“Not a day without a line” — The gentle discipline of drawing every day
<p>When the contemporary British illustrator Ralph Steadman (born 1936) describes his work routine, it resonates with the motto “Not a day without a line”, or in its latin version “Nulla dies sine linea”. It comes from the Ancient Greece painter Apelle (4th century BC), who was one of the most famous of his time. Though none of his work reached our times, stories and legends attributed with his craft were related throughout ages.</p>
<p>Pliny the Elder relates how he would draw every single day, and the discipline was condensed in that sentence:</p>
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<p>“Moreover it was a regular custom with Apelles never to let a day of business to be so fully occupied that he did not practise his art by drawing a line, which has passed from him into a proverb”</p>
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<p>It has since been used by writers and visual artists alike to set their commitment towards their practice. Emile Zola had the sentence painted over his chimney. Paul Klee wrote it down on one of his drawings in 1938, and the German translation, “<em>Kein Tag ohne Linie</em>”, became the title of a retrospective exhibition of his drawing by the Zentrum Paul Klee in 2006.</p>
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