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Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#111

Post by vajrabum »

NumberWangMan wrote: post #106
brimble wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You think you can see things, but what you are really doing is recognizing things. Any normal adult has the motor skills to make a controlled mark. I have reasonably nimble fingers and at least average overall motor control, and really cannot do this. I got pretty good at drawing a handful of things as a kid by just repeating the same pattern every time, but even on those my lines were just awful. I'm sure I could…

If you're interested in investing time into improving (it's hard to tell based on your comment alone) it sounds like https://drawabox.com/ (it's free) starts with just what you're asking for -- how to make straight lines on a page. A big part of the first lesson is practicing how to make confident, accurate strokes using your whole arm.

I'll second the recommendation of drawabox. That site helped my drawing a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#112

Post by psyc »

nefitty wrote: post #110
psyc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s another anecdote that might be more to your liking. It’s true, BTW. I started drawing seriously when I was 12. Everyone considered me really amazing by 16. I consider myself to have plateaued at 20. I’m not aware of having improved in any specific way since, but I’m Disney-level good, and I can draw anything from life or imagination in a variety of styles and levels of realism. Portraits too. I’m in my mid 40s…

The gap between what I imagine and desire motivates my art and coding. "Damn, I can't find what I want to listen to. I guess I'll have to make this song up that my brain wants to hear, myself."

I’m the same with music and games!

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#113

Post by treeman79 »

davidrupp wrote: post #89
commieneko wrote: post #58

Commercial artist for 45 years. Also a developer, FWIW, mostly graphics programming since the late 1970s. _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_ is actually one of the best places to start. I know you said you tried it. But try it this way: Ignore all the theory and the stories the author tells. It’s mostly nonsense. But the exercises are actually very good. The trick is to not care about the result and about makin…

"Learning to draw is much more about learning to see than making marks." This was the most helpful thing I learned from _Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_. That book alone took me from "poorly drawn stick figures" to "recognizable sketches of people and simple objects". It's been a while since I've exercised any of this, but it's on my list to re-learn One Of These Days™.

I started drawing a few years ago then took a college course.

Learning to see what is the major theme and made an amazing difference.

I would leave some sessions as if in a trance seeing the world in ways I’ve never had before

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#114

Post by jj0 »

If you want the absolute best online drawing class try Vitruvian studios Drawing Basics. It literally starts with how to hold a pencil. If you want to jump straight into portraiture David and Mindy have a portrait class starting in March. Their zoom classes are low stress, funny , you learn so much, and at the end you have an amazing portrait that you can’t believe you actually drew yourself. They are two working artists from Chicago, check them out. https://vitruvianstudio.com/course/drawing-basics/ https://vitruvianstudio.com/live-streaming-classes/

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#115

Post by timoteostewart »

nefitty wrote: post #110
psyc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s another anecdote that might be more to your liking. It’s true, BTW. I started drawing seriously when I was 12. Everyone considered me really amazing by 16. I consider myself to have plateaued at 20. I’m not aware of having improved in any specific way since, but I’m Disney-level good, and I can draw anything from life or imagination in a variety of styles and levels of realism. Portraits too. I’m in my mid 40s…

The gap between what I imagine and desire motivates my art and coding. "Damn, I can't find what I want to listen to. I guess I'll have to make this song up that my brain wants to hear, myself."

Reminds me of this Ira Glass quote:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#116

Post by MilnerRoute »

Someone once gave me a surprising recommendation for learning how to sketch: "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way."

It moves fast and gives you some genuinely useful quick tips on how to get started. (Like looking for ways to envision real-life objects as cubes and cylinders, as a way of easily capturing the three-dimensionality of what you're sketching.)

I mean, the best advice is usually to just spend lots of time practicing the thing you're trying to learn. What's good about this book is it encourages you to dive and try its various exercises - which could get you into doing some sketching in a fun and quirky way.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#117

Post by dceddia »

alexslobodnik wrote: post #50

You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less by Mark Kistler This was great.

I second this! Even though I didn’t get very far with the book (got distracted, stopped practicing, forgot to go back to it) it definitely helped me get better at perspective and shading.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#118

Post by hluska »

My sister is a talented artist but I’m complete garbage. When we were young, we drew completely differently. I drew whatever I felt like. She always drew the exact same dog. Over and over, thousands of times, for years. Whenever we’d go into a restaurant, she’d flip the placemat over and draw the exact same dog. Over and over again.

It got to a point that I knew what lines she was going to put next, but though I knew how to construct the dog, it never looked quite right. It’s like I draw the recognizable part of a dog. She draws a dog.

If I wanted to get really good at sketching in a hurry, I’d do exactly what my sister did and fill notebooks of the same exact picture.

(Just not of that dog. I’m sick of that fucking dog…) :)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#119

Post by grumblepeet »

Learning to draw and paint (painting is just drawing with paint in a way) the process is exactly like training AI to do anything. You put into your head all these rules and examples (books about art, images that you like etc) and set off. By setting off I mean daily - or more likely throughout the day - doodling and sketching whatever takes your fancy. Yes like training AI models the outputs at first are weird, but you keep the bits that look good and ignore the weird bits you dont want. Iterate and repeat. There are no magic shortcuts, you have to do the work of doing drawing but most importantly (in my opinion) dont throw away all your failures, keep them so you can see how far you’ve come. You have to be prepared also to let go all the notions of consciously learning how to do it, like learning to code for example. You have to let the model keep iterating. I still do a daily sketch (in pencil - simple lines) every day and when I can a painting. Eventually you train the bits of your brain that are involved and those rules get embedded. Now when I do a painting I dont have to think about the rules, they have been hard coded in some algorithm that I cant possibly understand but works. Even I am often amazed at what comes out. @chloegilbertartist on Instagram for some examples. You can see how things vary there, I’m still training the model ;)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?

#120

Post by wodenokoto »

I checked out Scott robertsons “how to draw” at the library and I think it is really good.

However, my main takeaway was that my desire to draw was not big enough for the effort required.

http://scottrobertsonworkshops.com/h2dr/

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