Andrew Loomis
Prominently featured in advertising and magazines, the commercial work of Andrew Loomis reached wide audiences during his lifetime and established him as a figure of consequence within American illustration.
Born in Syracuse in 1892, Loomis received his artistic training at two institutions: the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York. He worked as a painter, illustrator, and art instructor, combining professional practice with the teaching and communication of visual technique. He also wrote, and it was through a series of instructional art books published throughout the twentieth century that his name became closely associated with art education. He developed what became known as the "Loomis method," a codified approach to instruction that these books carried forward across decades.
Loomis died on May 25, 1959, a citizen of the United States who had worked across illustration, painting, writing, and art education. His realistic style did not recede from view after his death; long after 1959, it continued to influence popular artists, a reception that speaks to the lasting presence of both his instructional texts and the visual principles he set out across his career as an educator and working illustrator.
Quotes by Andrew Loomis
Andrew Loomis's insights on:
Skill is the ability to overcome obstacles, the first of which is usually lack of knowledge about the thing we wish to do. Skill is the result of trying again and again, applying our ability and proving our knowledge as we gain it.
Since the knowledge is available, why try to struggle along without it? The difficulties of not knowing are always much greater than the effort of learning.
As a student I thought there was a formula of some kind that I would get hold of somewhere, and thereby become and artist. There is a formula, but it has not been in books. It is really plain old courage, standing on one’s own feet, and forever seeking enlightenment; courage to develop your way, but learning from the other fellow; experimentation with your own ideas, observing for yourself, a rigid discipline of doing over that which you can improve.
To any man who has slaved to acquire skill in his art, it is most irritating to have his ability referred to as a “gift.”
The difficulties of not knowing are always much greater than the effort of learning.
There’s only one way to assure consistently good work. That is consistently thorough preparation.