Quotes from Andrew Loomis

To learn to draw is to draw and draw and draw.

One's skill is never complete, one's knowledge is forever lacking, one's taste is invariably altered, one's opinion ever subject to controversy. There is a complete and constant urge towards improvement.

There's only one way to assure consistently good work. That is consistently thorough preparation.

Since the knowledge is available, why try to struggle along without it? The difficulties of not knowing are always much greater than the effort of learning.

As a student I thought there was a formula of some kind that I would get hold of somewhere, and thereby become and artist. There is a formula, but it has not been in books. It is really plain old courage, standing on one's own feet, and forever seeking enlightenment; courage to develop your way, but learning from the other fellow; experimentation with your own ideas, observing for yourself, a rigid discipline of doing over that which you can improve.

It is ten per cent how you draw, and ninety per cent what you draw.

No matter how great your talent, talent has to work with knowledge to do anything well.

Skill is the ability to overcome obstacles, the first of which is usually lack of knowledge about the thing we wish to do. Skill is the result of trying again and again, applying our ability and proving our knowledge as we gain it.

Fill in the shapes with the right tones and the form takes care of itself.

No knack of drawing heads can compete with sound knowledge.

The thing to remember is that the skull is fixed in position, and, with the exception of the jaw, immovable, and that the flesh is mobile and ever-changing, and also affected by health, emotion, and age. After the skull is fully matured, it remains the same through life and is a structural foundation for the varying appearance of the flesh.

I have never found a book that stressed the importance of myself as a caretaker of my ability, of staying healthy mentally and physically, or that gave me an inkling that my courage might be strained to the utmost.

Take from the rest of us all that you can assimilate, that can become a part of you, but never still the small voice inside your head that whispers to you, I like it better my way.

If you intend to make a living at drawing, by all means learn it [the rules of perspective] now, and do not have them bothering you and your work for the rest of your life.

It is ten per cent how you draw, and ninety per cent what you draw.

Art without color would lose much of its purpose.

There's only one way to assure consistently good work. That is consistently thorough preparation.