Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

My wife has been hobby painting for the last few years! Like others have said the foremost thing that will help you improve is to enjoy the painting experience. We have so much art lying around our apartment that soon we will run out of space.

During her early days she would paint 1,2 paintings over the weekend, and with time the sophistication grew and she started exploring newer techniques, and at this stage some of her paintings take a week or 2 to complete. Some of her colleagues and friends have shown keen interest in buying her artwork so that tells you she`s getting good at it.

Shameless plug: https://instagram.com/swethareddyart

There are a lot of other artists on IG who share their work and techniques some even goto the length of making videos explaining the techniques.

Side note: looking for tips on best ways to take a picture of the artwork and get prints? Anyone have experience doing this.

> The only way to get better is by painting... you'll have to paint a lot

As with any creative skill, especially the ones that involve fine motoric skills, one cannot skip the practice. The advice I once read about learning how to draw applies in some way to all of them:

"Every artist has at least a thousand bad drawings in them. It is best to get these out as quickly as possible."

I would basically ignore any textbooks or "tutorials" and just start with drawing first, which has the advantage that you can ignore colors. When I was 19, I learned how to draw over the course of 3 years, by using standard printer paper, a pencil and photographs to copy. It was incredibly frustrating during the first few days, but you will get better very quickly. After a few weeks, you will realize that your perception of an image (and your idea of drawing) will change completely. You will see an image in 3 dimensions, and you will quickly learn how you can add "depth" to an image. It's difficult to describe, but basically it will suddenly feel like your pencil is "diving into" the picture you are drawing, as opposed to just scratching on the paper surface.

Something I did not expect was that the other major thing you learn during the first few weeks is not how to draw, but how to fix mistakes you made. This was an important realization for me, because it extends to many other professions as well.

After you have copied a few images, you will realize the shortcomings of your tools (paper, pencil, eraser) and you will start to look for other pencil types or better quality paper. All of this will come naturally after a while, you don't need textbooks for that, and you can apply this type of learning to many other skills afterwards, because you will have developed an immunity against these frustrating, frustrating first days.

Obviously I don’t have data to back up my claims but I explain what’s wrong with shape-copying way of drawing.

Then, I go on to explain the litmus test for evaluating whether one has internalized the “3D” aspect of the object they are trying to draw. If someone can draw from a reference but can’t draw the same thing from a different angle - that means they’ve learned to draw based on that book that I linked.

Contrarily, you haven’t put forth a valid criticism of my post except highlighted that it’s a “hot take”. I am happy and willing to engage in a debate without calling/judging.

Anecdote: the biggest thing I am learning now is just how much professional painters allow themselves to completely change their minds in the middle of doing a piece. I never thought this before, I thought everybody just knocked things out once they became proficient (and yeah, that can be true but not always), more often when I watch a video of an entire painting session they can decide to completely move things around, change the background, the mood, etc, and they are using physical paint, not photoshop.

Also in drawing, there is MUCH more erasing going on than I ever thought. It's true that some artists just work straight ahead, but I have never allowed myself to rethink things if I don't like where it's going. I make the mistake of abandoning works that I think are not going right, instead of fixing things which is a very, very valuable skill to develop.

Watercolors are pretty unforgiving in my experience as a beginner because they are transparent, and you have to be careful and plan things out in advance. I think there is a lot of technique to master there if you are learning on your own.

So you would want opaque colors, and you can get that with gouache + watercolor but more likely you may like acrylics.

Color theory is important. Take time to work make your own tests and color tables as you get used to a selection of colors.

I would add that watching videos of how different people work has changed how I view my own process. There are a lot of different ways to work and some may resonate with you.