How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#101

Post by Treegarden » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:24 AM UTC

mushishi wrote: post #95

Treegarden wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality the problem is more complicated and the issue is that the current media of teaching via worksheets and teachers is lacking and insufficient, which renders this debate obsolete. What you have is different parts, learning new stuff, practicing it, but also spaced repetition. Those need to be in balance with each other but also rely on cognitive overload, tiredness and motivation (among others) of the learner…

Cool idea, my first impression is that there should be some kind of mini-arcs or long phrases that make the content more digestible. What I mean is that now the speaker goes on and on, and the subtitles are abruptly changed to another set of words. As a learner, I would like to have better sense when the words will disappear. I noticed it's arbitrary Youtube content so it's hard.. A simple testable solution for arbit…

Appreciate the feedback! My biggest challenge is to polish features. I have taken out a few features from the app because they where buggy and would break. I always had some ideas and prototyped them in the app but then after trying it out and getting a feel for it, I would jump to another idea instead of polishing the prototype. I'm definitely gonna improve the youtube feature, especially the ui. Also, showing the previous subtitles in smaller font somewhere is a great idea! Thanks for that.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#102

Post by dalbasal » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:30 AM UTC

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #5

> But drill isn’t popular. It’s widely seen as boring. Worse, there’s a body of opinion, especially in education, that considers it an ineffective way to practice. That’s a shame, because it’s the most effective way to build your skills. This resonated with me as I watch my kids go through school. Math used to be taught with more drill style. Now with common core every single problem is an epic quest of 10 frames and…

>> Math used to be taught with more drill style.

There are many ways to suck. We tend to think in folksy wisdom: simples rules, simplifications, generalities. Practice makes perfect. 10k hrs. Problem solving. Etc. Often, we bounce back and forward between one such slogan and another.

Folksy wisdom requires folk to be wise. You can't just distil it into a statement and run with that. A great instructor might be extremely focused on drill X or exercise Y. In reality, X or Y outside the greater context is not the same.

The 10k hrs "rule" is a good example. I reckon I'm closing in on 5k hrs of chess. I'm not very good. I could have probably improved more than I would be with just 500 hrs training on a team, with an instructor, game analysis, tactic training, competition, etc. 5k hrs of bullet while on the toilet is not that.

Now... I'm not saying that the book does claim that playing 10k hrs of ultra-casual chess while on the toilet leads to mastery. You need more context. Drill & Scrimmage, in this article's terms. "Deliberate practice" in Anders Ericsson's. Competition in other's terms.

No matter what though, I think that the actual formula is not expressible. There will be a way of sucking while still ostensibly following the formula. You need the subjective human element. A person, training themselves or others who is focused on the goal of improvement, with the methods used as tools.

A lot of canonical examples like sports, art or whatnot us an "art & science" adjacent terminology.

TLDR, you'll also find plenty of example of rampant suckage and plateaus using drill oriented methods of teaching.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#103

Post by CorrectHorseBat » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:33 AM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #91

eloisius wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resonates with me too. I'm studying Chinese full-time and the classroom format is extremely drill-heavy. Here's a sentence, now say it this other way, using this new grammar device that we just learned. Here's another, and another, and another. After that we _mostly_ rote memorize characters (mostly, because they do have fragments of meaning that you can reason about sometimes). We drill on reading and writing charac…

> Yet, the average Taiwanese can put together functional English sentences. A great many of them can speak fluently Not true at all in my experience. I met only a few people there speaking English or French and all where young and most studied in a language department at university. There's surely a big divide along age categories and probably a North/South divide as I sometimes read people on the internet claiming T…

> In fact, it's one of the most effective way to learn vocabulary (Nation, 2001). I find it very sad that bad methods like Remembering the Kanji are hugely popular when they are in fact a waste of time. The amount of bad content on the internet is staggering. I think the biggest issue is that most people lost the willingness to put efforts in learning, and want everything immediately.

Are you talking about this book? https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/learning-vocabulary-in-...

I haven't read the whole book, but quick skimming got me to this part:

> The highest vocabulary test scores were from the small number of learners reporting mnemonic techniques. The most commonly used strategies were effective but not as effective as the lesser used visualisation, mnemonic, oral rote rehearsal and retrieval strategies. Clearly, strategy training in memory-enhancing techniques could have useful effects.

I can't imagine learning Chinese characters without any form of mnemonics.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#104

Post by odshoifsdhfs » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:36 AM UTC

natmaka wrote: post #49

This is not generic, it is not adequate for all disciplines. Painting establishes a relation between the painter and static entities (subject, colors...). They interact in many ways, however the painter is the main 'motor' and 'will'. Basketball is different because a player interacts with his teammates and opponents, he isn't the sole will at play. However I can see how experience may lead a coach to reckon that som…

I did this in boxing. My coach was very fond of drills. I remember my first week (5 trainings a week) he only taught and drilled me how to move. No punchs, nothing. Just the various movements, rotation, how to shift weight, etc.

I did it for about 3 months like this, with maybe, maybe a 30-45 minute spar session per week (and at this time, I was doing 3 trainings a day during week, 2 on saturdays).

Had my first fight around the 3-4 month mark and won it without much difficulty.

I see this now that I am learning padel tennis. Been playing for a year or so, but I hardly do any games, mainly practise/drills with my coach (4 times a week). Maybe 2 games a month. I started in September not even knowing how to play, to surpass most people in my trainings, since the drills make me play in games as I practise, since it was drilled so much, while 95%+ of the people do one movement in practise, then get to a game and change it all, reduce speed, or just hit it wrong because they end up 'practising' more the matches with wrong technique/no correction, vs the folks that repeat the same movement 1000 times with correction. In a few months I may even get my beginners coaching certificate.

As Bruce Lee said: “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#105

Post by eloisius » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:57 AM UTC

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #103

tasogare wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet, the average Taiwanese can put together functional English sentences. A great many of them can speak fluently Not true at all in my experience. I met only a few people there speaking English or French and all where young and most studied in a language department at university. There's surely a big divide along age categories and probably a North/South divide as I sometimes read people on the internet claiming T…

> In fact, it's one of the most effective way to learn vocabulary (Nation, 2001). I find it very sad that bad methods like Remembering the Kanji are hugely popular when they are in fact a waste of time. The amount of bad content on the internet is staggering. I think the biggest issue is that most people lost the willingness to put efforts in learning, and want everything immediately. Are you talking about this book?…

> I can't imagine learning Chinese characters without any form of mnemonics.

Username checks out :). Have you learned Chinese? I'm not convinced that my method is the best by a long shot, but I don't use mnemonics. I've tried memorizing other things with tricks like the memory palace, and either I don't know how to do it or my brain is busted, but I've never been able to create a "palace" much less store information I want to remember within it. I recently read about the mnemonic peg system and thought it might be useful if I could use radicals as "pegs." So far I just haven't been able to employ any of these tricks to my advantage.

My memorization routine (about 10 new words per day) is to write down a whole list ~30 words, writing the character and it's pronunciation (I use zhuyin). Sometimes I do this in class while we're going over the chapter's vocab. I set a timer for 5-8 minutes depending on how many new words there are, how "hard" some of them look at first glance, how many have unusual radicals I haven't used frequently, etc. Looking at just the pinyin or zhuyin I try to write them all down before the timer goes off. If I can't write a whole character, I at least try to write down some of the radicals, if nothing at all I just skip it and move on. Afterwards I grade myself and looking at the characters in my textbook again, I write a new list of just the words I couldn't write. I practice writing them several times until I feel like I have the hang of it. Then I test again. Repeat until I can write the whole list. After I can write them all, ideally, I would retest again after some time, sometimes I do. Unfortunately, I usually don't have enough time and I have just barely gotten them memorized before it's time for a chapter test and then a new load of vocab. Fortunately old words get rolled into new chapters and having to write essays and stuff gives me more practice after they've had a while to stew.

If there is some One Easy Trick that I'm missing that would make my routine 10x more efficient, I hope someone can share it, because this routine is very tiresome and time consuming. I have played a bit with visualization, where I would close my eyes and imagine every stroke of a character without actually writing it. It works, but I need a really quiet environment for that.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#106

Post by noahbradley » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 11:59 AM UTC

mabub24 wrote: post #96

temp234 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anybody have any reading recommendations or thoughts on the topic of how people _with_ drilled or otherwise refined skills can turn into people who come up with and complete mature creative projects? In creative contexts I know a lot of people who get stuck on just drilling their skills forever or who want to be mature creative project-completers but mysteriously aren't getting it done. I've read a lot about how…

You are relatively correct. The 10k "rule" and other general guidelines are just that --- guidelines for something that often bucks guidelines and is better for it. 3 things an artist make: 1. Finishing and finishing often. You should not be making the same thing all the time, but you should be consciously iterating in any direction you like as long as you are still finishing. Great painters, writers, musicians, are…

I'd somewhat change #1 to "starting and starting often." I see far, far too many art students fall into the trap of wasting hours finishing work when they'd be better off starting more pieces.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#107

Post by thatcat » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 12:01 PM UTC

test_epsilon wrote: post #47

mch82 wrote: post #41

> I paint realism in oils, mostly still life. I showed my grandma (98) a photo on an iPad. Her immediate reaction: “there’s no reason to paint realism anymore”. The method described in this article might work for realism in oils, but please don’t accept it as the exclusive way to create art. Art is about understanding the tools you’re using to create (for example how paint mixes, moves, dries, interacts with a surfac…

What were the remaining reasons to paint realism after relatively cheap color photography came about ~100 years ago and before the iPad was made, out of curiosity?

There wasn't any really, surrealism and abstract art developed slightly before that

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#108

Post by extrememacaroni » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 12:03 PM UTC

Jakob wrote: post #16

> Repeatedly doing it right I have a funny story about that: When my sister struggled with Math at school, I let her solve equations she struggled with. Unbeknownst to her, every test equation I gave her was identical to the previous one, but she didn’t notice because she focussed only on solving it. After repeating this more than five times, she was astonished that all results were equal. Between the 5th to 10th tim…

The sister's name?

Albert Einstein.

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#109

Post by thatcat » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 12:10 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #4

bloaf wrote: post #3

For art and music there are pretty clear and well defined skills that can be drilled. Anyone have suggestions for writing drills?

That’s an interesting question. My completely uneducated idea: reproducing masters’ works. Take a novel, or something shorter, and type it up, thinking with each sentence, each page, why they wrote what they did, and what they left out.

HS Thompson did this

Re: How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)

#110

Post by mabub24 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 12:12 PM UTC

noahbradley wrote: post #106

mabub24 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are relatively correct. The 10k "rule" and other general guidelines are just that --- guidelines for something that often bucks guidelines and is better for it. 3 things an artist make: 1. Finishing and finishing often. You should not be making the same thing all the time, but you should be consciously iterating in any direction you like as long as you are still finishing. Great painters, writers, musicians, are…

I'd somewhat change #1 to "starting and starting often." I see far, far too many art students fall into the trap of wasting hours finishing work when they'd be better off starting more pieces.

Definitely. I think were we to rewrite #1, we could say:

1. Start often and finish often; do not be afraid to abandon something that is not working. Learning what is not working will come from starting and finishing more often over time, along with reflecting on the work you have done. This is where the benefits of #3 come into play. A good community will not only praise your work, they will tell when something isn't working or doesn't work.