#Technique Quotes

“Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.”

“The more technique there is, the less there is”

“I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.”

“There are lots of really good guitarists, but they play with the same pedals that everybody else does. Everybody buys the same pedals, so the sounds tend to be the same. I am looking for different ways of doing that without having to spend days and weeks and months fooling around with pedals, which I don't enjoy.”

“The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is.”

“Style is often something which locks the painter into the same vision, the same technique, the same formula during years and years, sometimes during one's whole lifetime.”

“Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it. To the great poet, there is only one method of music - his own. To the great painter, there is only one manner of painting - that which he himself employs. The aesthetic critic, and the aesthetic critic alone, can appreciate all forms and all modes. It is to him that Art makes her appeal.”

“You can practice shooting eight hours a day, but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way. Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

“There are three aspects to perspective. The first has to do with how the size of objects seems to diminish according to distance: the second, the manner in which colors change the farther away they are from the eye; the third defines how objects ought to be finished less carefully the farther away they are.”

“The light for drawing from nature should come from the North in order that it may not vary. And if you have it from the South, keep the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the whole day the light may not vary. The height of the light so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground of the same length as itself.”

“Never make heads straight on the shoulders, but turn them aside to the right or to the left, even though they look down, or upward, or straight ahead, because it is necessary for them to look lively and awake and not asleep. And do not depict the front or rear half of the whole person so that too much straightness is displaced, one half above or below the other half; and if you should wish to use stiff figures, do so only in portraying old people.”

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”

“The first object of the painter is to make a flat plane appear as a body in relief and projecting from that plane”

“The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.”

“There was clearly great charm and worth in a sport so quaintly perverse in its basic instructions. Hit down to make the ball rise. Swing easy to make it go far. Finish high to make it go straight.”

“The hand of the painter is incurably mechanical: his technique is incurably artificial... The camera... is so utterly unmechanical.”

“I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.”

“It's harder to write in the third person but the advantage is you move around better.”

“Vipassana is fine until it becomes a technique that has many stages and that takes time to develop. That can be okay for people for a while, but then you have to leave the technique behind.”

“Remember, you are expressing the techniques and not doing the techniques.”

“Training for strength and flexibility is a must. You must use it to support your techniques. Techniques alone are no good if you don't support them with strength and flexibility.”

“The highest technique is to have no technique. My technique is a result of your technique; my movement is a result of your movement.”

“Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.”

“It is true that the mental aspect of kung-fu is the desired end; however, to achieve this end, technical skill must come first.”