Rainer Maria Rilke one day asked Rodin, "Cher maître, how would you describe the creative process, from the inception of a project?"

Rodin replied. "First I experience an intense feeling, which gradually becomes more concrete and urges me to give it plastic shape. Then I proceed to plan and design. At last, when it comes to execution, I once more abandon myself to feeling, which may prompt me to modify the plan."

Cézanne said of himself, "Je vais au développement logique de ce que je vois dans la nature”. Translating to, “I go to the logical development of what I see in nature”.

Matisse, seemingly guided mainly by his own feeling, made little sketches of projected paintings, and indicated the selection and distribution of colors in writing, before beginning to paint. In other words, he too, like Rodin and other masters, devised a rationally calculated composition, which he would afterwards use or reject.