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- interview with Patricia Spears Jones, 2011...
I want to do the human figure, and I want to invent the human figure. I don't usually work with models. I haven't had a model in I don't know when. And for me, it's a challenge to do the figure without seeing the figure, you know. It's kind of fun. (Emma Amos)
There was no opportunity to get the great man to sit for long periods. I did it by following him around and drawing him when I could. Uncle Ho even let me dine with him and he gave me cigarettes. (Phan Ke An)
When I ask someone to sit for me, the arrangement is that they will have first choice if they want to buy any of the work produced and after that I can sell what I want. (Jenny Arntzen)
-on an incident between Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse...
After Matisse was disappointed with a bouquet he had arranged for a painting, Renoir told him to go around to the side he had not looked at. (Anna Held Audette)
-on sketching Pope Benedict...
It's a luxury to have so much time, especially with someone so important and busy. You have to get a feel for the person. (Igor Babailov)
A smart model is a good model. (Tyra Banks)
I think only of objects: of a leg or an arm, of the wonderful sense of foreshortening, breaking through the plane, of the division of space, of the combination of straight lines in relation to curved ones. (Max Beckmann)
The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model, even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles. (John Berger)
-model for Lucien Freud...
I was very nervous about my naked body, when the idea of sitting for Lucien first came up... my physical features which so worried me... they are now in paintings which are housed in the greatest collections and museums in the world! (Leigh Bowery)
Model. Two mobile eyes in a mobile head, itself on a mobile body. (Robert Bresson)
The model is often amazed at my questions. I want to know their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams. (Harley Brown)
A single model enables me to focus on one thing at a time, separating design and form and color into three successive stages. (Thomas S. Buechner)
If thou shouldst paint mountains in a good style and to look natural, take some large stones full of cracks and copy them. (Cennino Cennini)
Studying the model and realizing it is sometimes very slow in coming for the artist. (Paul Cezanne)
When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it's this crazy chase of, Which face? Which one is the one? (Francesco Clemente)
I think it is never worth while to work from models who are positively ugly. It is a dangerous thing to the artist to get used to ugliness in any form. (John Collier)
The model – when she knows she is modelling, begins to be a stuffed owl. (Warren Criswell)
But it's true, isn't it Pauline, that people imagine that the artists and their models spend their time getting up to all sorts of obscenities? As far as work goes, well, they paint or sculpt when they are tired of enjoying themselves. (Edgar Degas)
The only ones who can really benefit by consulting the model are those who can produce their effect without a model. (Eugene Delacroix)
Every time I await a model, even when I am most pressed to time, I am overjoyed when the time comes and I tremble when I hear the key turn in the door. (Eugene Delacroix)
The living model never answers well the idea or impressions the painter wishes to express; one must, therefore, learn to do without one, and for that, you must acquire facility, furnish one's memory to the point of infinitude, and make numerous drawings after the old masters. (Eugene Delacroix)
No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty. (Albrecht Durer)
If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush... (Dawn French)
I work from the people that interest me, and that I care about, in rooms that I live in and know. I use the people to invent my pictures, and I can work more freely when they are there. (Lucian Freud)
If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice. (Lucian Freud)
Since the model... is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy... The model should only serve the very private function for the painter of providing the starting point for his excitement. (Lucian Freud)
It is well for young men to have a model, but let them draw the curtain over it while they are painting. (Paul Gauguin)
I was aware that on my skill as a painter would depend the physical and moral possession of the model... (Paul Gauguin)
At first, one sees the person who is modelling; but little by little, all of the possible sculptures that could be made come between artist and model. (Alberto Giacometti)
Praxiteles borrowed the better elements of a hundred imperfect models in order to create a masterpiece. (Charles Gleyre)
Just because of Rubens I am looking for a blonde model. (Vincent van Gogh)
When I have a model who is quiet and steady and with whom I am acquainted, then I draw repeatedly 'til there is one drawing that is different from the rest, which does not look like an ordinary study, but more typical and with more feeling. (Vincent van Gogh)
I don't know if I can convey the postman as I feel him... Unfortunately he cannot pose, and a painting demands an intelligent model. (Vincent van Gogh)
People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy. (Oliver Goldsmith)
Tell them to stand closer apart. (Samuel Goldwyn)
The neutrality and clarity of an engineering drawing is a better model for teaching about art than all the uncontrollable drivel about the cabbala and metaphysics and the ecstasy of sainthood. (George Grosz)
As a life model, I could sit for long periods of time and create or discard images in my head, so that when I went back to the studio, I had culled all but the best ideas. (Beverley J. Hanna)
The model is not to be copied, but to be realized. (Robert Henri)
Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first? (Robert Henri)
I look for an exciting hook to hang my pictures on... the way that sleeve flew out of the long horizontal was very exciting. (Linda Hutchinson)
Life drawing – fast, loose and sometimes just splashes of colour, the outline of the body hardly there. I don't want the drawing to look as if the model stopped breathing two hours ago! (Maureen Jordan)
The direct experience in painting from life is almost inexpressible. You are not painting an interpretation from a thin sheet of paper or a digital image but from an interaction with a real live human being. (Sharon Knettell)
- arrangement with the ballerina...
Her room should be my studio, she should never stay in any position on my account, she should go on with her make-up and dressing, stand in front of the long glass and go through positions and steps. We were both workers. There was to be no conversation. (Dame Laura Knight)
-photographic shoot...
Stand-ins are not only just technical but also emotional. They serve to better the image that I'm making in many different ways so when the talent turns up everything is taken care of and they have my full attention. (Tim Knox)
I could not do this if my sitter had to keep still... or to hold a stiff pose until we were both sick of it. A person is not a still life - not even a dead person. (Oskar Kokoschka)
I try to keep my sitters moving and talking, to make them forget they are being painted. This has nothing to do with extracting intimate secrets or confessions, but rather with establishing, in motion, an essential image of the kind that remains in memory or recurs in dreams. (Oskar Kokoschka)
Artists can spend a lifetime searching for a perfect model – distinctive features and strong psychological presence. (Robert Liberace)
I'll always be grateful to rent collecting. I've put many of the tenants in my pictures. (L. S. Lowry)
Older models especially fill me with respect and admiration. Unclothed, naked for all to see, unable to deny with the exposure of their vulnerable bodies the map of time. (Mary Jean Mailloux)
My models, my human figures, are never like extras in an interior. They are the main theme of my work. I depend absolutely on my model... (Henri Matisse)
The model for me is a touchstone, it is a door which I must break open in order to reach the garden in which I am alone and feel good, even the model exists only for what use I can make of it. (Henri Matisse)
I asked a Mexican singer to come and pose for the Friday class. She was initially worried that I was insinuating that she pose without clothes. I at once reassured her that she could pose in her costume from Spain and all of her usual fans and regalia and she surprised us by agreeing and holding poses so well that we all enjoyed this kind of a model.... we paid her what we pay our usual models. (Adrienne Moore)
I do not pose my sitters. I do not deliberate and then concoct... Before painting, when I talk to the person, they unconsciously assume their most characteristic pose, which in a way involves all their character and social standing – what the world has done to them and their retaliation. (Alice Neel)
My lovely wife, Janet, has been in a few paintings. She is basically a reserved woman who has never sought the limelight. She has always been there throughout my career and continues to be at my side. (LeRoy Neiman)
Five minute poses are always more dynamic and have such a great energy to them. (Nisla)
What I'm concerned about now is creating a metaphor for what the figure really is. (Nathan Oliveira)
The next best thing to a live model is photographic reference. (Dorothy Oxborough)
I never pose the model, but rather just talk with him or her and take pictures as we converse. This experience helps me get to know a subject's personality, and leaves me with plenty of reference material to work with when I'm finished. (Dorothy Oxborough)
-to The Associated Press, 1930...
I'm done with girls on rocks. (Maxfield Parrish)
Only the mature artist who works from a model is capable of seeing the body for itself, only he has the opportunity for prolonged viewing. (Philip Pearlstein)
An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality. (Pablo Picasso)
People don't often get a chance to stare at each other. Sometimes the subject starts to feel like you can see inside them. They begin to tell you about themselves. It's like a confessional. It's a privilege to share someone's life like that. (Bernard Poulin)
No matter what pose the model takes, I look for a 'rhythm' to put in my drawing. (Sally Pullen)
You will have to scrutinize the model sharply to find the proportions – how the weight is supported, how each joint is functioning... Look for the color and tone and texture... how the light falls on the figure, especially the face. (Howard Pyle)
-on Lila Nunes...
She is not a model like the usual kind of model; she's collaborating in this thing... she has a knack of getting herself into the right position... like when [as a child] you have your best friend come over and you play at things. (Paula Rego)
My early training was in figure painting. Capturing the personality and gesture of a model fascinates me... The model takes a pose that is natural and comfortable, and I adjust it if necessary to make it pleasing. (Charles Reid)
I've known painters who never did any good work because instead of painting their models they seduced them. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)
The art of seeing nature, or, in other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed. (Sir Joshua Reynolds)
When we describe a process, or make out an invoice, or photograph a tree, we create models; without them we would know nothing of reality and would be animals. (Gerhard Richter)
You must first spend some time getting your model to relax. Then you'll get a natural expression. (Norman Rockwell)
In front of the model I work with the same will to reproduce truth as if I were making a portrait. I do not correct nature, I incorporate myself into it; it directs me. I can only work with a model. The sight of human forms nourishes and comforts me. (Auguste Rodin)
The body as well as the skin will hold the history of its experience. (Hanneline Rogeberg)
I prefer painting voluptuous models with rolls and mounds of flesh. I find they're much more interesting and stimulating to paint than thin people. (Maida Rosenheck)
Is she not more than painting can express, / Or youthful poets fancy when they love? (Nicholas Rowe)
Painting a young maiden is similar to cavorting with great abandon. It is the finest refreshment. (Peter Paul Rubens)
Feel the Pose! (Nelson Shanks)
Never force someone into a pose; it will never look natural. (Ted Smuskiewicz)
It is the death of present art when it returns again and again to the model. Use of the model is only an intermediate stage in artistic development. Create out of a living spirituality to overcome everything naturalistic. (Rudolf Steiner)
They must bear the mould of their ancestry. There is a duality: they can be themselves and something else at the same time. They are formal metaphors. (Graham Sutherland)
-on posing for Alberto Giacometti...
The sittings would begin between 3 and 4 o'clock and go on till about 7:30, when the light went... There were 20 of those 3- to 4-hour sittings for my portrait... His glance moved very quickly, almost continuously, between canvas and model. (David Sylvester)
Being natural is one of the most irritating poses I know in people. (Alexander Theroux)
-on women in the brothel...
A professional model is like a stuffed owl. These girls are alive. (Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec)
Giacometti always wanted to look into the eyes of the models, but I don't want the scrutiny of the model on me whilst I'm working, so you will very rarely find the eyes are looking at me. (Euan Uglow)
He who draws... ought to take his position so that the eye of the figure he is drawing is on a level with his own... because, generally, figures or people whom you meet in the streets all have their eyes at the same level as yours, and if you make them higher or lower you will find that your portrait will not resemble them. (Leonardo da Vinci)
-on posing for Paul Cezanne...
Cezanne rushed foward: 'You wretch! You have upset the pose! You should sit like an apple. Whoever saw an apple fidgeting?' Motionless as that fruit may be, Cezanne was sometimes obliged to leave a study of apples unfinished. They had rotted. (Ambroise Vollard)
I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. Here was every sensuous curve of the 'human figure divine' but minus the imperfections. (Edward Weston)
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