In her talks and in letters to disciples, the Mother said many things about art, artists and the expression of beauty which may be of interest in connection with her own artistic work. A selection of this material is presented below.
                                                       
                 To learn means months and months of study before any picture can be done; studies from nature, drawing first for a long time, painting only after .
                 If you are ready to study hard and regularly, then you can begin, otherwise it is better not to try .
 

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                 You must be prepared to be unsuccessful many many times before you can truly learn. It is with the effort of many failures that you prepare a progress leading towards success.
  

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                 It is good to make sketches from nature. It gives richness, variety and precision to the execution.
 

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                 You can begin to study the human figure but that from Nature, not from books.
 

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                 Before doing a drawing you must find the proper place for the model to sit. Generally near a window where the lights and the shadows will be frank and precise, is the best. Before starting the work, you must try several positions and choose the best.
 

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                When you want to do a certain sketch on a certain sheet of paper, you must ~ first establish roughly the whole of it keeping in view only the proportions. For a whole figure it will make it easier to keep the right proportions by keeping in ;, mind that a normal body contains 7 heads including the head itself; less makes ( a short man and more a tall one .I am sending you the sketch of the man with the seven heads marked.

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                  (The technique of "broken colour" )
                  The technique is to apply the colours by dots and short lines very close to one another but not to mix; it gives a much more living effect than the mixing and expresses well the play of colours and of light. ..you can make in that way all possible shades.

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            So-called black hair is never black. Look at it attentively and you will see that in the shadows there are deep browns, deep blues and purples. The lights are pale blue if the hair is very black and reddish brown if the hair is less black.

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            The colour of the shadows is always somewhat complementary to that of the light. The complementary colours are green and red, orange and blue, violet and yellow-and all the intermediate shades with all the possible combinations.
             Thus if in the light your ground is green, in the shadow it will probably be a reddish brown-if it is of some kind of golden orange the shadow will be of bluish purple, and so on.