Michelangelo’s Handwritten 16th-Century Grocery List

>I strongly suspect it will be a very uphill battle for the way my brain "naturally" works.

What we have been trying to explain is that this belief is incorrect. Everyone likes to pretend that the ability to draw is some sort of mystical power bestowed upon artists while they were still in the womb. HN in particular should understand how silly this is, because non-technical people generally think the same thing about programming and general computer skills.

Learning to draw is largely the same experience for everyone. If you don't think that this process is worth the effort, then you don't really want to be able to draw, as you originally claimed.

There used to be a threat in an art forum where a member joined, barely able to draw a stick-figure. He kept uploading his work and getting feedback, and eventually, he opened his own art school.

There's one key piece of advice in that book, and it's simply draw what you see, not what you know. I consider myself devoid of any drawing talent, and yet I could produce pretty decent copies with relatively little practice. Also, if you take it as a hobby, rather than thinking about it in terms of RoI, it might work out better. Good luck, in any case.

Find a bird book that uses drawings, not photos.

Find a reasonably sized drawing of a relatively "simple" bird (not too patterned, e.g.).

Copy the drawing, a little at a time.

I couldn't believe how well that worked first time I tried it.

(Don't use "scientific" drawings, they tend to be too complicated. You want something simple yet recognizably complex, challenging but feasible.)

Okay.

Wow. Yours looks a lot better than mine did.

It's like magic, really - I wouldn't have believed it had I not seen it for myself.

that exercise is the "aha" moment.

What he meant was that anyone with a sufficiently functional hand as a drawing potential at least equal to that of a "professional". That's not saying that everyone has the same drawing potential since "professional" isn't the limit of drawing skill.

And its very likely that learning to draw at a young age is if not orders of magnitudes, then significantly more effective than as an adult simply though greater brain plasticity, and probably having less inhibition.

I didn't say that everyone would progress in a manner that's perfectly equal in every aspect, but I do believe that everyone can learn to draw just as well as professional artists do.

History might not regard you as Michelangelo's equal, but there are quite a few amateurs that (technically speaking) draw just as well as he did.