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Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#91

Post by ams6110 »

morley wrote: post #65
kingkawn wrote: post #59

I will tell you what I tell my students; To learn to make art you spend time working with the materials. That is it. When the urge arises to judge the quality of your work, it will be tempting to say this is good or this is bad. Take that energy that you might put into assessing the aesthetic and put it back into the materials instead. Persist and grow. Avoid aesthetic judgements, and instead produce work. Inevitably…

Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way? Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never get any _aesthetic_ feedback on my work. In grade school, my grammar and spelling would get corrected, but otherwise, what I wrote was what I wrote. It wasn't until I took a sitcom-writing course in college that a teacher gave me feedback that would make my writing better: "this…

I don't think writing and painting can be compared. Writing has some elements of art, but it also has a lot of rules that come from the language. Painting is much more free-form.

Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#92

Post by massivecali »

morley wrote: post #65
kingkawn wrote: post #59

I will tell you what I tell my students; To learn to make art you spend time working with the materials. That is it. When the urge arises to judge the quality of your work, it will be tempting to say this is good or this is bad. Take that energy that you might put into assessing the aesthetic and put it back into the materials instead. Persist and grow. Avoid aesthetic judgements, and instead produce work. Inevitably…

Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way? Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never get any _aesthetic_ feedback on my work. In grade school, my grammar and spelling would get corrected, but otherwise, what I wrote was what I wrote. It wasn't until I took a sitcom-writing course in college that a teacher gave me feedback that would make my writing better: "this…

The problem with aesthetic guidance is it invariably leads to creation of 'product' over 'art'. Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make it art.

Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#93

Post by superpermutat0r »

kingkawn wrote: post #59

I will tell you what I tell my students; To learn to make art you spend time working with the materials. That is it. When the urge arises to judge the quality of your work, it will be tempting to say this is good or this is bad. Take that energy that you might put into assessing the aesthetic and put it back into the materials instead. Persist and grow. Avoid aesthetic judgements, and instead produce work. Inevitably…

This sounds like a very bottom up approach to painting. It requires tons of trial and error and time. The result is that only the most persistent learn how to paint well.

If I were to try learning competitive programming, I'd much rather work through known algorithms and practice my problem solving, instead of trying to reinvent everything from sorting to iterative deepening search to number theoretic algorithms.

I'd much rather learn tools and solve problems (in painting) than just trial and error through it, hoping that I have the aptitude to really methodically sift through my mistakes and find the right approach to painting.

Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#97

Post by pbhjpbhj »

morley wrote: post #65
kingkawn wrote: post #59

I will tell you what I tell my students; To learn to make art you spend time working with the materials. That is it. When the urge arises to judge the quality of your work, it will be tempting to say this is good or this is bad. Take that energy that you might put into assessing the aesthetic and put it back into the materials instead. Persist and grow. Avoid aesthetic judgements, and instead produce work. Inevitably…

Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way? Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never get any _aesthetic_ feedback on my work. In grade school, my grammar and spelling would get corrected, but otherwise, what I wrote was what I wrote. It wasn't until I took a sitcom-writing course in college that a teacher gave me feedback that would make my writing better: "this…

Compulsory education is not for that. They're not there to change your aesthetic, if they did then we'd lose a lot of good art IMO: people developing their own aesthetic are often considered to be "no good" because they disobey the conventions. When you've learnt all the tools, and different normative styles, read a reasonable body of work in different genre, that's when to develop your own style. Which corresponds with University/school leaving largely.

The sitcom course is almost certainly designed to help you write in a narrowly designed style that is commercially useful. But a sitcom that breaks many of the norms could do really well .. you're not going to learn to write opposing the established styles on a course like that, are you.

Writing crap is part of the journey.

Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#98

Post by lbotos »

two ideas:

- Take an instructor lead figure drawing class. This will teach you to see "line" which is the primary foundation of "form". I suggest this route because any class worth it's salt will give you tasks: 5 min pose/ 10 min pose/ 1 hr pose these will challenge you to think in different ways and get the skill of line down vs. working on aesthetics.

- As you start to master line, you then want to explore the "absence" of that, which is what impressionism is; "color as form." How do you take the essence of what you see, and capture that as color.

Impressionist art is a reaction to line, and if you start there (like a lot of them did) you may have better luck.

Have fun!

Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#99

Post by pbhjpbhj »

massivecali wrote: post #92
morley wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way? Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never get any _aesthetic_ feedback on my work. In grade school, my grammar and spelling would get corrected, but otherwise, what I wrote was what I wrote. It wasn't until I took a sitcom-writing course in college that a teacher gave me feedback that would make my writing better: "this…

The problem with aesthetic guidance is it invariably leads to creation of 'product' over 'art'. Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make it art.

>Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make it art. //

How to start a fight at an art school!

Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?

#100

Post by kingkawn »

superpermutat0r wrote: post #93
kingkawn wrote: post #59

I will tell you what I tell my students; To learn to make art you spend time working with the materials. That is it. When the urge arises to judge the quality of your work, it will be tempting to say this is good or this is bad. Take that energy that you might put into assessing the aesthetic and put it back into the materials instead. Persist and grow. Avoid aesthetic judgements, and instead produce work. Inevitably…

This sounds like a very bottom up approach to painting. It requires tons of trial and error and time. The result is that only the most persistent learn how to paint well. If I were to try learning competitive programming, I'd much rather work through known algorithms and practice my problem solving, instead of trying to reinvent everything from sorting to iterative deepening search to number theoretic algorithms. I'd…

Tools too early in the process can seize control of the imagination.

I agree completely; there is room for technique.

But I prefer to let the student find where that room is by discovering something about themselves first, rather than vague promises of freedom that comes after satisfying arbitrary minimums.

My preference as a teacher. A good student knows to overthrow my worldview when the time is right.

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