Comment by chefandy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chefandy | Hacker News Reader

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> draw from imagination rather than copying or tracing photos

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.

I agree that life drawing is of tremendous importance, but your characterization here disagrees with my experience:

> [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'm not an art educator, but I am a fairly recent graduate from art school, and am familiar with the curricula of other art programs-- and that's the perspective that I'm speaking from. YMMV of course. Reasoning about objects symbolically is very different than reasoning about the way real world space and forms present themselves in 2d. The "copy the portrait upside down" type of exercises are great for casual self-paced learners: they help break naive habits, get people excited because they see the composition and intent that other people created coming out in their work, there's built-in guard rails to make sure they don't stray too far, and the references are commonly available and therefore easy to get crit on online, or just evaluate it yourself... but I think they take up a lot of time for what you get out of them, and it's really easy for people to plateau taking that approach.

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.

Interesting! A couple of years ago, I attempted to begin "learning to draw well" (technique focus). I did the first couple of lessons on the Watts Atelier online course and attended several life drawing sittings. It didn't stick, though! Do you have any recommendations for the initial phases of "learning to draw well"? I think I focused too much on rigor, too soon, and didn't give myself enough chances to sink my teeth into it with initial easy wins.

Firstly, online learning is not for everybody. Seriously. Not having in-person accountability can be a huge problem for some people. Taking individual art lessons or drawing classes locally might be a good way to go. These skills aren't exceptionally rare and people who wield them aren't exceptionally well-paid for doing so.

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!

I want to say how much this means to me that you wrote this. I feel hopeful again. Thank you.

You may want to take a gander at Marco Bucci's book about creativity and the campfire (5 bucks for kindle version). It is a look at myths of talent and inspiration from someone that is a pro artist and have thought a lot about things.

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.

So glad it helped! Random bits: The preponderance of folks in art are really happy to answer questions and offer critique, so don’t feel weird about asking. To some extent, we’re all perpetually beginners if we’re doing it right because the human experience is perpetually changing and we’ll never have life figured out, and that’s the core medium we’re all working with, really. Any folks with the stack overflow “RTFM Noob” vibes, or tryhard “git gud“ vibes are just trying to externalize their fight against their own feelings of inadequacy, and you should probably ignore them. Their perspective will always be about juxtaposing their work above yours, even if they don’t explicitly say so, or even realize they’re doing it.

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

Have you seen "draw a box"? It might be for you.

Respectfully, if one is put off by focusing too much on rigor initially then I think drawabox is the exact opposite of what you want. It is an incredibly rigid, grindy way of acquiring some basic mark making and perspective skills. 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. At that point I was having so much fun drawing actual things I cared about that this is what I transitioned to spend my time on. I would probably benefit from sticking with it further, but I am doing this for fun rather than to become a technically amazing illustrator. My background is photography, and this is a way for me to get stuff out very quickly without finding people and places, schlepping lights, dealing with camera stuff, developing film, scanning film, removing dust from scans, color correcting, and doing editing. It's incredibly freeing.

It has rigor, yes. But OP complain in full was " I think I focused too much on rigor, too soon, and didn't give myself enough chances to sink my teeth into it with initial easy wins."

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.

Quickly looking at the course that was initially mentioned, it doesn’t look like they force you to go faster than you want, but for $200/mo I imagine learners tend to push themselves too much, too quickly, so they can stop paying ASAP. I’ll bet the Draw A Box stuff just doesn’t come with that kind of pressure.

Also an art school survivor, and I strongly agree with what you wrote. Moreover I think it applies to everything, including writing code and writing music: Theory is much more important than technical skill. Technical skill follows from practicing and trying to execute theories as you understand them, even if you're practicing them badly at first. Understanding how to work with space two-dimensionally can't be done by grid copying; understanding how spices interact can't be done by following recipes. You have to start with a concept, taste the product, and adjust through trial and error until you understand the relationships.

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.

Yes, yes, yes, all of that. As an aside, I really wish the tech crowd at large understood that physically crafting the end product is neither the hardest nor the most important part in the creative process. I think that knowledge being more widespread would expose many of the flaws in the idea that a handful of SV companies are a few exaflops away from saving humanity from deliberate creativity.

Well, life drawing is a great way to get work on storing things in your brain you can draw on (!) when you want to construct things from your imagination esp. if anatomical likeness is your goal. However: What I was talking about in my comment was not to recommend any one path to get to drawing from from imagination, it was a lament that the book just does not talk at all about what I am personally getting the most excitement from in drawing: the thrill of the skill of getting things from your head to the page. And you definitely don't need to do classical life drawing to get there. If you look at the Lynda Barry/Ivan Brunetti style of having fun and drawing things from your head where anatomical likeness is not the ultimate goal you clearly can do that without doing a whole lot of life drawing.

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