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Some drawings are better than others... Some are utterly spoiled... I keep them all. I find a use sometimes even for the worst drawing... But their chief use is to mortify one's conceit, to show how thoroughly incompetent it is possible to be, and to shame one into better ways.

Walter J. Phillips

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Walter J. Phillips
Age: 78 †
Born: 1884
Born: October 25
Died: 1963
Died: July 5
Painter
Wood Carver
Barton-upon-Humber
Lincolnshire
Walter Joseph Phillips
Walter Phillips
Phillips
Shows
Failure
Conceit
Better
Worst
Spoiled
Find
Ways
Thoroughly
Sometimes
Possible
Utterly
Even
Show
Chief
Way
Use
Chiefs
Mortify
Keep
Drawing
Drawings
Others
Shame
Incompetent

More quotes by Walter J. Phillips

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Beauty may be perceived in any scene by one with sympathy and understanding. Beauty is in the mind.
Walter J. Phillips
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The true artist and the sane collector never will tolerate insincerity and impudence.
Walter J. Phillips
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The importance of colour is as nothing compared with that of form, chiaroscuro and arrangement. They are the true and enduring bases of pictorial art.
Walter J. Phillips
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Rhythm is as necessary in a picture as pigment it is as much a part of painting as of music.
Walter J. Phillips
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The most admirable method is that by which each wash of colour, large or small, is never disturbed. It admits of practically no overpainting, sponging or scrubbing. The colour stays where it is put.
Walter J. Phillips
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Any subject is suitable provided it is of sufficient interest, but the design must be very carefully considered, and plenty of time and thought given to its construction.
Walter J. Phillips
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It is evident that no derivative laws can teach the young student to see and apprehend colour in nature. His perception needs development as urgently as his muscles.
Walter J. Phillips
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Subject has the variety of life.
Walter J. Phillips
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Take away a painter's vanity, said a famous landscape painter, and he will never touch a pencil again.
Walter J. Phillips
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When spring is here the sketcher begins to look over his equipment and relishes in anticipation the soothing hours he will spend in the open, warmed by the sun, fanned by the breeze, charmed by the manifold delights of nature.
Walter J. Phillips
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The student's ambition should be to become a painter's painter, rather than a popular painter. The approbation of fellow artists based on sympathy and understanding is manifestly better than the fickle or fast homage of the greater public.
Walter J. Phillips
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Appreciation is the breath of life to the creative artist, and in spite of modern conditions, there is enough abroad to sustain him. But his name is now legion he competes with the dead as well as the living and the rewards and honours seem attenuated by division.
Walter J. Phillips
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Perhaps the ideal life is that of the week-end artist, who preserves the integrity of his own aesthetic ideals because of his economic independence... If his daily grind is hateful he has his weekly solace in art.
Walter J. Phillips
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Since art exists for humanity it is not unreasonable to assume that humanity has some rights in the matter. Who pays the piper calls the tune. An artist cannot be at once a rebel and a comfortable citizen.
Walter J. Phillips
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There must be a judicious arrangement of all the parts. Considered conversely, the artist's task is to fill his panel with a design that conforms to its shape and is beautiful in itself.
Walter J. Phillips
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The impression of wood-grain... must be considered, not only as regards texture and visibility, but for the occasional possibility of the expression of form. A soft wood, with hard annulations, such as fir, prints very dearly.
Walter J. Phillips
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The sincere artist is usually his own best critic, but continuous and prolonged work on one painting will sometimes dull his judgment... The critic is in demand, but he must be competent.
Walter J. Phillips
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The syllogism art for art's sake refers to that kind of painting which disregards, or is contrary to, public taste.
Walter J. Phillips
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When technique is obtrusive it becomes mere mannerism, a conscious striving for effect. It is only a means to an end - the manner of putting paint to paper. It hardly embraces the expressive side of painting.
Walter J. Phillips
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A landscape painting in which composition is ignored is like a line taken from a poem at random: it lacks context, and may or may not make sense.
Walter J. Phillips