is the process by which the artist makes clear to himself, and not to the spectator, what he is doing. It is a soliloquy before it becomes communication. Michael Ayrton

Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper. Pablo Picasso

Sometimes, you start with the drawing and then the gag comes to you in the middle of it. That is when you start working on the solution of the gag, which is composition, placing, equilibrium, and character design. Sergio Aragones

Drawing general conclusions about your main weaknesses can provide a great stimulus to further growth. Alexander Kotov

Learn to draw. Try to make your hand so unconsciously adept that it will put down what you feel without your having to think of your hands. Then you can think of the thing before you. Sherwood Anderson

Practice by drawing things large, as if equal in representation and reality. In small drawings every large weakness is easily hidden; in the large, the smallest weakness is easily seen. Leon Battista Alberti

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing. Robert Henri

Remember that the relationship of a foot to a leg is no less critical than its relationship to the head. When a student says, ‘I know this is right,’ I ask, ‘Compared to what?’ Nothing stands alone in a drawing. James Adkins

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form. Edgar Degas

As practice makes perfect, I cannot but make progress; each drawing one makes, each study one paints, is a step forward. Vincent Van Gogh

At its essence, art is an alchemical process. Alchemy is a process of transformation. Julia Cameron

Your drawing is a reflection of how you respond to your emotions, your experiences, your values, beliefs and choices which makes you unique. Let quotes on vision help you explore your innate creativity and discover your strengths.

Meaningful Drawing Quotes By The Masters

Deep quotes for drawing will energize your creative sensibilities and push you to achieve your dream by making you think differently.

The first things to study are form and values. For me, these are the things that are the basics of what is serious in art. Jean Baptiste Corot

Drawing is the root of everything. Vincent Van Gogh

Draw lines. Draw a lot of lines. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

The whole essence of good drawing – and of good thinking, perhaps – is to work a subject down to the simplest form possible and still have it believable for what it is meant to be. Chuck Jones

When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I’ve got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything. Ellsworth Kelly

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer, and clearer still. The image is passing through you in a physiological way, into your brain, into your memory – where it stays – it’s transmitted by your hands. Martin Gayford

While drawing, I discover what I really want to say. Dario Fo

You can never do too much drawing. Jacopo Tintoretto

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true. John Berger

Lose your inhibitions about drawing and just do it. Chris Riddell

Drawing is a way of coming upon the connection between things, just like metaphor in poetry reconnects what has become separated. John Berger

To learn to draw is to draw and draw and draw. Andrew Loomis

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They’re drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they’re not tortured about it. Spike Jonze

Even though I’m usually not conscious of it, I think drawing has always served a sort of therapeutic purpose in my life. There’s something about the process of translating the messy chaos of real life into a clean, simple drawing that’s always been comforting to me. Adrian Tomine

With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing. Gunter Grass

For me, drawing is a way of navigating the imagination, and it remains the fundamental vehicle of my practice. Drawing allows me to be at my most inventive. Shanzia Sikander

Drawing is a frame of mind, a loving embrace if you will. Susan Avishai

We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better. Walt Stanchfield

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw? Banksy

It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn to draw it in a few seconds. Paula Scher

Sketch Quotes

Whether you’re an artist or an art lover, sketching quotes help to stimulate creative thought and increase observational skills.

Sketching is a continuing source of learning rather than a string of performances. Paul Laseau

Sketching is the breath of art: it is the most refreshing of all the more impulsive forms of creative self-expression and, as such, it should be as free, and happy, as a song in the bath. Mervyn Levy

Sketching on a regular basis requires you to pay close attention to the visual world around you. With practice, you begin to see things you never noticed before. Paul Laseau

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. Pablo Picasso

Few people know that I am also an artist; I truly enjoy sketching and drawing. Sonakshi Sinha

The fundamental thing about sketching is that it is about asking not telling. Bill Buxton

I spend a lot of time in a sort of free state when I’m writing in the beginning and sketching. Tony Gilroy

I’m born with a pencil in my hand. I did lots of sketching. Karl Lagerfeld

Drawing is an exercise for a restless imagination. Tim Burton

What do drawings mean to me? I really don’t know. The activity absorbs me. I forget everything else in a way that I don’t think happens with any other activity. John Berger

Never become an artist if you can’t learn to draw. Sergei Bongart

Begin by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

To create one’s world in any of the arts takes courage. Georgia O’Keeffe

Art begins with resistance – at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor. Andre Gide

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. Emile Zola

This world is but a canvas to our imagination. Henry David Thoreau

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it. Anais Nin

Drawing Captions for Instagram

Let your unique vision shine. And you can express your art with best captions for drawing:

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Drawing is just another way of keeping a diary.

Drawing is the journey of a free soul.

It gives me such a sense of peace to draw; more than prayer, walks, anything. Sylvia Plath

Art is either revolution or plagiarism.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

If I paint something, I don’t want to have to explain what it is.

Filling a space in a beautiful way.

Drawing is the silence of thought and the music of sight

Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

Drawing is what happens when you dare to be who you really are.

If you wish to make good art, then you must believe you already do. Otherwise, you will never be good enough.

Art is my life and my life is art.

A drawing is a poem without words.

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

I draw better than I talk.

Drawing is a line around your thoughts.

Create with the heart; build with the mind.

Drawing is neither a profession nor a hobby. Art is a way of being.

Drawing doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful.

All art, like all love, is rooted in heartache.

I paint the spirit and soul of what I see.

Drawing is freedom. Being able to bend things most people see as a straight line.

Artist by nature. Every art is a masterpiece.

Every artist was first an amateur.

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Being an artist is the same as being a wizard… only instead of a wand, you use a pencil for your magic.

If you’re searching for amazing quotes to share with the people you love or just want to feel inspired yourself, discover confidence quotes of all time. Browse through an inspiring collection of quotes about progress, sad life quotes and coffee quotes.

Some Facts About Drawing