There is force and vitality in a first sketch from life which the after-work rarely has. You want a picture to seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you by the shoulder! It should impress you like reality!
Interpretation
The initial sketch from life captures raw energy and vitality that later artistic revisions often lack.
William Morris Hunt emphasizes the unique power and immediacy found in a first sketch made directly from life, suggesting that such spontaneous creations possess a vitality and impact that can be diluted in later, more polished works. He argues that art should engage the viewer with the same intensity as a physical interaction, signaling the importance of capturing genuine moments of inspiration.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the importance of spontaneity in art creation.
How are we going to make painters by lecturing to them? We are going to make questioners, doubters, and talkers. We are going to make painters by painting ourselves, and by showing the paintings of others. By working frankly from our convictions, we are going to make them work frankly from theirs.
The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.
Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.
Art teaches you the philosophy of life, and if you can't learn it from art, you can't learn it at all. It shows you that there is no perfection. There is light, and there is shadow. Everything is in half tint.
That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write for the whole world, and you don't write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.
The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I don’t want to write anything but takes.
You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
All the stuff I love most in game storytelling is never the big-picture stuff; it's the stuff that feels like curlicues, stuff that's just there because it's a game and because you can do it.
I can't think of anything more rewarding than being able to express yourself to others through painting. Exercising the imagination, experimenting with talents, being creative; these things, to me, are truly the windows to your soul.
For children of my generation, anime was an escape from Japan's loser complex following World War II. Anime wasn't foreign. It was our own.
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