Ask HN: Anyone learned art (drawing, caricature etc.) as an adult? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Anyone learned art (drawing, caricature etc.) as an adult?

95 pointsakudha91 comments

Any form of art. Started with zero natural talent as an adult and got decently good at it? If yes, how did you do it?

I have been learning classical singing (opera, oratorios, etc) with no previous voice training. I think I am fine, and I can get low-paying gigs, but nothing big. I also did the process of becoming an ok composer a while ago (a few public performances of my work, etc), and the same advice applies.

I do have significant musical training and experience. The prior music training does help, but it mostly just helps me figure out when something is wrong, not how to fix it.

I have three tips:

1. Find a teacher or group you click with. Music instruction is 1:1 because it doesn't scale well, but visual arts you can do with a studio. A teacher will really help since most forms of art are subjective enough that you may not know what you are doing well or poorly and that feedback is very valuable.

2. Do your art every day, even for 15-30 min. Inspiration starts with doing, not the other way around.

3. Try to be better than you were yesterday. Practice things you are bad at, and consciously do projects to improve yourself. There is no competition here except with yourself yesterday.

A final one:

IMO the notion of "talent" for the arts is just how people cope with the fact that the best and brightest in that field did more work than them. I had several friends who were "talented" pianists growing up, several of whom are concert artists now. All of them worked their asses off 5-6 hours a day to become "talented." It took me a while longer, but I eventually became a "talented" harpsichord player in my early 20s. Go at your own pace and don't give up and you will also eventually be "talented."

I spent 3 years taking voice lessons with a few different teachers and I was really surprised just how little progress I made, even with regular practice. I'm very curious about your experience learning to sing. How long did it take you? What was your starting point?

I found the whole thing to be a real head scratcher, to the point that I find it hard to imagine learning to sing is even possible (obviously it is, but what is actually going on in the process?).

Here's my starting point: I sang in choruses for a few years as a child and I also generally like to sing stuff. I also did a lot of theory and ear training, which involved sight-singing contrived exercises. I am also a pretty good pianist/harpsichordist and an ok composer/arranger. I have also spent some time tuning harpsichords professionally. So I started with the ability to read music fluently and a really good ear (relative pitch only, but better at hearing exact intervals than many people with perfect pitch).

That is all to say that I don't have to learn many "musicianship" skills during the process, I vaguely knew that vowels are important, and I have a pretty good idea of how to generically practice music (and as a former pianist, I have a very high tolerance for things most singing teachers call "boring"). I will also say that aside from piano, I have done a lot of things that need fine motor control in the past, and that seems to extend to your face muscles.

That means that my voice teacher and I can focus mostly on vocal technique and honing my ear to listen to my own voice (which is surprisingly hard). I also picked a teacher who was a locally-well-known soloist, and she was a very good fit because she herself focuses a lot on the biomechanics of singing.

I have been working for a year and have a decent tone (several times louder than when I started, too) and a decent voice quality with vibrato if I focus on it. Vocal placement, "support," and other similar things are not unconscious for me but I can control them. I can also sing several arias and art songs at a decent quality. I am still working a lot on agility, pronunciation and exact vowel sounds, picking the right ways to produce sounds, and working on controlling my tongue and my abs/diaphragm to produce a good tone that is expressive and can pierce an orchestra.

FWIW I have heard that if you switch voice teachers a lot, it's actually bad for your voice because teaching methods are so "fluffy." Also, I have never done this, but I am sort of convinced that developing a good pop voice is probably as hard as developing a classical voice. In contrast, learning to play keys for a band is supposedly much easier than classical piano of the same level.

>IMO the notion of "talent" for the arts is just how people cope with the fact that the best and brightest in that field did more work than them.

Maybe the notion of “hard work” is just an attempt by talented people to justify their winning the genetic lottery to themselves and to appear humble?

Nowadays, success in the classical music industry very often depends on looks and conventional physical attractiveness. Here, too, luck is more important than hard work.

> Nowadays, success in the classical music industry very often depends on looks and conventional physical attractiveness. Here, too, luck is more important than hard work.

Really? My sister was a professional violist for a while and did all her auditions behind a screen. There are lots of efforts taken to remove biases of exactly the type you are citing from your career path.

Several soloists I know are relatively ugly people, but everyone who is a serious musician is in pretty good shape. Playing concert music is a light-to-moderate full-body workout, and doing that for 5 hours a day takes stamina. They usually also have clothing that fits them perfectly and they will often use some makeup to fix blemishes. So if you're just looking at a soloist on stage or on a video recording, that is about as attractive as the person you are seeing will possibly look, and they are selected from a pool of people that work out about as much as a full-time yoga instructor.

An example that stands out to me here is Yuja Wang, who is known for wearing very short dresses on stage. This happened much to the consternation of conductors and orchestras, and may have actually hurt her early career. She was more than good enough to overcome that, though, and I can't say that it was a bad marketing tactic for attracting youtube views.

Yes, I started learning drawing as an adult with zero natural talent. For me, it wasn't about becoming exceptionally good but about exploring and finding pleasure in the process. I took drawing classes following the "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" method, which I highly recommend.

Thank you. This book you mentioned seems interesting.

Art classes are high utility.

I agree, great book. It took me from drawing stick figures to drawing decently well.

Where did you find classes? University classes or what?

I used the book without classes and it's great.

What an interesting subtext and method! I'm surprised to hear it works, and now I'm curious to try

Here's a preview: https://books.google.com/books/about/Drawing_on_the_Right_Si...

I recommend this book as well (absolute beginner here). Learned to see the world a bit differently because of it.

Another vote for this book. Took me from objectively terrible at drawing, to objectively mediocre. I think if I'd put more time into practice it could have got me to the point of good. While this doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement, it's literally the only thing that moved the needle for me.

And another vote!

I never made it through the book (I know, bad habit of mine) but she said _one_ thing in that book that opened my eyes; paraphrased "you're not drawing the object; you're drawing lines". The first time I drew a crumpled-up blanket blew my mind.

Since then, I just find techniques[1] and ideas[2] that I implement for fun. The reaction from people is joyous.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TXEZ4tP06c [2] Unfortunately, I can't find depictions of Sergio Aragones' MAD magazine marginalia to link to here

Yes. Yet, in my mind, for some peoples and/or subjects (drawing buildings, interiors where perspective is important, etc.), it may be easier to do the exact opposite. Meaning, to learn instead¹ how to construct an accurate perspective view from descriptive geometry, until it becomes second nature and one can then skip the geometric construction (or at least make it less exact and time consuming, closer to what's described in Robertson's "How to Draw" for instance).

¹: I wrote "instead", but of course both ways complement each other.

My wife. She began on a bet that there was no such thing as talent, she could learn the thing she was worst at. Wound up with everyone telling her how much talent she had. Annoyed the heck out of her.

She did it by being willing to throw herself into whatever she did full force, and by believing that any subject she tried to learn could be structured in a hierarchical way.

I wish I could say more, but I met her after she did this. (She's back to being a software developer these days - it pays more.)

I've always thought of this as the discovery of an aspect of talent, that people who'd be described as talented simply discovered by chance earlier, and isn't mutually exclusive with the act of learning it deliberately.

As in, if you have some innate predisposition towards creative thought, it'll be a Schrödinger's cat until you find some way to explore it. Someone with innately great coordination and the right build might have a higher rate of success in learning to climb or play billiards, but if they've never tried to get good at either, then until that time comes they're evidently not good or bad at either. Likewise someone who is a virtuoso violinist may or may not also succeed at swimming because some aspect of how they got good at violin carries over, but if they have no interest or exposure they'd never discover that or care if they did.

For example, I know a pro _____ who also happens to be incredibly good at aiming a frisbee. He almost certainly practiced it—since he got a dog—but his disposition was toward coordination and aim oriented things, which likely helped reduce the amount of practice needed to reach a higher ceiling than someone who's deeply clumsy might. Incidentally, he's also very good at illustration, which again he practiced before it became a medium of expression, and maybe shared an aspect of relentless determination and creativity that also came through in his sport of choice.

The skills that you are treating as innate may be a lot more learnable than you think. The first time I did micro-soldering (soldering things on the scale of 1 mm) when I was an EE, my hands shook a lot, and I basically just tried to figure out how to catch the soldering iron in the right place while it waved around. After doing more micro-soldering, people later complimented my "very steady hands" when soldering small things, and they were very steady. Since then, being able to aim things precisely has carried over. I walked on to the NCAA fencing team at school and was good enough to go to several meets largely because I am 6'3" and left-handed, and could accurately aim the point of an epee at small targets. I also later have been target shooting a bit, and was told I did a lot better than most new shooters.

I have fantastic fine motor control thanks to piano playing, but I am very clumsy otherwise. I regularly run into doorways and have near-misses with static objects. The fencing coach found this hilarious. I assume the fine motor control comes from practice (while most people learned to not run into doors, I studied the blade).

Certain aspects of this stuff are innate, but I think a lot less of it is than most people do. Those innate things do seem to include "speed at which you learn new stuff," as well as very basic parameters of your body like reflexes, bone density, and body shape.

Ya, I agree, but would clarify that I was mainly exploring a few real examples to illustrate my take on it, rather than intending to state those abilities were concretely innate, which I don't think they are.

The superficial difference between someone who may be "talented" and "highly skilled" seems to me to be indistinguishable without more context about how the skills came to be, and for most people who just aren't as pedantic, the term talented is just synonymous with skilled, imho.

In situations where two people of the same age, interest, and approximately similar exposure, resources, and build, are compared, it would come down to progress made between start and end of engaging in an activity without prior deliberate practice that to me would indicate some innate predisposition to do whatever it is that's advantaged by it. I watched two people my age grow up skateboarding into adulthood. Both came out highly skilled and with some amateur/pro success, but one had to grind much harder and took more damage in the process, while the other took a non-zero amount of serious damage, and seemingly picked new abilities up within a few goes. I think this accumulation of prerequisites has an aggregate cost that potentially detracts at at varying rates from each subsequent opportunity to pock something else up.

Something like microsoldering could teach you those skills, but if it took you 6 months to get good at it instead of 4 years, you'd have 3.5 more years at your new baseline of fine motor skills to train fencing without also impairing your academics. Doing it later for fun over an arbitrarily long time might be neat, but irrelevant, especially if you have no specific project to work on.

The Talent Code book says exactly this. It boils down to what one practices mindfully and obsessively - the brain adapts to get better at that thing.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5771014-the-talent-code

“Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you're willing to practice, you can do.” - Bob Ross

I noticed for a lot of people it is excuse for their laziness or actually lack of interest in the topic.

As a dev I had troves of people "wanting" to learn how to program. Usually after I give them pointers and resources they fizzle out after a week or two.

It is easier to say "I don't have talent for that" than "I have better things to do, like binge watching new series". Don't get me wrong, I am "want to learn more math"/"want to learn more electronics" person but never get to really spend time on it and no time to use all the RaspberryPis eating dust in my drawers.

In the end I believe there is talent but that is something like being Linus Torvalds or Michael Jordan, you don't need talent to play basketball or develop software, but to do that on highest levels there is something definitely.

I did this with Drawing.

Here is a short introduction about how it went for me: http://pa-mar.net/Hobbies/Drawing.html

[Warning NSFW !!!]

And this are the results: https://www.instagram.com/pamar

My "best of" (still mostly NSFW) https://pa-mar.net/Hobbies/DrawingBestOf.html

Can I ask honestly why you got into drawing?

I mention it in passing in the first page: I have always liked to express myself visually, so for example in a meeting at work I tend to move to the nearest whiteboard.

[15 years ago I started practicing Shodo (Japanese Calligraphy) which was already a step in the same direction.]

But apart from the little drawing I did at school (as a child) I never really took any class, not even a video class on Internet.

As I explain in the first page, I just decided to try drawing from random photos setting a timer. Then two things happened:

1) I found out I liked it a lot, even if the first results were nothing to write home about.

2) COVID (9 months later).

Also, as a person I tend to stick to hobbies so if I decide to start something new I try to sort out how much time I can devote to this new activity considering everything else I have already on my plate. If it sticks, it tends to go on forever (e.g.: Aikido - 35 years and counting, Shodo 15 and counting, TTRPG... 40 and counting, IT/Tech, 45 and counting...).

I started doing ink drawings (0.1mm ink pens).

I tried pencil at first but with ink I liked that I can’t erase and can’t shade by using pressure.

So every mistake has to be transformed into something agreeable.

It is very productive to think about drawing in a logical way, e.g. how can I achieve what I want to achieve in a part of my picture. What also helps is knowing that a perfect drawing is a photo and I don’t want to produce a photo. And I try drawing what I actually see, not what my mind abstracts and thinks the picture should look like.

This is me five or so years back. It was very calming and therapeutic for me. Same goes for the pen versus pencil thing. There is that charm of living with your mistakes and finding something new out of those mistakes.

I don't actually draw though, more like doodle and make something substantial (for me) out of it. It can be anything - an object, letters, shapes, anything which can dance in some harmony.

I mostly use fineliners too. Even when I draw models posing "live" (actually on Zoom, most of the time) I do the preliminary sketches with thin, light gray pens, and then when I have the proportions mostly right (or at right as I can) I go in with a dark pen.

Example: (NSFW) https://www.instagram.com/p/C_C5VQZOYVF/?img_index=8

How long does a fineliner typically last? During the pandemic I tried doing Draw A Box, which demands fineliners. It seemed like they’d die on me extremely fast, and was a big reason I stopped. I don’t know if I got a bad batch or that’s just how they are.

If you buy quality ink pens by pentel or faber Castell they will last years, depending on usage.

I bought Pentel Pointliners. I don’t know if I got a day out of it. It was certainly less than a week.

I still have a bunch. I bought a whole back. But after the first one became useless I quickly I wasn’t so interested in continuing to use them.

My main problems with fineliners is not their "autonomy" but their durability. I work on small scale drawings most of the time (A5) and I use small size tips. I surely throw away more pens due a damaged tip than due to ink.

I am also using Japanese roller pens in very small sizes and these are sturdier, and last "long enough", in my experience

This could have been the issue. Maybe there was still ink in it, but the tip couldn’t deliver it.

I always had a bad time with them as a kid and ignored them for a couple decades. I only tried again after they were so highly recommended for this program. They wouldn’t accept work for review without using them. But they were exactly as I remembered, if not worse.

It’s possible I got unlucky at the start, but with it confirming my past memories, I was that interested in investing further in a program that required I use my least favorite implement.

Yes, I started about 4 years ago (in my mid 40s) just putting watercolour onto paper - like stick trees, really the absolute basics. I moved on to reproducing patterns in pencil (Islamic tiling designs, celtic knots, etc) as something to put paint into.

After a few years of reproducing all sorts of patterns - mainly Islamic patterns using compass and straightedge, but honestly also tracing paper - I now can convert an image I like of a tile or similar into a neat, symmetric painted-on-paper example in a weekend.

Along the way I've learned how to use various types of paint (watercolour, gouache, acrylic) and mediums (gum arabic, gloss) and varnishes. Also brushes - current favourite being an angled shader and types of paper.

Most importantly, learning about how to use colours - mixing them, and choosing a palette that looks good. Also what I consider the 'finish' of a work: inking outlines, bordering, just making it look good.

I initially put stuff on Etsy, just to put it out in the world. However - not particularly surprisingly, that's not something want to buy - so I now use cara.app as a way to show it to other people, which is what I actually want :) I worry though that cara is unsustainable.

It's been fun, just trying out what seems interesting and striving to get output that you can be proud of and is visually pleasing in whatever way.

Islamic geometry is gorgeous. I've a pile of books on my shelf but have never gotten off my backside to recreate some.

Hope to take this as inspiration!

So I have two recommendations:

Samira Mian, her youtube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/user/samiramian

Another book (!) by Eric Broug - 'Islamic Geometric Patterns' that has step-by-step instructions for 22 patterns.

In general, I use a good compass (although I have also used the cheapest one, it's fine for getting something on paper!) and a mechanical pencil. A transparent ruler with a bevel (so that you can flip it over and draw along the edge) is good. You get used to how to precisely draw a line between points and how to adjust a drawing to get it as symmetric as possible.

Go for it! It's fun :)

Thank you kindly! I've got a few lovely books, but I'm out and their names escape me. Will update later.

The two practical ones are Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design by J. Bourgoin (a pattern book), and Ruler and Compass by Andrew Sutton, which is a small general guide to building shapes.

I've never gotten particularly far in doing my own and have honestly spent more time just cheerfully leafing through Islamic Art in Cairo by Prisse d'Avennes and L'Art de L'Islam by Titus Bruckhardt.

I started sewing on Thanksgiving of 2023. Every day since I've found myself wanting to sew, and have probably sewn something every day since except for maybe 20 days where I was away from home. I feel like I'm ok at sewing after 100+ bags and altering/repairing tons of clothing from yard sales or thrift shops. Most of what I do is completely custom and it's super fun to wear custom matching jeans, jackets, and bags (backpacks & hip/shoulder packs) that I made or altered. Some of my stuff looks like store-bought quality.

For me, as soon as I sewed my first seam, I was hooked. It was like the magic I've felt building software, modifying cars, and woodworking, where you can make something from nothing.

I'd encourage maybe trying out various arts, whatever piques your interest - maybe one will hook you instantly like sewing did for me. In the last couple years, I also dabbled with painting/signmaking, and metalworking (largely with tin snips and a rivet gun) but those didn't really appeal to me instantly or for the longer term like sewing did.

I've realized that the opportunities for the trying/exploring different arts are everywhere and in lots of cases free - community centers, libraries, check your local newspaper('s website), etc. Every single interaction I've had with local art folks in any way has been positive. It's been great to meet folks.

Also, there's so much online to learn from. I've learned a lot from various sites and youtube.

It's been great, and I hope you find joy in the arts!

edit: formatting

I started doodling in class at the start of tertiary education and I eventually learned how to draw there out of sheer boredom.

Like any other skill, it takes practice to master. While you can brute-force drawing from scratch, reading up on some techniques and anatomy will help a lot.

Started doodling the same way, been on and off at it for some years and I must say prolongued, boredom-driven brute force works better than expected

I've had some troubles with reading up on tech&Co. as that always seems to get my expectations higher than what I can achieve, which ends up being somewhat discouraging even if I'm visibly improving at the thing, which is far less of a problem with doodle art as I'm mostly having some stupid fun

Curse you, expectations!

My wife teaches art (drawing, painting) at a couple of senior centers. She is also a fairly accomplished (but not judged, doesn't enter many carving contests) carver; she started that to do something with her dad (and indirectly that led to the art teaching gigs at the senior centers). Her dad was an origami master; I dunno, I do a little origami.

Here are some of the benefits for older adults of these activities: staves off dementia and improves motor control. How do you do it? You start drawing circles and straight lines; I'm only sort of kidding. She actually teaches people about transferring drawings (to e.g. canvas), layering paint (it's not going to look like the final picture when you start): things that require envisioning the final goal and laying foundations to achieve that... along with drawing circles and lines.

It's not something you asked, but (to my relief and profit) I can still paint a house: painted one this summer, and I got compliments from strangers. Call it a hobby, I don't think I'd get the same personal satisfaction if it was a job. ;-)

I think in general adults forget how hard it is to be a kid, what Piaget called "hard fun". Find, and celebrate, some hard fun in your life.

I’m almost 44 and becoming decent at writing Arabic poetry in the classical style. Along with intricate grammatical rules in the language itself, there are strict conventions for meter and rhyme.

I enjoyed reading and memorizing when I lived in Syria for 5 years (7th-11th grade), then had a hiatus until my mid-20s when I suddenly started reading and memorizing again, and added reading more explanation and commentary and criticism. I tried to write my own but it was mostly cringe.

Every now and then my interest in Arabic poetry has been rekindled. This year, I finally started feeling confident enough to share my poetry with not just with family and close friends, but also on social media.

I don’t have a formal learning method as I tend to learn by repetition and osmosis (same with programming), but a few tips:

- Examine and study other folks’ work, especially of those who are famous or whom you personally admire. Don’t just examine the works of art themselves, but also seek out any resources that can help you understand the underlying history, tools, conventions, etc.

- Balance that with learning via your own endeavors. You’ll probably do better working on things that actually interest you. Personally, I can’t imagine enjoying or doing a good job writing poetry on a subject that doesn’t excite me.

- Don’t be shy about seeking feedback. Earlier this year I wrote a poem I was very proud of, but a friend of a friend (a top authority in Arabic and a poet in his own right) picked it apart quite thoroughly. It was humbling, but I internalized the feedback and came back stronger and more confident.

Wow, just reading classical Arabic poetry was hard enough for me! It was one of the more frustrating genres of classical Arabic that I read. Having to look up every other word was just not my cup of tea. I did like some of al-Mutanabbi's stuff though. One of my old professors is legend in the field.

I have to look up a lot of words from classical (especially pre-Islamic) poetry as well. For my own poetry I use words that I, and anyone reading/listening, can understand more easily. When I said “classical” I meant the meter and rhyme aspects, not necessarily the vocabulary.

I'm learning how to paint. I started when I was about 30 and I'm now 41. I started with abstract colours, the kind of thing you might do as a kid. I mean, I started by doing it with my kids, and that was very enjoyable. I was OK at drawing already and I felt I could get a lot better with practice but I don't find the end result that compelling... I guess I like my colours.

To begin with I was really doing it as a way to get away from depression/anxiety. I found it was distracting enough. Now I do it for enjoyment. I like the process from start to finish. I don't rush, takes me a long time to produce a painting - a month for a small one, more for a large one, although I have done a portrait in a 2 hour sitting.

There's tons of learning material, just find someone you like on youtube. However, there's a a large part of it that you only learn by doing - colour theory and mixing, layering, tinting, those all require experimentation. Brush technique just takes time. Videos can help with tooling though, canvas prep is harder than it looks, and more worthwhile than you think... but it's also OK to not bother, I mean you're in control in the end.

I've got a few paintings now that I really like. I haven't put my stuff "out" there, or tried to put it in the local gallery, even though I think it's good enough to do so. Partly as I don't want the attention or don't want to have to try marketing myself, and also because if you put a piece up there you have to sell it.

I've thought of doing prints. I did one for my mother to buy https://fineartamerica.com/featured/crane-bird-jeremy-wells.... but it's probably not worth it for the money (not much), I didn't like the colour reproduction by those print sites, its pricey to do it with the local graphics company, and I mostly like to paint on large canvases now, which would require a photographer as they don't fit in a scanner, and that's a lot of money in one go to digitize.

I'll echo another thing others have commented - since doing this I really look at other art a lot more, think about how it was made, give it more appreciation. Or I'll be about in the world and will see something and think "that'll make a nice painting, how would I make that work?"

I just started pencil sketching again - I never managed to make anything that didn't look like it was part of a horrible nightmare before. I think it was a question of finding the right tutorials - if you look for art of wei on YouTube, his explanations click for me, and maybe they'll make sense to you too. I haven't drawn a whole face yet, but the one eye I did draw looked very convincing. you'd need to start with shading a cube, cylinder, sphere first - it's what I did first (using other tutorials, but there's a couple from wei too). you really need to understand the sphere before moving on to interesting shapes. also a keyword for getting the face right is the Loomis method.

I started learning violin about 4 years ago. I used to play saxophone, but always loved classical.

To say that the beginning was rough is an understatement. Violin (and any string instrument, really) is just difficult, plain and simple.

But daily practice, private lessons, and I’m able to play pieces that I’ve only heard recordings of. Sure, it’s not professional, but it brings me immense joy to be able to have my hands and fingers know what to do on instinct now.

Private lessons for me were the key: accountability and expertise at every step. Self-learning would have been so much slower.

The more you learn, and I’m sure it’s like this with any art, the more you realize there’s so much nuance to it and that there’s always room to improve.

Martina and Hansi from Nerdforge made a video about art at some point. She's an artist and he wanted to learn, so I believe she made the following playlist for him:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKxVMUwzoPxEyxkyyTHw_...

The video they made about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWi1pCR3peg

got decently good at it

If you want to be good, you won't do it. Because learning == endless process of doing something badly relative against adult standards. Not being able to play blues guitar as well as B.B. King don't mean you ain't got the blues.

If you want to do draw, I can give you permission. Nothing will change until you give yourself permission to draw badly. Until you give yourself permission to draw for the sake of drawing. Until permission to take your drawing seriously. Until you accept the technical flaws of your technique. Accept that your flaws are what makes your art your art. Good luck.

I began rock carving a few years ago from zero prior experience of any kind. I have been finding Native American and Paleo era rock relics in and around my house for over a decade now, I have hundreds of items and it has inspired me deeply. One day it hit me broadside that these early humans were using only what they had to survive and here I am picking up rocks carved by people many thousands of years old that look the same as the day they were lost. I have written countless lines of code over the decades and much of that is still running to this day in past founded entities however nothing I have created prior will outlast my rock carvings.

I find the carving experience like a drug. I'm "isolated" from the external senses in wearing ear protection, eye protection, and a HEPA filter breather from the silica. In my mind I am carving away in isolation to make some shape that is whatever I set out to create via my planning and selected rock target. Instead of a keyboard which I use to make computers do whatever I want I instead have hammers, chisels, and power tools to shape a rock as I see fit. Every rock I have carved will still be the same tomorrow, next year, next century, and every coming millennium.

Stay Healthy!

Yes, I started creating electronic music after my 30s. In the process of learning piano so I can compose better.

Natural talent definitely helps to save a bit of time learning but nothing beats practice, no one is naturally talented and producing good work without lots and lots of practice.

I'm close friends with visual artists (fine arts, sculptors, experimental, lights, etc.), musicians, circus artists, and a few other types; a common notion in the arts is that quantity beats quality, if you are starting and judging yourself on creating quality first you'll take much longer to achieve quality. Go for quantity, even more in the beginning, don't judge yourself by your current abilities but look at your lack of quality as guidance to what you would like to get better at.

Play, play a lot with it, if you want to draw then draw a lot of bullshit that feels fun to you, experiment, failing at achieving your vision is not failure, it's just a step towards it.

At least that's what helped me in my experience, and also a lot of the artists I know who are professionals at what they do.

Yes. I can without reservation, recommend Brent Eviston's "art and science of drawing" series. Best taken via skillshare (grab a discount code from some YouTuber if you are trying it for the first time) . I didn't take his drawing laboratory series since it hadn't been released at the time. That said, just follow his courses in order:

- Basic Skills / Getting Started with Drawing

- Dynamic Mark Making / Drawing with Expression & Creativity

- Form & Space / 3D Drawing & Perspective

- Measuring & Proportion / Drawing with Accuracy & Precision

- Contours / Drawing with Compelling Contours & Foreshortening

At this point, I recommend picking up drawabox.com as well to engage with practice a little differently. It draws from a school of thought that is present in the book "How to Draw" by Scott Robertson. That book is a little more advanced and I'd recommend it only if you are deep enough into understanding drawabox.com (PS: recommend trying but then moving on from the texturing chapter if it feels too hard to understand. It sticks out like a sore thumb because it requires understanding of light tbh. Texture doesn't just exist. We perceive most of it because of light and shadow)

Brent's work continues though while you do drawabox:

- Shading Fundamentals / Drawing with Dramatic Light and Shadow

- Shading Beyond the Basics / Shade Any Subject No Matter How Complex

Once you are done with this, it really depends on where you want to go. You should be far along in drawabox where you doing constructional drawing. This is actually a good point to see if you can also do the texture challenge.

At this point you can decide on your thing. Maybe drawing figures is your thing (Again, Brent's art and science of figure drawing is the best resource out there). Maybe only a bit. Maybe you want to paint digitally? Meds map by Ahmed Aldoori is the best resource there is. If you manage to finish that, anything from Marco Bucci on skillshare is brilliant. If you have more specific desires on physical mediums, check out proko, but also double check the courses since some of the instructors sell the courses on proko at higher prices than they do on udemy or gumroad. If you don't care for the community aspect of proko, you can buy it cheaper sometimes from elsewhere. Lastly, on anything related to animals, Aaron Blaise's creatureartteacher website is a gold mine. Wait for sales though since you can get an all access pass for a huge discount during those times.

Good luck! Feel free to mail me if you want to discuss more :)

Does paint.net count?

Also I have never learned it, but I can pencil/mouse-draw at a barely decent level^. It started with transformers 1/2 (animation, not movies). Somehow I picked on how to recreate the 3d-ness of the robots and adding shadow strokes was a no-brainer. Started as a kid, but I improved (slightly) through years with no help and no tutorials/etc. Recently got a lot of upvotes and comments in a “paint the rest” thread on a pics-and-gifs site, but that was more for the pic than for the skill.

How: I can do active 3d in my mind, some say it’s a relatively rare feature. I simply think of it and reproduce from there, no real skill required, apart from pencil holding.

^ some people whoa at it, but they just have no clue imo and never seen “decent” arts, apart from popular classics. Any artstation/etc account destroys me with the first pic.

My another “form of art” is restoration. Yesterday I took an old office chair and made new handles for it from foam rubber, poly-s and plush. Then I thought why not and re-made the seat completely, used more foam, sintepon, a sewing kit and a few screws. Now waiting for a new ball bearing that lost in an unequal battle with my butt.

Could easily buy a couple of new ones for the time I spent on it, but I like the process. All that instrument, materials, the flow. It feels like art to me. You just make something out of nothing.

Wish it brought as much money as programming, I would work all day, get rich and happy. Would do everything in my house myself. It’s so available today with all that instrument and modern tap-to-order materials.

I've been trying for a few years now, trying to get something made most days. I actually made a website to track my progress by giving me a place to upload and get a GitHub like calendar streak: https://streak.club/s/8/daily-art-club

Here's my profile with my art: https://streak.club/u/leafo Currently in a gouache phase, but I have done sketching, figure drawing, watercolor, digital painting over the years

Here's the my figure drawing: https://streak.club/u/leafo/tag/figure-drawing

I started digital painting as a way to give my wife gifts without having to spend money. I started by sending cartoony things, but had a breakthrough when I saw a CNN story about a guy who made photorealistic paintings on an iPad. They showed a time lapse video of the process and I realized that it started out as a mess and got progressively better.

“I can do that,” I thought.

This was my fifth try:

https://youtu.be/watch?v=HnhMgtO15Pk

https://youtu.be/watch?v=xcvfL0BbLD0

I did some paintings of dogs for friends, too. But in the end I felt I am not talented enough— I can do it but it takes many many hours per painting. Also I somehow don’t feel like it is art.

Relearned drawing as an adult. The critical thing I did was daily practice - about 15 min a day. There's something about daily practice, even just a little bit, that makes learning move really fast. I'm getting the same effect with daily DuoLingo.

I am relearning. I doodled a lot in school and practically stopped after graduating high school. A few years ago I met someone who sketches and it made me feel bad for giving up on that hobby.

It’s also when I heard about a book called the art of noticing. The book isn’t worth it but the term stuck. Sketching makes you stop and notice what you are sketching. Making art makes you stop and notice other artists and their techniques. It made museums come to life for me.

I filled a notebook or two, then got myself an iPad with Procreate and Notability. The undo button is nice. I made a few hundred drawings since 2019.

Art has the benefit of being very cheap. Just a decent pencil or pen is enough. You can take classes, learn online, practice a lot or just stumble forward. There is no wrong approach.

I learned Blender 3D from watching Blender Guru (Andrew Price) tutorials on YouTube and then playin' around with what I had learned until I got decent at it. Also got lots of good inspiration from SketchFab (other much more talented 3D artists than I).

as an engineer, Drawing Ideas: a hand-generated approach for better design has changed my life. My girlfriend is an artist but I never tried drawing until this book caught my eye on the shelf of a book store. I love having some basic sketching skills to help make my thoughts come to life. When I write blog posts, I try to throw in a sketch or two now.

http://www.drawingideasbook.com/book.html https://breadchris.com/blog/the-figma-plugin-system/

My grandmother learned it at 70. Just keep drawing things and remember that drawing is as much about being able to see things as they present themselves as it is about being able to draw lines where you want to draw it.

You have a model of all things you want to draw in your head, e.g. you know how many fingers are one one hand, how the thumb goes into another direction — these models can distract you from drawing what is really seen from a certain perspective.

So my advice is to just draw regularily. Don't hessitate to do things in isolation, e.g. as a designer I had to draw straight lines for half a year. That is boring as fuck, but afterwards you have much more control.

Painting wargaming and TTRPG minis. I guess I've been at it about a decade now. Mine aren't quite as good as my more experienced and obsessive friends', but I've got my own style, they look good enough, and most importantly, I enjoy it.

Lots of people here recommending regular practice, but I'm a binger. Nothing puts me off something than it feeling like work.

I'll obsessively work on a project for a week or so, get somewhere nice with it, then forget about the whole thing for months.

The satisfaction comes from seeing the most recent thing being better than the last. Gives tricky plateaus, which I've worked around by changing style and medium.

Ditch teachers and learning. Draw whatever interests you: tits, cocks, trucks, old boomboxes, celebrities. Don't focus on creating but use drawing as a method for you to see better and looking at things more carefully. If you develop as an artist, that will be a bonus, and you'll develop into an artist of your own kind. No need to force or motivate yourself into learning. And if you lose interest, just change a subject. Don't treat art as a discipline.

Try to draw the same thing more than once. For example next day without seeing your older work. You'll be amazed of how your drawings get better and better.

Not me but my mother. I don't recall her making any art when I was younger (although she is an amazing cook which is a type of art). However, over the last 10 years or so she's taken several courses and workshops in a wide range of art, painting, sculpture, sign writing and more. I guess she started around age 65, and the courses are a great source of social interactions for her. She is especially taken by mandalas and has drawn and painted some very beautiful ones. Her house and garden has a nice selection of her work.

Yes, but bit of a tangent to what you’re expecting.

I’m taking up graphics programming as my form of art. So the screen is my canvas. I love cold hard logic, mathematics, as my form of creating art. I like the order. I’m kind of like Sauron in that regard.

I’ve just started this journey, but it’s a natural one as I’m already a developer. Deep diving C to play around with bare metal graphics processes.

I want to make procedural art, shader art, voxel art. I think there is an amazing creativity that can be drawn from mathematics

I started learning pottery at 43. Four years later I'm decent at it. It's all about practice. I do two hours of classes and two hours of practice each week.

Some people in my class started learning after me but put in many more hours of practice, and are a lot better than I am (and also started as adults in their 30s and 40s).

I also started doing drawing classes with my daughter during the pandemic. I'm not very good at it because I only did it once a week for an hour, but I got better!

It's really just all about practice.

I started doing "art" about 4 years ago. Don't think about it as learning to do art, just do it as much as possible and don't get attached to the individual pieces. Realize that art has absolutely no rules, make use of that inherent freedom. Try out different mediums, create your own "style". Post your art, it can help you improve and track your progress.

Poetry, although I wouldn't say that I started with no natural talent. I was already a good writer.

I've been doing it seriously for twelve years now. Three years ago I finally took my writing to a professional critiquing site to refine the skill. Now I'm pretty much where poets hope to get to.

I've produced three books, one public.

I'm a musician. I studied film and photography in college. I started learning how to digitally design in the early 1990s (yes I am old), and made a short career of it for the first 15 years or so until recently. I still do some of it here and there, mostly for fun.

Yeah, I was a kid who was always told I was no good at drawing, that I should focus on stuff I'm good at

In my early 30s I sat down with a sketchbook and a mechanical pencil and watched YouTube videos on figure drawing, practiced a bunch and I'm actually decent at it now.

I wanted to be able to draw and design characters. I can draw figures and gestures decently now but I'm really stuck learning the stuff like hair, eyes, faces in general, clothes, costumes, props like weapons... It's a lot of stuff

But I can draw nude faceless figures, even hands and feet, decently

I think its really a matter of practice and study

I mentioned it above, I think art of wei on YouTube is really good, even though I haven't gotten very far yet. maybe you'll find him useful.

I'm working on some other skills aside from drawing at the moment but I'll check this channel out. Thanks!

It's never too late to learn how to paint.

Remember, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.

IMHO, one of the most useful free resource to begin and improve your art is Drawabox[1]. (Its lessons teach much more than just drawing a box.)

[1] https://drawabox.com/

Define "adult". I got my undergrad degree in Fine Arts, walking in at 18 with very little in the way of skills, but learning along the way. 4 years of classes and practice can do wonders for just about any skill set.

I practice drawing and sketching often. I haven't really formally trained, but just by practicing daily for years it has helped refine my skills. Same with photography and video.

I learned painting and guitar to an intermediate level in my 40s, after never taking art or music listens since junior high.

Everyone can get up to 80th percentile in pretty much everything if they try. The reason it's the 80th percentile isn't because it's that hard, but because most people aren't focusing on this one niche skill, whatever it is you choose to develop.

Drop $20 or $50 on a lesson once a week in something that interests you, and see where you are in a year from now. I bet people will be saying, "hey, that's not bad!" Or just teach yourself from youtube videos.

It only takes two steps to get from zero to "not bad": show some courage, and then show some commitment.

Related question from a few years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26360349

HN-famous Zed Shaw has been learning to paint in public for years now. Before that it was music. Just Google his name and look for anything recent.

Ordered art tablet. Made anime style art on weekend once a week. That was surprisingly enough to become okay at it, minus properly learning anatomy.

one example:

"Steve Jobs on Taking a Calligraphy Class"

https://www.leemunroe.com/steve-jobs-calligraphy/

I learnt to draw long ago but I started dancing at the age of 45 and got decent. It helped a lot that I'd learnt a few things about how to learn:

* give yourself permission to suck, you don't know a goddamn thing yet and you know this

* if you notice that you're terrible at doing some part of the work, don't keep making excuses to avoid it - dive into it, embrace the suck, watch closely to see what you're doing wrong and try to not make the same mistake the next time

* keep doing it, find a way to make it a regular thing

specific to drawing:

* you have a few major tasks: install a simple 3d renderer on your brain, learn to break things you see down into simple shapes and build them back up on the paper, and learn to move your body so as to control your favorite mark-making device (pen, brush, stylus, sponge, spray can, etc)

* the first two tasks carry over to any medium but the last one may not - I've been experimenting with paint lately (after 25y of working in Illustrator) and I have absolutely no real idea of how to efficiently use brushes and other objects to put paint where I want it, so right now I have a few canvases that I'm much more concerned with experimenting with different ways to make marks on then I am concerned with making a nice image on. that said, pencil/pen on paper is a great medium to start with, it's easy to get a decent array of marks out of them without much practice, plus you can easily carry it around in your bag and take it out wherever you go with very little hassle

* study masters, think about what they're doing, copy/work over their stuff - trying to make your hand move the same way as someone much more skilled than you is very powerful, if you know enough to make some guesses about how they made the marks you can see. "How would [master artist you love] handle this image?" is a great question to be able to ask yourself when you're stuck on something.

I hear drawabox is pretty good for the "install a simple 3d renderer and some basic models on your brain" part of this task list. Me, I mostly learnt from the Preston Blair book on Animation, Bridgman's Constructive Anatomy, Loomis' Figure Drawing for All It's Worth, and a life drawing class with a teacher who was largely following Glenn Vilppu's Drawing Manual. That last took me from "you seriously want us to start with 10-20 second poses to start each class?" to "noting down enough of a pose in 10s to turn it into a full drawing later is a blast".

also, take care about ergonomics, you can fuck your wrist up badly, learn to "draw from your arm" instead of "drawing from your wrist", once you do it will let you draw faster and larger, and it will help you keep the Carpal Tunnel Fairy away from your wrist.

I think you've hinted at it, but years ago I was interested in learning how to draw and was given the advice of drawing poses on a timer (I think it was 120s but the goal is to eventually get it down to 30s or less).

There were websites back then which would automatically flip to the next pose once the timer ran out, you'd have to start a new page and sketch it out again.

If you do this for even 10-15 minutes a day every day, you eventually start to see an improvement on your ability to draw poses (starting with picking up on which lines are the most important to convey a silhouette, eventually moving into things like muscles, bone structure, etc.). You can even refer back to your earlier drawings to see the progression.

I never got any good because I didn't stick with it, but I did get a lot better than how I was when I started.

These sites still exist, this is how I started: https://line-of-action.com//

Yes, when I was taking life drawing classes in animation school, every class opened with about 15 minutes of 10-60sec poses, followed by some longer poses, as well as chunks of lecture from the teacher on how various body parts are put together and how to think about that on the page. Those short poses seemed impossible at first but very quickly became pretty good.

Later on a regular exercise at one of the studios I worked at was "cartoon life drawing", we'd pause a video tape on a good frame from an old WB cartoon, and draw. There was a built-in timer since the VCR would only hold a single frame for so long before saying "okay we're playing again now".

Passion, focus.... Just like tech.

Atleast for drawing/painting/etc, there is no natural talent - you work your ass off practicing, and that's about it. You don't need talent, genetics or money. You don't need art school or classes. The biggest issues beginners have is thinking they lack talent, thinking there's some secret tricks/hacks of how to get better, thinking they need expensive materials/tools. You just need practice.

Here is some advice:

1. "We all have 10,000 bad drawings in us. The sooner we get them out the better." You'll make some ugly, terrible drawings, even if you put in your 100% best effort, that you just look at and feel terrible and want to give up and quit. It's very important you know you aren't lacking talent, that's what everyone goes through. You're making improvements even if you don't know it. Eventually, you'll make something that makes you go "wow.. this actually looks good", and that will happen more and more often until its just normal.

2. Art skills transfer hugely between mediums, so don't stress about picking digital art or painting or drawing/etc. Your effort in learning one is also making you better at the others. Switch between them, try different ones, focus on only 1, whatever you feel like.

3. Everyone is different. You may have a different preference or style of what you enjoy, do what works for you.

4. Follow some artists you like on twitter/artstation/youtube, look at their art, if you want to make art like them: try to copy it, if they show their process try to copy that.

5. You don't need to "Draw every day" or "do 1 hour of study/drawing boxes every week", if that style suits you and you enjoy it great. But it is not needed, and you don't need to do it. Draw whenever you feel like it.

6. There are no rules. Use what you want, draw what you want, mix mediums, you don't have to do things like studying old masters or drawing 100 boxes.

7. My biggest biggest advice is: there is no secret or missing ingredient, just keep practicing - and secondly, draw what excites you or what you enjoy.

Here's some random youtube channels: Charcoal: https://www.youtube.com/@MadCharcoal/videos

Gouache: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K6snXJg_aU

Digital art: AhmedAldoori sinixdesign Lighting Mentor

Oil Painting: https://www.youtube.com/@paintcoach https://www.youtube.com/@FlorentFargesarts https://www.youtube.com/@DrawMixPaint

Acrylics: https://www.youtube.com/@JansenArtEducation/videos

The grand wizard of figure/gesture drawing, Glenn Vilppu (search on youtube)

Steve Huston

I personally don't like paid courses (such as NMA), as they are often obnoxiously long and drawn out, and there's no magical secrets hidden in them. Generally you can find all the same instruction on youtube, just not as structured or organized. However, if you can stick to a long course and do it diligently, it's worth trying.

Richard Feynman did so.

Started drawing for the first time about 5 years ago in an effort to realistically draw what I see IRL and in my imagination/dreams. Here’s how I would go about learning this skill today:

- drawabox.com provides a foundational theoretical and methodological framework that’s free and effective. Exercise and task focus leads to right-brain acceptance and left-brain results.

- Knowledge of basic perspective is key as the human mind is unwilling to accept the “illusion” of 3D on a 2D sheet of paper without accuracy and making concrete decisions and sticking to them.

- Some shapes are easier than others to master. Humans, autos, animals, robotics, architecture are fun to imagine drawing but hard to accomplish because of perspective symmetry and familiarity. I found that drawing leafs, trash, rocks and miscellaneous shapes that didn’t matter to me lead to improvements.

- The time I spent observing the world was just as valuable as putting marks down on the page. Things in life do not appear as I thought.

- Understanding relative proportions of shapes was critical, and for a long time I was constantly measuring with my fingers or a pencil (vertical to my eye-line). The moon, trees vs people, heads and hands surprised me in how far my instincts were from reality. For years I was always measuring.

- I always made time to draw what stopped me in my tracks. Whether a radio tower or a room I enjoyed, taking these 15 minutes to sketch in person helped keep me sharp and focused even when drawing was a bit awkward due to time constraints or positioning.

- I found that carrying a small notebook and pen at all times meant the difference between drawing every day or not.

- I learned to stop caring what my drawings looked like. In almost all cases, there was at least one part of a drawing that didn’t suck…sometimes these were indicators of future interest.

- When I wanted to draw what was in my mind, I found looking at Blender or other 3D software was helpful. Starting with the horizon and camera aperture, then placing what I wanted helped with offline drawing.

- Light, shadow, and color are important and beautiful but I feel are easier to understand when simple line is mastered. Ornamental to the outcome.

- Now I can pretty much draw what I want from my imagination or real life. This is the result of focus and answering a stack of questions about how the world works.

- Unexpected upside came by just not stopping drawing. A lot of drawing is connected to math and physics. I’ve met wonderful people who stopped to ask me what I was doing (much nicer with experience…), I understand the world around me better - I can see how there are really only a few key shapes that reality spreads across my vision.

Talent is truly a myth. Dedication is real.

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