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“It was amazing what an hour with her sketchpad could do for her mood. She was sure that the lines she drew with her black marker were going to save her years of worry lines in the future.”
― Victoria Kahler, Their Friend Scarlet

“Sketches are social things. They are lonely outside the company of other sketches and related reference material. They are lonely if they are discarded as soon as they are done. And they definitely are happiest when everyone in the studio working on the project has spent time with them.”
― Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design

“While I am carrying on a conversation with someone, I find that I am drawing with my eyes. I find myself observing how his shirt collar comes around from behind his neck and perhaps casts a slight shadow on one side. I observe how the wrinkles in his sleeve form and how his arm may be resting on the edge of the chair. I observe how the features on his face move back and forth in perspective as he rotates his head. It actually is a form of sketching and I believe that it is the next best thing to drawing itself. I sometimes feel it is obsessive, but at least it accomplishes something for me.”
― Charles M. Schulz

“Save for the accident of her low birth, Peg might have been a person of fashion; a vibrant beauty, painted by an academician in oils.
Intending to make a quick end to it, I started mixing the lily green I had made especially from crushed flowers, hoping exactly to tint her eyes, rattling my tiny brush in the jar. Then I subjected her to my closest gaze.
"Your eyes," I said, musingly. "They are a very unusual green; in different lights they reflect brown and blue. Do they perhaps reflect whatever light falls on them?"
Peg replied that she couldn't say. "Do, please, sit very still." I looked very hard, then used my green with a wash of yellow ochre to tint the iris, and a ring of burnt umber. A pinprick of white titanium gave them startling life. I was happy with them; surely even Peg would admire her lively cat-like eyes.”
― Martine Bailey, A Taste for Nightshade

“Aurore sketched—it would always be her pleasure—and "scribbled"—it was her passion...”
― Joseph Amber Barry, Infamous Woman: the life of George Sand

“Another day, sheltering beneath trees in a rain-shower, I uncovered a doorway long obliterated by undergrowth. After pulling shrubbery aside, I stepped inside a long deserted summerhouse, fronted by cracked marble columns and ironwork, the rear extending deep into the hillside. Though still filthy, even after I cleared away the tenacious vines, the windowpanes gave sufficient greenish light for me to sketch indoors. In a cobwebbed corner stood a gardener's burner that must once have coaxed oranges or other delicate shrubs to life. With that alight, I found a chair and sat with my shawl muffled around me as I sketched.
The marble statues that lined the walls were fine copies of the Greek masters, with muscular limbs and serene faces, though sadly disfigured with a blueish-green patina. As an exercise, I copied a figure of a handsome boy, admiring the sculptor's rendering of tensed muscle, the body frozen just an instant before extending in action. My mind drifted to Michael, the uncertainty hanging over us, my urges to please him, my need to move beyond this stupid impasse. As I sketched the statue's blind eyes I half-heartedly followed his line of sight.
I stood and looked more closely at the statue. "What are you looking at?" I said out loud. A green stain blotted the boy's cheek, ugly but also strangely beautiful, for the color was a peacock's viridian. For the first time I noticed the description, "HARPOCRATES- SILENCE", engraved on the pediment, and had a vague recollection of a Roman boy-god who personified that virtue. He held one index finger raised coyly to his lips, while his other hand pointed towards a low arch in the wall. I paced over to the spot at which he pointed. The niche was filled with gardener's trellis that I removed with rising excitement. Behind stood an oak doorway set low in the wall. As I lifted the latch, it opened onto a blast of chilly darkness. Lighting the stub of a candle at the stove, I propped the door open and ventured inside.
At once I knew this was no gardeners' store, but another tunnel burrowing into the hillside. Setting forth with the excitement of new discovery, my footsteps rang out and my breath fogged before me in clouds. The place had a mossy, mineral smell, and save for the dripping of water, was silent. Though at first the tunnel ran straight, it soon descended an incline, and my feet splashed into muddy puddles. Who, I wondered, had last passed through that door?”
― Martine Bailey, A Taste for Nightshade

“I was at first unwilling to show my teacher my own work, but after I summoned the courage he was generous in his praise and astute in his criticism. Thus I learned a number of the professional artist's tricks: clever matters of line and shadow. He also spoke freely of the new styles of painting, the abandonment of high wigs and whalebone for flowing costumes, and that most excellent word, Truth. "Portraiture should not be confused with flattery," he said. "What is more ridiculous than a stout duchess tricked out in hoops, masquerading as a goddess? Use your excellent eye to record what you see, Mrs. Croxon. Painting is eighty parts looking to twenty parts moving one's brush.”
― Martine Bailey, A Taste for Nightshade

“She took out a charcoal stick and began to sketch-- on the workbench itself. Of course the moon wouldn't come to her in songs or poems or crystals or whatever... she felt the most centered, the most tranquil, when she was painting or drawing. Lost in her own world or in new ones she imagined. She shouldn't have made a chart; she should have drawn a circle, with the moons going from waxing to waning all the way around...
She hummed to herself a little, the way she always did when she painted.
Her hair began to glow.
A little shading here, a few light strokes in the middle of the full moon for the face that Rapunzel saw there... Circles and shadows and crosshatching... She worked extra hard on the profile of the fatter waxing crescent, where the moon would be now. She knew what it looked like as she felt her hand shape it.
Her power surged; her hair began to sparkle.
She looked around frantically for something to release her magic on. The first thing she saw was her tea, so she grabbed the red clay cup and wrapped the end of a braid around it.
Just like with Pascal, sparks sprayed off her hair and over the object.
When they faded they revealed...
... a heavy, crude clay cup.
Rapunzel started to slump in disappointment-- and then noticed something. Where the hair had touched the sides, the cup was now shiny black, like onyx or obsidian.”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“Document your dreams.
Sketch that shape you saw.
Write those lyrics before they fade out.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary

“A leaf, large and rough, a thorny stalk, blue flower. I borage bring courage. Than a saw-toothed leaf. Lemon balm. Soothe all troublesome care. Marigold---cureth the trembling of harte. Perhaps their medicine will cross through the cell walls of my drawing hand.
The plants grow into a schematic, a garden, geometrically arranged. I consult the crackly herbals by my bed. Chamomile, catmint, sorrel. In Latin: Matricaria chamomilla, Nepeta X faassenii, Rumex acetosa. I get out of bed, retrieve my colored pencils, come back.
The smell of earth fills the room. Root and flower and loam. Decay and regeneration. Mullein and comfrey, costmary, feverfew, betony. I sink into the earth, below verbena and lavender, descending as I draw.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“If you experiment, you have to fail. By definition, experimenting means going to territory where you've never been, where failure is very possible. How can you know you're going to succeed?
Having the courage to face the unknown is so important.”
― Marina Abramović, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

“Iris lay there, her eyes closed, her golden hair spread on the pillow, half-turned toward him.
She must've been exhausted to have fallen asleep so swiftly.
The candlelight sent shadows spilling from the tips of her eyelashes, made her brow and cheeks glow, and left the valley between her breasts in darkness. She was so lovely it felt like a hook digging into his heart, tearing a jagged hole.
He turned and went to his traveling trunk, then knelt to open it. Inside, under a layer of folded banyans and pairs of breeches, he found his sketchbook and pencil case. Then he picked up a straight-backed chair and set it down next to the bed.
And began to put on paper what he couldn't say in words.”
― Elizabeth Hoyt, Duke of Desire

“To me, he was still a hero; he gave me fencing lessons, sharpened my pocketknife, taught me how to draw clouds by rubbing an eraser over shapes sketched with a piece of charred wood from the fireplace, and how to render the myriad leaves of a tree without drawing each one separately—the true secret of art, as he called it.”
― Stefan Hertmans, War and Turpentine

“From my bag, I took out a Moleskine notebook and a pen that I always carried for essay ideas and made notes on the setting. The clothes and attitudes of the passersby, the kind of shops that populated the hallways, the cakes in the case, so different from what I'd see at Starbucks in the US- these heavier slices, richer and smaller, along with an array of little tarts.
I sketched them, finding my lines ragged and unsure at first. Then as I let go a bit, the contours took on more confidence. My pen made the wavy line of a tartlet, the voluptuous rounds of a danish.
The barista, a leggy girl with wispy black hair, came from behind the counter to wipe down tables, and I asked, "Which one of those cakes is your favorite?"
"Carrot," she said without hesitation. "Do you want to try one?"
If I ate cake every time I sat down for coffee, I'd be as big as a castle by the time I went back to skinny San Francisco. "No, thanks. I was just admiring them. What's that one?"
"Apple cake." She brushed hair off her face. "That one is a brandenburg, and that's raspberry oat.”
― Barbara O'Neal, The Art of Inheriting Secrets

“I lined the back fence with salvia (kind of a blue-purple color) with something called Scabiosa "summer berries" (kind of pinks and purples, including one that was almost black- so cool, a gothic flower) in front.”
― Abbi Waxman, The Garden of Small Beginnings

“Water can be drawn from a well, or drawn on a sheet of paper.
Art, in whatever form, is art.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“I immerse myself in sketching on my phone, tapping my stylus against the corner when I’m thinking through my design. I love the way there’s direction and guidance for something as wild and emotional as art, so some of my favorite books to read are on art theory.
But the best learning comes from practice, after being guided by the lessons in the books.”
― Julie Abe, The Charmed List

“When I begin, I draw rougher, more jagged lines to get out my excess energy before I can focus on what I see before me. Before I can study the angles and get them right, before my practice and proper theory sets in.”
― Julie Abe, The Charmed List

“Slipping past a patch of reeds, I slow to look for the purple gallinule, Porphyrula martinica. My father called it a pond chicken. No dead bird skin can capture the way this creature walks weightlessly over lily pads and floating reeds. That's why I've come out today, after all---to get the gizz of one purple pond chicken. I skim close to every clump of bulrush, wild rice, and pickerelweed. For a moment, the only sound is my paddle and the water. Then here come the moorhens, cousins to the gallinule, swimming around me. Their beaks are white, and their feathers are black, where the gallinule's are blue, violet, and rainbow-shine green. They start up with their high, collective cackle. "Listen to 'em laughing at us," my dad would say.
"Get out there," Estelle said, "before you lose touch." What exactly was that supposed to mean?
I spy a limpkin among the reeds, poking its tweezer-like beak in the mud for apple snails. Crying birds, they call them, because of the baleful sound they make trying to get a mate into their nest. It almost sounds like a baby's wail. I do a quick sketch of the limpkin's long legs and slender, curving bill, the variegation of its brown and white feathers.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I set up the skin of Estelle's bird number 5, the marbled godwit---- a migratory visitor to Florida, like me. I draw the beak twice as long as the head, tapering down to the width of a knitting needle, then fill in the back and wings with terrazzo mottling, brown and black and white. It has long legs and an exquisite neck. I hope this bird gets a prominent place in the exhibit.
On my second sheet, a young woman kneels on black soil, her back to the viewer, dark hair in a chignon. She pulls at the weeds that crowd her precious bee balm, betony, dock, and rue. She wipes her cheek with the back of her wrist, avoiding the dirt on her glove.
I should go see my mother today, but to be honest, I don't feel like it. Yes, she's an oldish person, displaced from her home, who might count on someone to come and break her solitude. But that journal entry... I simmered while Loni played... gives new color to my lifelong weariness.
Godwit. I draw the bird flying blessedly north, displaying her gorgeous cinnamon wings.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“The gallinule's candy-corn bill--- yellow at the tip, orange toward the eye---points at the waterline, and the blue and green of the feathers glint in the sunlight. I sketch the light blue cap and the oval body, hinting at its iridescence. The bird pokes her head sharply into the water, swallows, and beings to meander. She walks across floating lilies, pad to pad, and then into the reeds until I can't see her anymore, no matter how I steer the canoe. When she's gone, I look at my drawing. "Hee-hee!" I say aloud, sketching a few more quick studies to indicate her motion and the intensity of her stare, with notes on the deep iris blue of the head and breast, the aqua of the back and wings graduating to olive at the tips, and underneath an inky black.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I come around the curve of a hardwood hammock to witness two herons, a great white and a great blue, having what looks like a territorial dispute. I slow the canoe. Another white heron stands in the shallows a short way off, either fishing or waiting to see who'll win. The white and the blue keep flying up, each trying to warn the other off, angling their wings so the light catches them first one way and then another.
I sketch them fast, trying to record the unintended grace of their motion as well as the force of their intention. While they're concerned with power and territory and fishing rights, they have no idea how stunning the exchange makes them look. The blue heron, in particular, shows me the richness of her color from every angle.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“I draw the blue heron flying up and protecting her territory. The purest images come as I wake, and I need to catch them before they disappear. As I sketch, the old story my father used to tell echoes in my brain. No wonder the fairy queen of the marsh chose this bird to inhabit. The heron is regal in her blue, asserting her will with shimmering, outstretched wings.”
― Virginia Hartman, The Marsh Queen

“Still humming to himself, he flipped past sketches---a father and son hiking the base of Mount Cecilia, an old woman feeding pigeons along the old fountain in the middle of Pariva's town square, a young couple strolling around the bell tower at dusk---until he found a fresh new page.”
― Elizabeth Lim, When You Wish Upon a Star

“His torso was a perfect "V" of golden skin and muscle; his slim hips, whiter than the rest of him, tapered to thighs and calves that could have been turned on a lathe, and these were dusted all over with fair hair that glinted in the low sunlight. The hair on his head was cropped short and beacon-bright, but the features of his face were nearly indistinct from where she watched. Given the glory of the rest of him, they scarcely seemed to matter. The man's beauty was, in fact, an assault, and a peculiar tangle of shock and delight and yearning began to beat inside her like a secret, second heart.
And then the man stretched his arms upward, arching his back indolently; exposing the dark fluffs under his arms, and this, somehow, seemed more erotic and intimate than the rest of his naked body combined. Susannah had seen paintings and statues of naked men, for heaven's sake, but none of them had ever sported fluffy hair beneath their arms. In fact, the sheer easiness with which this man wore all his raw beauty frightened her a little. He was like someone too casually wielding a weapon.
She fumbled her sketchbook open.
Quickly, roughly, she sketched him: the upraised arms, the curves of his biceps and legs and the planes of his chest, and when he turned, the darker hair that curled between his legs and narrowed up to a frayed silvery-blond line over his flat stomach. Nestled right between his legs were, of course, his... male parts...which looked entirely benign at the moment, really, at least from this distance. She sketched those, too, as she intended to be thorough, hardly thinking of them as anything other than part of her drawing.”
― Julie Anne Long, Beauty and the Spy

“It's as though I can stop being me for just a moment, and I feel what it feels like... to be a vole. Or a rose. Or---"
She was going to say, "or you."
She wouldn't presume to know what it felt like to be him. But she thought of him on the pier, gloriously nude, stretching his arms toward the sky... and it had been as though his own pleasure in the moment had become her own pleasure. As if every bit of his pleasure, his abandon, his beauty, had infused her drawing.
"No," he said suddenly. Softly but firmly. As though he'd just had a revelation of his own.
"No?" She was crushed. And here she'd really given it some thought.
"No, I don't think you ever stop being you when you draw, Miss Makepeace... not even for a moment. I suspect you are entirely yourself when you draw.”
― Julie Anne Long, Beauty and the Spy

“Your armpit is very handsome."
This made him laugh. "Only an artist would think an armpit is handsome."
"But it is... the line of it is, anyhow. The muscles and shadows and hair..." She traced the muscles and shadows and hair with her finger as she said the words, and her voice drifted.
She sat up suddenly and reached for her sketchbook and quickly rendered him, that arm stretched over his head, his bare chest, and long legs, his lolling, spent manhood resting in curling hair, his wonderful face reflecting smug satisfaction, easy intimacy.
"You're a very good model," she told him approvingly. "You hold cooperatively still."
"I don't think I could move if you pointed a gun at me," he murmured.
She kissed the birthmark in the shape of a gull on his outstretched wrist, then leaned down and kissed his nipple, tracing it with her tongue, tasting it the way he'd tasted hers. His hand trailed down her back, she saw unmistakable signs of stirring below.
"You're moving now," she teased.
He gave a short, very distracted laugh. "Siren," he said absently. Clearly enjoying the run of her tongue over his chest.”
― Julie Anne Long, Beauty and the Spy

“The pair of them had taken pleasure in discovering the London markets together, stretching their fingers out to touch the pineapples and pomegranates, sketching the stalls piled high with herrings and cockleshells, and holding clementines to their noses at Christmas, each fruit crackling in its wrapping of foreign lettering.”
― Caroline Scott, Good Taste

“After selecting a brush, she moistened the cakes of watercolor in her traveling palette with some of the water from her cup and, with careful strokes, began to record the almond flowers in painstaking detail. Her father had successfully cultivated them at Trebithick, but she had never seen them growing in the wild before.
More often than not, Elizabeth would collect plant samples to study carefully indoors, and would sketch them out before taking up her brush, spending hours ensuring she captured each detail precisely. But recently she had begun to experiment with a more free-form style of painting. It wasn't strictly the style of illustration she had learned, nor did she think her father would approve, but she loved the immediacy of it. The trick was to get the lighting just right--- a strong source helped to create shade and give the work a three-dimensional effect. The afternoon light was perfect, and she also used a dry brush, rubbed over the paint cakes, to add detail and depth to the watercolors.
Daisy wandered off to the shade of a wide-spreading tree a few yards away. 'It's a canela tree, I think," Elizabeth called out, pausing for a moment from her work. 'False cinnamon,' she explained.
'I can smell it,' replied Daisy, sniffing appreciatively. 'Like Cook's apple pie.”
― Kayte Nunn, The Botanist's Daughter

“People who speak badly about others are just mentally sketching themselves.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih