Brush strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and all the littleness are in it.

 - Robert Henri from Art and Influence

Color is all relative, thus my reasoning for painting with a mud-puddle on my palette as opposed to mixing individual local colors as I need them. Every point in which you place the brush to sample the oils, you can find a color warmer, cooler, darker and lighter than your selection. If I reach the edges of my puddle, I can always expand outward as necessary. The puddle is a wonderful way to also limit your color choices if you are looking to control certain aspects of your painting process.

There is also no absolute color to start painting flesh with. Your first choice will then dictate what the next value or color needs to be. A slight move across the palette shifts the overall temperature of your skin, but the inherent local relationships will remain the same.

I remember working on a portrait painting once that was an artistic disaster. I was in complete despair and ready to start over. Jacob told me to slow down and deliberatly focus on each area, one at a time, starting with the worst area and working until it became the best area.

- Lessons in Classical Drawing, Juliette Aristides 

The artist usually has no wish to duplicate appearances. He translates, indicates, and perhaps exaggerates. He goes to Nature for inspiration, but his work bears the stamp of his own personality. He is an interpreter rather than a copyist. 

- Arthur L. Guptill (from Freehand Drawing Self-Taught)

Shaping the light

We represent light with gradations of tone, guided by observation and knowledge of the way it interacts with form. It’s very easy to miss the quality of the light if you’re just copying values. Instead you need to shape the light.

This means molding the amount of light for each form, building up more light in one place and tapering it off in another. It means making value configurations within the linear structure of the drawing by allocating differing intensities of light according to the topography of form

Another important skill to work on is that of shaping your tonal progressions. In a truly naturalistic drawing style, each patch of tone has a specific shape. Tapering, curving, slanted, and asymmetrical shapes are the rule.

Whenever I draw on the inside I try and remember and obey the following rule: Each form to be shaded must first be recognised as such and its shape in space understood. The light progression that cuts across the form just also be seen and carefully studied. Then a corresponding tonal progression is made in the drawing to represent that specific form as it’s conveyed by that light progression.

- Anthony Ryder (The artist’s guide to figure drawing)

The block in, is designed to be built around direct observation of the model. As a result you will begin to consciously experience the actual appearance of the model.

Connecting forms are the small, full forms that bridge the gaps between the various larger, fuller forms of the body. They are little transitions…nearly invisible, but nevertheless very important. Without them, the form would be choppy and unnatural.

- Anthony Ryder

Think about the marks you want to make on the paper in front of you… the ones that bring you pleasure and satisfaction. You can’t control what other people think or if they’ll give you a job. You can only control your own actions and the work you produce. You have to be a little delusional to pursue a life in the arts, so throw caution to the wind and make pictures that excite you and hopefully the world will agree.

- Jillian Tamaki

Well, I start with an idea - like a magazine article or a poem and start by sketching idea down, normally the general shapes first, playing around with shapes and colours. Then I do a few sketches of the figures until I can get excited about them.

- Andy Lyons (illustrator)

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

- A sister’s eulogy for Steve Jobs

Hergé on colouring

With few exceptions, the colors are applied in flat areas, that is to say, without taking into account either the shadows or gradients.

This gives, in my opinion, more “clarity” to the drawings and also, I think, more freshness. I also believe that the concepts of shadows and Chiaroscuro (light-dark) are conventions. I prefer to side with solid colors, which has the merit of simplicity and readability.

For a child, for example, the Tintin sweater is blue, completely blue. Why would it be light blue on one side (the side in the light) and dark blue on the other? It’s the same sweater, right?”

- Hergé techniques