Quote

When you draw a crowd of people in a street or room or landscape, decide whether you want to say that the people dominate the place or that the place is more important than the people.

John French Sloan

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John French Sloan
Age: 80 †
Born: 1871
Born: January 1
Died: 1951
Died: September 8
Artist
Designer
Draftsperson
Drawer
Etcher
Graphic Artist
Illustrator
Painter
Lock Haven
Pennsylvania
sloan j.
John French Sloan
Important
Draws
People
Street
Importance
Dominate
Streets
Crowd
Room
Crowds
Rooms
Landscape
Whether
Draw
Place
Decide

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Be sensitive to the qualities inherent in the medium. Paint honestly and avoid tricks.
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There is a better chance of getting an exciting painting from a laboured study with texture than from a fine drawing without it.
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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.
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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.
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A good drawing has immense vitality because it is explanatory. In a good drawing even its faults have become virtues.
John French Sloan
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Study the great brush drawings of the Chinese and Japanese... When we try to imitate their conventions for perspective, form and texture we lose the content, because those artists were part of an ancient tradition. Our tradition changes rapidly, our schools of thought come to fruition quickly and decay again. We see differently.
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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 French Sloan
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...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 French Sloan
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In the hands of a master, light and shade is one of the great qualities of art.
John French Sloan
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Always think of drawing, getting the forms realized, emphasizing the design.
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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.
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A piece of drapery is like a necktie, hot stuff to paint, and one of the easiest things for a painter to kid himself into thinking he can do. Don't be fooled by the color. Go after the shape and character. Hew the forms together with colored tones.
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Color is like music. The palette is an instrument that can be orchestrated to build form.
John French Sloan
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Most art students are generous till it comes to squeezing their colour on the palette... Many pictures haven't become works of art simply because the artist tried to save a nickel's worth of colour.
John French Sloan
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Find your own technique.
John French Sloan
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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 French Sloan
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Artists are the only people in the world who really live. The others have to hope for heaven.
John French Sloan
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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.
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The great black and white draftsman, the sculptor, and the blind man know that form and color are separate. The form itself is what the blind man knows...Color is surface skin that fits over the form.
John French Sloan
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Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind.
John French Sloan