an artist’s eye

thoughts about observation

"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

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

"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

"It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are." — David Hockney

"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. Above all things get abroad, see the sunlight and everything that is to be seen. — John Singer Sargent