The Practice and Science of Drawing

pg 136

"In good work unity is the dominating quality, all the variety being done in conformity to some large idea of the whole, which is never lost sight of, even in the smallest detail of the work."

"Without variety there can be no life."

pg 185

"However imaginative your conception, and no matter how far you may carry your design, working from imagination, there will come a time when studies from nature will be necessary if your work is to have the variety that will give life and interest."

note:

(variety/rhythm of soft and hard edges)

pg 186

"Nature is the great storehouse of variety; even a piece of coal will suggest more interesting rock-forms than you can invent . . . it is  fascinating to watch the infinite variety of graceful forms assumed by the curling smoke from a cigarette, full of suggestions for beautiful arrangements."

pg 189

"Tone relationships are most sympathetic when the middle values of your scale only are used, that is to say when the lights are low in tone and the darks high. They are most dramatic and intense when the contrasts are great and the jumps from dark to light sudden."

198-199

"For under the freest painting, if it be good, there will be found a bed-rock structure of well-constructed masses and lines, They may never be insisted on but their steadying influence will always be felt. So err in your student work on the side of hardness rather than looseness, if you would discipline yourself to design your work well. Occasionally only let yourself go at a loose handling."

"You have only the one scale from black to white to work with, only one octave with in the limits of which to compose your tone symphonies. There are no higher or lower octaves as in music to extend your effect. So be very sparing with your tone values when modeling the different parts."

pg 207

"…more variety of tone and shape in the masses of your composition is permissible when a smaller range of values is used than when your subject demands strong contrasts."

pg 208

"When strong contrasts of tone or what are called black and white effects are desired, the massed must be very simply designed." (maintains unity)

pg 209

large flat tone:

look of repose, touch of serious emotion, infinity

(analogous to long vertical and horizontal)

gradated tones:

graceful charm, harmonious rhythm, gaiety

(analogous to curved lines)

pg 217

"The desire of so many artists in these days to cut loose from tradition and start all over again puts a very severe strain upon their intuitive faculties, and keeps them occupied correcting things that more knowledge of some of the fundamental principles that don't really alter and that are the same in all schools would have saved them."

(Emerson: "Although you search the whole world for the beautiful you'll not find it unless you bring it with you.")

pg 219

"There seems to be a strife between opposing forces at the basis of all things, a strife in which a perfect balance is never attained, or life would cease. The worlds are kept on their course by such opposing forces, the perfect equilibrium never being found, and so the vitalizing movement is kept up."

pg 220

"Straight lines are significant of the deeper and more permanent thing of life, of the powers that govern and restrain, and of infinity; while the rich curves (that is, curves the farthest removed from the straight line) seem to be expressive of uncontrolled energy and the exuberant joys of life."

pg 221

"Often when a picture is hopelessly out of gear and "mucked up," as they say in the studio, it can be got on the right road again by reducing it to a basis of flat tones, going over it and painting out the gradations, getting it back to a simpler equation from which the right road to completion can be more readily seen."

pg 238

"The variety of proportions in a building, a picture, or a piece of sculpture should always be under the control of a few simple, dominant quantities that simplify the appearance and give it a unity which is readily grasped except where violence and lack of repose are wanted. The simpler the proportion is, the more sublime will be the impression, and the more complicated, the livelier and more vivacious the effect. From a few well-chosen large proportions the eye may be led on to enjoy he smaller varieties. But  in good proportion the lesser parts are not allowed to obtrude, but are kept in subordination to the main dispositions on which the unity of the effect depends."