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30 Novel Painting Ideas

A collection of painting ideas from classic novels to inspire you for a month.

By , About.com Guide

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If you're wanting to do a painting a day but are stuck for ideas, here are 30 painting ideas from classic novels to keep you busy for a whole month. Don't feel you need to have read the novel or that your painting must reflect what the novel is about, just go with the imagery the quote suggests to you. For more on the novel the quote is taken from, click on the link on the title. (Page 1, Page 2, Page 3)

1. Howards End

"The tree rustled. It had made music..."

2. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

"You start a question, and it's like starting a stone. You sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes..."

3. Fahreneheit 451

"The sun burnt every day. It burnt time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people..."

4. All Quiet On The Western Front

"To me the front is a mysterious whirlpool. Though I am in still water far away from its centre, I feel the whirl of the vortex sucking me slowly, irresistibly, inescapably into itself."

5. 1984 by George Orwell

"...the sky was the same for everybody... And the people under the sky were also very much the same -- everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this..."

6. Across Five Aprils

"Then a skeleton came out from among the trees... the uniform it wore was so ragged and filthy it was difficult to identify... the hair was lank and matted. It fell over the skeleton's forehead and down into its eyes."

7. Adam Bede

"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to ... rest on each other in all sorrow..."

8. And Then There Were None

"...a young man, his hair blown back by the wind. In the blaze of the evening light he looked, not a man, but a young God, a Hero God out of some Northern Saga."

9. Anne of Green Gables

"The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields..."

10. As I Lay Dying

"Her eyes are like two candles when you watch them gutter down into the sockets of iron candlesticks."

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