There is force and vitality in a first sketch from life which the after-work rarely has. You want a picture to seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you by the shoulder! It should impress you like reality!
Interpretation
The initial sketch from life captures raw energy and vitality that later artistic revisions often lack.
William Morris Hunt emphasizes the unique power and immediacy found in a first sketch made directly from life, suggesting that such spontaneous creations possess a vitality and impact that can be diluted in later, more polished works. He argues that art should engage the viewer with the same intensity as a physical interaction, signaling the importance of capturing genuine moments of inspiration.
In practice
Using this quote in a discussion about the importance of spontaneity in art creation.
How are we going to make painters by lecturing to them? We are going to make questioners, doubters, and talkers. We are going to make painters by painting ourselves, and by showing the paintings of others. By working frankly from our convictions, we are going to make them work frankly from theirs.
The mission of art is to represent nature not to imitate her.
Painting is the only universal language. All nature is creation's picture book. Painting alone can describe every thing which can be seen, and suggest every emotion which can be felt. Art reaches back into the babyhood of time, and is man's only lasting monument.
Art teaches you the philosophy of life, and if you can't learn it from art, you can't learn it at all. It shows you that there is no perfection. There is light, and there is shadow. Everything is in half tint.
I hate this life of the fashionable world, always ordered, measured, ruled, like our music-paper. What I have always wished for, desired, and coveted, is the life of an artist, free and independent, relying only on my own resources, and accountable only to myself.
Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.
Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.
Don't worry about how you 'should' draw it. Just draw it the way you see it.
We don't need a lot of initiatives for women in film; what we need is money.
Speak to me...be eloquent, be brilliant for me. Improvise! Rhapsodize!... I ask for cream and you give me milk and water... Please gather your dreams together into words. - Roxanne, Cyrano de Bergerac
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