You know, if one paints someone's portrait, one should not know him if possible.
Related quotes
A Fool (Cinquain)
A fool,
With ease to catch
Paints with a careless mouth
Portrait in words, splashed images
Of heart.
poem by Cynthia Buhain-Baello

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Paints Life Theme Canvas
research scientist
paints water colours
paints poetry brush strokes
paints poetry beaker pigment
paints life theme canvas
research insistent
poem by Terence George Craddock

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
White... is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black... God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.
quote by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
July Paints of Winter
July paints masterpieces
kissing my canvas with lively breezy strokes
July paints what she sees
adding intrigue to yellow folks
She paints a cold numbing winter
adding icicles on Christchurch trees
She paints a briskly Tasman salty sea
Sitting at a window overlooking her muse
July can't see colour til summer’s shines it's hues
poem by ArmourQuill Hunter

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
An Artist
An artist paints with brush so old
Makes his painting worth gold
He paints the nature's gifted gifts
The flowing rivers in the midst
Of all he paints is a pretty face
A girl dressed all in lace
Portraying her beauty he is lost in time
The beauty she possessed is hard to find
Was it her beauty he tried to captivate?
But what a pity time doesn't wait
For she has gone so far away
Leaving her image with the artist to stay
Who paints her all through day and night?
Seeking pleasure deep inside
poem by Meena Mustafa

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Portrait
As I gaze blink-less
At the bare beauty of your persona
Behind the thin satin coat
Your portrait steps out alive
Out of the golden frame.
Your portrait generates
A multitude of elemental emotions,
Some romantically elusive like fluttering butterflies,
Others tangible like love-making,
Yet some others audible like the dying cadence
Of a stringed music played on my lyre.
Am churned by the immaculate portrait
Like the ocean
And I deliver nectar and parijat
From the dark womb of my private secrecy.
I owe it to your portrait timeless,
As I take the yet-to-be christened
Eleventh incarnation of Indian pantheon
Embodying love and truth
With an assured confidence.
Nature Paints
Nature Paints
Nature paints the sky in blue,
Then adds the fluffy spots of white
Which sometimes hide the fuel
Of fiery sphere - light
A relief that gives a gracious smile
Nature paints the high mountains green
An emerald of an incline climb
Extending stairway to heavenly dreams,
The peak is in a target's reach
Our nature paints the dark stained soil
A symbol for our hard day's toil
What in its core does treasure hides?
Seek the rainbow you will find
All colors that our artist binds
Copyright © 2012
poem by Godfrey Morris

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.
quote by Salvador Dali

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Submitted by Dan Costinaş
Vote! | Copy!
The reason that I'm an actor, or an artist, is ultimately because I'm trying to paint a self-portrait, and the most complete and beautiful self-portrait that you can.
quote by Terrence Howard

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
quote by Robert Louis Stevenson

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.
quote by Pablo Picasso

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Earth Safe
Death paints darkness at noon
Earth not feared of death
Death paints darkness at noon
Sun shines sky so bright
Death paints darkness at noon
unkind eyes dark so blind
Volcanoes erupt, whirl winds kill
Towers collapse thousands peril
Terrors kill, humans destroy
Death paints darkness at noon
Earth not feared of death
Rivers flow, Oceans flow
Nature green, universe calm
Earth safe, safer than ever....
September 4,2008
poem by Rema Prasanaa

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Tomb of Lanis
The Lanis you loved, Markos, isn't here
in this tomb you come to weep by, lingering hours on end.
The Lanis you loved is closer to you
when you're in your room at home and you look at his portrait—
the portrait that still keeps something of what was valuable in him,
something of what it was you used to love.
Remember, Markos, that time you brought in
the famous Kyrenian painter from the Proconsul's palace?
What artistic subtlety he used trying to persuade you both,
the minute he saw your friend,
that he absolutely must do him as Hyacinth.
In that way his portrait would come to be better known.
But your Lanis didn't hire out his beauty like that:
reacting strongly, he told him to portray
neither Hyacinth nor anyone else,
but Lanis, son of Rametichos, an Alexandrian.
poem by Constantine P. Cavafy

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Portrait of a heart
Portrait of a heart
~
A portrait piece by piece
built through the heart
presents a romantic world
memories tell a moving tale
the full beauty of a loving heart
where the artist knows no end
and feels the strain of pride
still the picture takes its shape
to present a landscape of a life
touched by the words of love
scarred by the losses felt
the heart speaks and draws
from the uncharted depths
there in the eye of its picture
a romance reveals
a portrait of a world
built through the heart
poem by Matthew Holloway

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!

Portrait and Reality
If on the closed curtain of my sight
My fancy paints thy portrait far away,
I see thee still the same, by night or day;
Crossing the crowded street, or moving bright
'Mid festal throngs, or reading by the light
Of shaded lamp some friendly poet's lay,
Or shepherding the children at their play,--
The same sweet self, and my unchanged delight.
But when I see thee near, I recognize
In every dear familiar way some strange
Perfection, and behold in April guise
The magic of thy beauty that doth range
Through many moods with infinite surprise,--
Never the same, and sweeter with each change.
poem by Henry Van Dyke

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
At the unveiling at the White House of the presidential portrait, President Bush pointed out that Hillary Clinton was the first sitting Senator in history to have her portrait hanging in the White House.
quote by Eleanor Clift

Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
A Painter In You!
who has painted your picture in my thoughts,
without a brush, the paints and the pallet,
not even sketched using a pencil and a knife,
the picture is perfect with the colors mixed,
your smiling is great with a thin line at the edges,
your eyes are wide open, sprinkling the cheerful messages,
every time the happy visuals of you pop out in the mind,
I couldn't have drawn such a beautiful portrait,
of you in my heart, who has done this painting?
You are the one who posed and painted on your own,
you are a great painter who can paint your pictures,
on everyone's heart whom you know, love and respect.
poem by Veeraiyah Subbulakshmi

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A Portrait of Aspiring Perfection
A portrait of aspiring perfection hath been painted
Through the creation of evolutions tidings.
A portrait of respiring reflections lay untainted.
Leaving my thought in meditation hiding.
They cry, the muses of my soul how they cry,
Forever sighing as I am forever wishing to be whole
And in so doing I am assuming myself to be but half.
poem by David Lacey

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Canvas (Part 2)
We last left off with such the fright,
She paints—but gasp! —that's not quite right,
For every story has a twist,
And every painting is done on her wrist.
She paints with—sorry? —with little regard,
To what may bleed and what may scar,
But oh, she paints a lovely spar,
Despite the way that most things are.
Some find it funny and watch as she flees,
Others feel sick the moment they see,
Because a painter, she can't have much of a life,
If all of her painting is done with a knife.
This painter—in fact—she thinks she's alone,
Because of the burden of problems at home,
And then there's her mind, a nasty old place,
It's mostly the cause of the paintings she makes.
But one can be trapped, or one can be freed,
Though most painters like her find this hard to believe,
Yet this very painter broke free of her sadness,
And if she ever wonders 'why? ' she can look at her canvas.
poem by Dayna Mortimore

Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!