Patrick O’Brien

Realist painting requires an artist to carefully observe the world around them. Here are some ideas about observation that I have come across in my reading. 

"Paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous." — Michael Michalko 

"It's through my artist's eyes that I see wonderful things in nature that I never saw before." — Kathy Connelly

"Seeing artistically does not happen automatically. We must constantly develop our powers of observation." — Eugene Delacroix

"Look slowly and hard at something subtle and small." — Philip Pearlstein

"All of us are watchers – of television, of clocks, of traffic on the freeway – but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing." — Peter M. Leschak

“Cultivate an ever continuous power of observation. Wherever you are, be always ready to make slight notes of postures, groups and incidents. Store up in the mind a continuous stream of observations from which to make selections later.” — John Singer Sargent

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." — Henry David Thoreau