Paint your picture by means of the lights - imagine that you are bringing

moving beings out of a gray chaos and not that you are drawing men with
black paint. (Howard Pyle as recorded by Ethel Pennewill Brown and Olive
Rush, August 2, 1904.)

Cleverness seems to be substituted for exactitude, and the result is very

unsatisfactory so far as any real and practical results are concerned. It is very
discouraging to one who holds in view a real, material, and vital
advancement in the practical uses of art to meet so many young artists, who,
having passed from the schools, seek in vain for opportunities whereby they
may earn a modest living... (Pyle to James Hulme Canfield, April 17, 1905)

...I think you may easily see that in the making of a successful picture, the
artist must compose and arrange his figures and effects altogether from his
imagination, and that there is very little opportunity in the making of such a
picture for him to copy exactly the position of a model placed before him in
the lights and shadows which the studios afford. Nor is it likely that he can
find any background to copy accurately and exactly into such an imaginative
picture.

For example: suppose an artist were called upon to paint a picture of a man
running away from his enemies along the shores of a sea; with a gray sky
overhead, and a strong wind blowing over the landscape. You see, he could
not pose a model in the required position, for not only could no model hold
such a position as that of a man running, with a center of gravity projected
far beyond the point of impact; but even if the model were suspended in the
air in such a position, yet he would not convey the idea of running. Apart from
this it would be very difficult to find exactly the seascape to fit the picture,
and exactly the landscape. For all this, the man must draw, not upon the
facts of nature, but upon his imagination.

If I have expressed myself at all clearly, you will see that what a man needs
to paint an imaginative picture of such a sort, is not the power of imitation,
but the knowledge to draw a figure from imagination.

As necessary, however, as is the concentration of the mind, it is not more

necessary to success than it is to develop the opportunities that lie
immediately at hand. There are few temptations greater than the temptation
that possesses a man to gaze into some impossible to-morrow, beholding in it
an opportunity that does not exist to-day. The opportunities that lie
immediately at hand appear to be very small and very petty; and those that
are remote appear to be very great and very pregnant of possibilities. Alas!
How many men are there who, gazing into that seductive future, stumble
over the things of the present and so fall prostrate in the dust!

He who succeeds, is he who seizes the opportunity that lies within his grasp
and develops that opportunity to its uttermost. No one can ever achieve a
great success unless he performs well the small things of life. To achieve
success, everything, however insignificant, should be done to the fullness of
your powers.