Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it
five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced
that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the
definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In
drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
-- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
-- Quoted in Gyula Brassau, Picasso and Company (1964)