Ways of Seeing: Nicholson Baker learns to draw
bookforum.com
bookforum.com
Right now an essay on him is sharing the front page with 2-axis light positioners (whatever the heck those are), cow magnets, secrets rooms in train stations, and a CLI switch to DOS that printed “I love sex” continually on the screen. So meta, you can’t make this up. This is why HN is so unique among all other places I frequent(ed) and why I love it.
Maybe he is a HN lurker.
The Fermata is his only book I’ve read, it was very interesting. You can see that has put a lot of thought into the idea of what you can do if you can stop time for everyone else.
The Mezzanine and Human Smoke were two of my most impactful reading experiences. Mutually, totally orthogonal and yet both speak to the unbelievable cardinality of complexity in real life
i love how his speaking style in that interview is like his stories, meandering tangents and fascinating
If you're savvy, you can probably get ahold of the course books for the self-paced "Famous Artists School" courses from the 50s. They later became the "Art Instruction Schools" courses that had the commercials with that dorky guy saying "Do you like to draw, or paint, or maybe just sketch and doodle?" It was created by Norman Rockwell and Albert Dorne specifically to guide people to teach themselves how to draw. You obviously can't get the mail-in critique, but if you have the discipline to do all of the exercises, you'll still do well.
NerdForge recently helped her boyfriend learn to draw from scratch, and she lists all the stuff she used to help him get there, and you can watch him go through parts of them as well.
In five months I have gone through three 100 page sketchbooks and I have had fun and reached flow state pretty consistently the whole time through. The first of the sketchbooks was basically just drawabox exercises up until the 250 boxes challenge. At this point I transitioned away from drawabox as I was having enough fundamentals to have fun and make progress on drawings I cared about.
All these resources and books may seem overwhelming and you definitely don't need to go through all of this material. The key for learning drawing is to figure out what is exciting for you to draw and get over that first hump to get to where you can draw something you see have potential even if it is not great. That's when the momentum builds and it becomes self propelling. Drawing is basically a language for communicating 3d form on a 2d surface, and like learning Spanish the key is just to get enough of a vocabulary that you can get started conversing. The rest follows once you can talk a little.
Well, I'd argue that the more important skill from a technical perspective is in between that-- life drawing. Being able to translate 3d scenes into a 2d image is the primary technical drawing skill emphasized in art school drawing classes, and for good reason: it forces you to reason about physical space and the structure of objects in ways that neither drawing from imagination nor drawing from a photo reference does. Using a photo reference for drawing in art school is usually disallowed because you simply don't build up that skill, and drawing from imagination is generally taught in classes like Character Design and Illustration after students have learned the fundamentals because there are tons of intellectual considerations there that don't have a lot to do with making marks and reasoning about space that warrant their own subjects. Among the long-time artists I know that started drawing from imagination exclusively, I don't know a single one that doesn't lament not focusing on the comparatively dry life drawing earlier in their practice.
Doing the traditional foundational things like pencil line drawing accurate complex still life can be really frustrating, as can figure drawing, though I found it a lot more rewarding. But if you're looking to develop the best possible artistic eye, there is absolutely no substitute.
> [life drawing] forces you to reason about physical space and the structure of objects in ways that neither drawing from imagination nor drawing from a photo reference does.
Now this may be because I am, at best, an intermediate artist, but in my experience, beginner drawing courses (rightly) focus on unlearning the natural tendency towards "symbol drawing". A bunch of beginner drawing exercises like (a) copying Picasso's Stravinsky portrait upside down, (b) overlaying a picture with a grid to copy it, (c) life drawing with various physical aids (holding out a pencil to "visually measure", drawing a scene visible through a cardboard frame) are all focused on learning to draw what you "really see" instead of what you think you see.
To me, this early learning process involves learning _not_ to reason about what you see, but to instead simply copy what's in your "visual field". Instead of "oh, a nose is sort of a pyramid shape, so it should look like this", it's, "I see a darker value in that spot" (it just so happens to be the shadow cast under the nose, but you don't even need to recognize that). In my own drawing journey, I actually think my life drawing started getting much better once I started learning to draw from imagination, because the latter _does_ require that level of understanding - using perspective, simplifying forms into primitive shapes, types of shadows, planning where the darkest and lightest values in the image will be, and so on. In particular, since practicing illustration, I'm much more capable of sketching things that aren't posing, like the geese permanently milling around in front of my house - I can quickly copy a silhouette, and then use my knowledge to fill out what it should look like. I didn't really learn to do that in all my life drawing classes, because I could just fall back on what I was seeing.
I also went to culinary school some time ago and worked as a chef-- there's a similar split in culinary art. If someone told me they were sick of making boring weeknight dinners, then sure, finding and following fun recipes and maybe doing some creative experimentation is a good place to start, and surely some people that start that way end up really learning how to cook eventually. Exposure to variety is also helpful in developing aesthetic sophistication. But without deliberate guidance towards theory-focused information, most hit a hard plateau with that approach, and there's a good chance they'll stay there. If they'd read a beginner-friendly technique-focused book like Michael Ruhlman's "Ratio" instead of trawling recipe sites for aspirational dinners, they might have seen less improvement in the quality of their dinners for a week, but in a few weeks they'd be miles beyond the first cargo-culting cook because rather than knowing a handful of recipes that work, they'd know how they worked.
If someone said they were looking to get into art, generally, then there's no way I'd recommend even touching still life for a while. If they're like "I want to learn oil painting on canvas" then I absolutely would.
P.S.
> Now this may be because I am, at best, an intermediate artist
So you're probably a pretty competent artist. ;-) Genuinely mediocre artists talk about their capability like they're Van Eyck.
Secondly, not everybody learns at the same pace, and the course you're following might be too fast for you. Try doing each lesson twice or three times spread out over a few weeks. Some people need a little more reinforcement before it clicks, and they often wind up with better technical skills because they've made 3x the marks everyone else did to get to the same place, on the lesson plan.
Thirdly, you might need more external support. One of the biggest benefits to drawing in a room full of other people drawing the same thing with a professor walking around was hearing when I was doing something well. As you surely know, after staring at a piece for however long, it's nearly impossible to view it objectively, and having someone else saying "hey you did a great job with this hatching there. Maybe you could do some of the line work around this object right here with the same approach." If you don't have that, consider posting in online communities (that aren't toxic as hell) or taking in-person classes.
Fourthly, you might have the incredibly common streak of perfectionism you need to push through. It's psychologically hard to embark upon a task you know you don't have the skill to complete to your standards-- for some more than others. A really good way to push against this is to do a deliberately shitty version off it right off the bat. Messy crooked hairy lines, shitty shapes... just shoot to get the overall proportions approximately right and then maybe the negative space around the edges or something like that. A good quality vine charcoal which is super easily erasable, or a few colored pencils you can use for different preliminary stages in your sketching can really help you out. Counterintuitively, you can also try moving in the opposite direction. Do some fast and loose ink drawings where you can't erase and challenge yourself to finish a drawing no matter how badly you fucked it up. In the end, it's not about being able to do it perfectly, it's about having enough experience to realize how much you can fuck something up and have it still be great. Especially in ink work, those wonky lines and stuff can make some of the most compelling parts of the piece.
Fifthly, if you're getting frustrated with art generally, you might want to start with a different artform first to get the general idea of crafting images, composition, etc etc etc. Photography served that purpose for me. (And you don't need expensive equipment: most of what got me accepted to school was iphone photos and the reviewer was a photography professor. It's the underpinnings that really make something good.) If you're really new to art, generally, this is a really great step. You can't start off at a flat run if you're not confident walking.
Sixthly, be fucking kind to yourself at every possible opportunity. You will usually fail at doing so. It's ok. Just really try. Overall, when I find myself quitting or abandoning something, my first thought is "it's too hard for me" or "man I suck at this." In reality, I don't quit because it's too hard or I suck, I quit because I feel like I've failed at it. It's easy to think you just need the discipline to buckle down and rise above the challenge, but that's quite frequently bullshit. The tougher but better approach, if you can pull it off, is lowering your expectations to a level that's appropriate for where you're coming from and where you're trying to go, while still challenging you to improve. It seems like that would be easier, but it's not, because it requires confronting our egos.
Remember that technical skill is one of the least important parts of being a really good artist. Furthermore, the difficulties you're encountering are incredibly common: this is not a personality flaw, moral failing, or some fundamental intellectual shortcoming, and it doesn't mean you won't be really fucking great. Stick with it friend!
A thing I'd like to add is that it really helps to figure out what brings you joy to draw. It is a lot of work to acquire great drawing skills, but if you work on things that brings you joy then it does not feel like nearly as much grind. And also: The trick is to stick with it long enough that you get over the hump to where you can make technically imperfect drawings that still feels like they have promise. Then the fire becomes self fuelling and it is a great feeling. You need to grind some to get to this point, but then the momentum takes hold. Also: You can draw fun things from day one without it being photo realistic if you adopt the proper mind set: Look at Ivan Brunetti's book on comic production or Lynda Barries syllabus book about comics. Both of them focus on immediately working on storytelling without getting held up by drawing skills. You start with what is essentially just a figure that is a few simple basic shapes and figure out how to do meaningful things with this. The drawing skill will accumulate as you keep working on the underlying subject matter you care about.
Crit can be tough to swallow but it’s often harder to give than receive, so don’t punish the other person by succumbing to the temptation of getting super defensive. When you find yourself going into that mode, just stop yourself if you can… disengage if you need to. You’ll regret not doing so. Good faith crit you completely disagree with can be incredibly valuable: knowing something lands differently with a non-zero sum of people is worth knowing. Either way, just politely thank them for their input and move on. When you get confident enough to start offering feedback, you’ll realize how important it is to give people leeway with their reactions! The criticism feels personal because it is: art is personal. It’s just going to feel awkward or contentious sometimes because we’re all human. It’s usually easier for the receiver to distinguish between someone nervous about giving negative feedback, and someone trying to insult you, than it is for the critic.
Really try to dig into the theoretical and conceptual side of things, too. The technical stuff is appealing because it’s easily defined and most laypeople don’t even consciously see beyond it… but being able to communicate things you might not even be able to put into words is the important part. If something is meaningful to you, or scratches some aesthetic itch, follow that thread. There’s a really good chance it will resonate with others. If not, knowing that it doesn’t is all part of getting good at art. You won’t develop that concentrating on technique alone, but you will develop your technique exploring the other stuff, though especially at first, the technical stuff about form, space, perception, and mark making are super important. Especially the very core stuff like mark quality are waaay more consequential being able to express yourself than being able to tell exactly for far this thing is from that thing and putting the line in the right place right away.
Good luck!!<3
Draw a box is giving you wins from the day one. It is pretty much opposite of doing things too soon. The thing with other beginner resources is that they kind of assume you already know how to draw, you know fundamentals and build on that. If you actually cant, they put you into loosing position.
> The first part of it worked great for me, as I am spectrummy and dont mind grinding as it puts me in a flow state, but I only stuck with it up to the 250 box challenge.
I did intended to suggest op should finish it. I think that part up to the 250 challenge is the part that is sort of the key - it gives you basic fundamental skill to draw lines where you want them to be. Plus by that point you see there is systematic analytical approach to drawing and can build on that.
It's not just unlearning symbolic representation (learning to see light and color rather than outlines of shapes, for instance). That can be unlearned quickly. It's learning how the eye actually perceives light and color in theory and then testing and re-testing your assumptions.
All the drawing tutorials for beginners I have seen putted a lot of emphasis on drawing from refences first, before you draw from imagination. The reason stated again and again was that you need to learn how the object looks like before you can draw it from imagination - that people do not know how objects really looks like unless they trained it first.