Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

IMHO I would say start simple and work your way up. Begin with doodling and then progress to more careful drawing. It's often easier to copy another artist's work or to draw from a photograph. One advantage is you can draw lines over your reference imagine and make measurements. From there you can practice shading and get a sense of tone. Don't try to cheat by smudging with your finger. It may sound stupid but make sure you have a full set of pencils as you'll probably want to go darker that you can with a regular pencil. Once you're somewhat happy with that I would then move onto acrylic paints. You can draw out the image as before with measuring and then use that pencil drawing as a guide to paint over the top. Be careful when using black paint. It may just be the paint I used but attempting to make darker shades by mixing black would just give black. Once you're happy with acrylic paints I would then move to oil paints. Oil paints take longer to dry than acrylic paints which can throw you off. One of the great things about paint is if you make a mistake, you can simply paint over it :-) (though with oils you may need to be a little more patient). You may want to take what I've said with a pinch of salt as I've not painted in years and I'm out of practice with drawing. I still make collage-type images in Gimp though :-)

Just do it. Your errors will be your best teacher.

This is a pretty strong opinion, and not necessarily correct.

>"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook" [1]. This is a completely wrong way to learn how to draw

Do you have a source for this? This book has been recommended by a good majority of the drawing/painting professors I had (at a fine arts school). The entire basis of the book is "learn to draw by learning to see".

>Do this everyday for 6 months and you will pickup how to think in "3D" so to speak.

This isn't bad advice, but not doesn't correlate directly with learning to draw/paint from observation. This is a helpful exercise if you are looking to go more of an illustrative/modeling route. If OP is looking to draw from imagination completely, this would be helpful - but I would still argue that practicing from observation would build a better visual vocabulary than practicing basic shapes only.

>But fundamental drawing skills are __critical__ in order to paint well.

true

>All bets are off if you're trying to do abstract art or non-representational art.

Demonstrably false. Every single one of the abstract/non-representational masters have an extremely good grasp of "traditional" (i.e. observational) skills. Even Pollock knew how to draw from life.

To OP - I would recommend starting by drawing AND painting from life at the same time. There's no real reason to master drawing before attempting to paint, as painting is essentially drawing with color. That being said, drawing is a great way to force you do as much as you can with a very limited tool box (line, shape, texture, value, space (composition)).

Also - don't take anyone's advice as an absolute. There are thousands and thousands of ways to progress as an artist and not a single one of them is "correct". The only constant is to be persistent and self-critical.

Art degree here, and fairly decent at it. I'd suggest that you learn to draw first. Having a good handle on rendering form and value (dark and light) are a necessary foundation for painting. You can start with painting but you're going to have to build that foundation while also learning a bunch of things particular to paint. If you want to try drawing first, Youtube is such an awesome resource.

I would highly recommend watching the old episodes of Bob Ross.

His goal was to teach you how to paint.