Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

My first piece of advice might seem a little bleh: Just start! Really. Grab some premade canvases from wal-mart or Amazon (nothing super pricey or massive), and a starter set of both acrylic and oil paints. I say both, because both of them work very differently from each other. Acrylic dries much faster, and water washes it right off, but (in my personal experience) oil paint is much better for colors and mixing them up and doing all sorts of crazy neat things.

Learning to draw first is nice, yes, but it isn't exactly necessary. I started drawing and moved to painting, but I've met other artists who started with painting and went to drawing with graphite. Art is fluid and unique to each individual, and no one does anything the same way.

Just starting out, don't try to imagine a massive, amazing piece your first time. It'll just bum you out. Start off with simple things, like painting a vase, or some scattered objects around your house. You aren't trying to impress anyone yet, so just do simple things to learn how the paint works, how it reacts to different strokes and different brushes. With acrylic, add a touch of water to thin it out and let other colors bleed through. Add a little linseed oil to oil paints to make them thinner and easier to blend.

there's all sorts of videos and courses you could take, but honestly, I've never really looked into any of that. They help, yes, but painting is a very personal, emotional thing. In time, you'll find what you like, what you don't like, how you like to hold brushes and use them, etc. There's no right or wrong way to do it. It all sorta boils down to what works for /you/.

Though, I do recommend this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNB3XY67Q-I

The guy is a little boring, but he teaches you how to make ANY color with oil paints. This was a huge thing for me when I was learning.

If I can help any more, you can find me around the net by searching my art name, doublePopsicle, and toss me a message wherever! (I draw NSFW furtrash stuff, just an FYI)

Honestly, while your comment probably isn't entirely wrong, I'd hesitate to say that painting is the kind of activity where a pre-requisite is learning to draw.

The concept of painting is bringing your vision to life on media. Whether that's a scene with obvious shapes or not. There are plenty of art pieces where drawing or knowing how to draw before creating the painting would've been unnecessary.

"Drawing from the right side of the brain" is basically just a brain hack to allow a person to essentially trace what is in front of them. To some people that might be the goal. To make a reasonably accurate copy of what is in front of them. For others they may want to be able to draw an accurate picture of something from their head. Others may want to create wild stylistic abstractions. The original post referenced impressionism. In that case a more informed knowledge of color and composition might be more helpful.

Personally, as someone who has spent my entire life drawing(and a chunk of it painting) I cringe at that advice to learn from that book. I have read it and it will definitely help someone to render and accurate version of a photograph or object in front of them. But it really boils down to a shortcut as opposed to fundamental learning. Its like teaching math with just a series of steps to get the answer without teaching the underlying fundamentals of what is happening. In the short term you'll test well, but in the long term your growth will be stunted if you do not also learn the concepts involved.

Hope that is a bit more clarification. And with all that said, for some people that book might be wonderful. I do think it is well written and I did enjoy it and I imagine others will as well. Its a fun read and set of exercises. Just wanted to give you a bit more perspective on the opinions presented.

With that said, the general advice given in what you are replying to is way over the top. No one needs to spend 6 months drawing cones in space. That smells like your typical exaggerated internet advice that tends to prevent people from taking the first steps.

1. Being able to draw/paint from life. Still life objects are easily accessible without paying for a human model.

2. More importantly, household objects can easily be broken down into primitive shapes. Cups, Cans, Pots, Apples, etc..

3. It teaches you about illumination, finding values by "Squinting" and finding edge quality (soft, hard, lost, etc.)

Furthermore, the classical masters practiced "Chiascuro", i.e. high contrast and wide dynamic range light conditions that can be simulated indoors with still life. The reason why drawing is prerequisite for painting is that the act of application of paint depends on local values where your brush stroke is being applied to. In order to find the value of the color, you need to know the form. In order to know the form and how it is illuminated, you need to "internalize" the 3D aspect of the object. Therefore, always, drawing is 80% of the work in painting (80% to make a point, obviously, I don't know exact percentage).