Some quotations you might enjoy on craftsmanship, lifelong learning, and the artistic process:

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“Be a good craftsman; it won’t stop you from being a genius.”–Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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“If you can handle three elements, then handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way, the ones you do handle you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.”–Pablo Picasso

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“I wasted a lot of time just by dreaming of what I was going to do, rather than working. But that is natural of young people.”–Raphael Soyer

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“Anatomy is a tool like good brushes.”–Robert Henri

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“An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician.”–Wayne Thiebaud

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“The scholar specialized in any field will find that the more he knows, the more he will have to learn.”–Alberto Giacometti

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“There is nothing more difficult for a truly creative painter than to paint a rose, because he has to first forget all the roses that were ever painted.”–Henri Matisse

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“You would hardly believe how difficult it is to place a figure alone on a canvas and keep it living and real.”–Edouard Manet

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“I’ll take weeks doing watercolor studies I may never use. I’ll drop them on the floor and walk over them. But the communion that has seeped into the subconscious will eventually come out in the final picture.”–Andrew Wyeth

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“I tell myself, ‘Just give it another hour. Just plod ahead, one foot in front of the other.’ And then six months later I see it’s a beautiful piece.”–Virginia Cartwright

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“The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own intimate sensitivity.”–Anne Truitt

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“I think I like to create problems for the love of solving them.”–Ann Zielinski

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“Finishing a painting demands a heart of steel: everything requires a decision and I find difficulties where I least expected them.”–Eugene Delacroix