Bob Ross videos on youtube
Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
161–166 of 166 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
#162I 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…
Yes, art is a lot about trial & error to find one’s way. Because the goal is not to achieve something but finding one’s own expressions. That why artists do a lot of copies to master basic techniques but they don’t stop there yet must go further. Otherwise, it’s just craft.
Of course, the situation is completely different if one merely wants to paint well or be able to produce some nice copies.
Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
This advice reminds me of an anecdote from Art and Fear [1]. A ceramics teacher divided his classes into two groups. One group he told would be judged only based on the quality of the best pot they made, the other group would be graded based only on the number of pots they made. After the two classes had finished, the teacher noticed that all of the highest qualities works came from the class that was aiming only for…
If you follow the citation trail for that you end up with nothing, no individual who says they did that and had those results. The same anecdote shows up in the War of Art.
I made 1000+ melodies without regard for quality, and now quality melodies are effortless. There you go.
How it works: I create good bits in every one by accident, then use those bits on purpose going forward. Quantity leads to discovery.
Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
#164Figuring drawing is a great first step to loosen up, relax, and practice seeing and abstraction. There's probably a class nearby.
Photography, especially digital, is a great way to explore composition and narrative.
And a key bit of advice - take a class in oil painting first. Acrylic and water color seem simpler, but are less forgiving of mistakes. Dedicate a studio space / corner to practice painting.
Art is like exercise - pick what you enjoy doing and will keep doing over what someone else says to do.
Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all subjective in that most people who want to draw or paint, likely have completely different ideas of what being good at that is. "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 dr…
>"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. I really don't agree with this sentiment mostly due to the way it is voiced. Yes, the core of "drawing on the right side of the brain" is learning to see objectively and draw what you see. I wouldn't call that a "brain hack" or say that is "essentially tracing" what's in front of…
Agreed. I'm a pretty solid artist who doesn't learn well from others, and I'll still praise the book. It had another lesson in it that I never see mentioned, one that was expanded on in Drawing on the Artist Within. Our mind has task managers that constantly assess what we're doing. They do scheduling, handle cost benefit analysis, etc. For someone who doesn't already have the right aptitudes, this can lead to a nagging voice in the back of your mind telling you that you aren't doing a good job, this is boring, you're wasting your time. Getting people to use some simple brain hacks to stop listening to their preconceptions and just draw what they see can bypass these issues long enough for some people to see that they're being their own worst enemy. It isn't a good book to teach you how to draw. It's there to help make sure you don't give up the moment you start.
Re: Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint?
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you follow the citation trail for that you end up with nothing, no individual who says they did that and had those results. The same anecdote shows up in the War of Art.
I made 1000+ melodies without regard for quality, and now quality melodies are effortless. There you go. How it works: I create good bits in every one by accident, then use those bits on purpose going forward. Quantity leads to discovery.
The same is true with photography. Take tonnes of photos, and some will be great. You begin to take on board what makes some photos better than others. It seems to raise the quality of all the photos. We're basically talking about focused practice, but applied to aesthetics.