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Comment by lutusp | Hacker News Reader

One can't fault a simple pencil and pad of paper, but I think if technologists become interested in drawing (which seems both likely and desirable), over time there will be more ways to do this with a tablet and stencil, with all the advantages. For me personally, notorious for moving lines around in my drawings, that would be very nice -- one would be able to delete lines that didn't work out.

I've always envied people who are actually gifted draftspeople -- people who lay down the exact right line on the first try, and whose drawings are paragons of minimalism. R. Crumb, for example -- there's a video showing him drawing with a pen and never laying down a bad line. Whenever I watch that video, I have an envy meltdown.

My point? With a tablet and stencil, by being able to delete things, I could pretend to have actual drawing talent. :)

One of my old drawings: http://i.imgur.com/hRQY84G.jpg

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I think the trick is that they are using the Bob Ross method. They don't make mistakes, they make happy accidents.

There's this program for rapid sketching called alchemy http://al.chemy.org/features/ it specifically has no undo button, for that reason.

It's pretty fun to screw around with.

I disagree that there's a trick to it. Laying down a line with precision and exactly in the way that you planned is a skill. When you watch an architect or draftsman draw a line, they've drawn that same line thousands of times before.

Being a good draftsman is like being a good painter; it's all in the prep. There's a lot of work that goes into getting things setup and guides in place before the first real line hits the paper.

If you watch someone that's really good with a CAD program you'll see they do more work with things that don't end up on the final drawing than they do on the actually drawing.

> They don't make mistakes, they make happy accidents.

heh. partially that. but there's also:

    - tricks how to cover up an accident
    - recognizing an accident early so it's less to cover up
    - and finally of course, can't deny skill and control

The last one is why I never liked doing pencil sketches and then inking my cartoons. I always used a marker or ballpoint pen right away purposefully because I wanted to learn the skill and control to get the lines right, the first time.

While I probably did learn skill and control that way, I also very much learned about "happy accidents", cover-ups and recognizing an accident early or before it happens :)

Mind you, this was me as a stubborn teen, drawing during boring school classes. Maybe learning techniques for adults are different.

I really like Leonardo Da Vinci's more minimalistic sketches for this. He has that ability of laying down the exact right line on the first try. I love Da Vinci's anatomy sketches, where you can tell they were done for study and he did them without a lot of editing or touch-ups, and they show his intense curiosity for how things work.

http://www.drawingsofleonardo.org/images/shoulderandneck3.jp...

That drawing is realistic yet creepy. I like it. The shading is perfect, yet incomplete. Sort of an uncanny valley type thing, gives you a sense of unease.

That's probably because at that time (more than 30 years ago) I was trying for photorealism, and I perhaps shouldn't have been -- I didn't have the skill. As a result, my drawings from that time all have that somewhat spooky aura.

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