Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I became an artist

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 110 posts

Re: How I became an artist

#71

Post by vacri »

ArtBot-1 wrote: post #55
Swizec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about difficulty, it's about mastery. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be able to draw the perfect line. Even if drawing said perfect line took seconds. A large part of mastery also goes beyond the technicalities of expressing, it's also about having a good eye for what is worth expressing and what is mundane/boring/etc. But it basically boils down to: art [of all kinds] is tricky and takes a lot o…

Here's a Flickr stream with lots of art with good to great technique: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/ Boring isn't it? (Interesting as history maybe?) The "what is worth expressing" is where creativity happens. Technique makes you a competent hack. It's not enough for originality. So it's misleading to think it's all art. Technique and originality are different skills. The best artists have lots of both, b…

Any list of the same kind of scene done with the same methodology is going to be boring in bulk.

Re: How I became an artist

#72

Post by vacri »

ryan-allen wrote: post #65
gbog wrote: post #41

Most comments seems positive here, nice. I'm a bit less enthusiastic. A twenty-so young boy has no lesson to teach. He can't be an artist because artists are either over fifty or dead, no matter how many times he'll repeat the mantra. One does not choose art among other professional activities: a very few men or women are chosen to become artists and they will be no matter what else they try to do. Also being an arti…

I don't know why this comment is being downvoted, do we downvote on differences of sentiment now on HN?

"No TRUE Scotsman..."

Re: How I became an artist

#74

Post by nstart »

hawngyeedun wrote: post #66
archagon wrote: post #61

This might be a dumb question, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway! I'm really interested in learning how to create art, and skill-wise I'm currently right where you were at the start. If I were to follow your exact path, it would take me many years to get anywhere near your level, and while I'm up to the challenge, I don't have four solid years to devote to a new college run at the moment. However, looking b…

I was in a similar situation about 8 months ago—You just have to pick up a pencil and go for it. I had just finished college and found a great job. With all the free time I didn't have in school, I decided to buckle down and start taking art seriously (instead of doodling cartoon figures). I knew I need to start out by building a solid foundation, which meant that I have to really familiarize myself with the basics a…

Proko is brilliant. And his videos have gotten better over time. His breakdown of drawing faces from any angle was a kind of light bulb moment for me.

Re: How I became an artist

#75

Post by cousin_it »

ArtBot-1 wrote: post #55
Swizec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about difficulty, it's about mastery. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be able to draw the perfect line. Even if drawing said perfect line took seconds. A large part of mastery also goes beyond the technicalities of expressing, it's also about having a good eye for what is worth expressing and what is mundane/boring/etc. But it basically boils down to: art [of all kinds] is tricky and takes a lot o…

Here's a Flickr stream with lots of art with good to great technique: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/ Boring isn't it? (Interesting as history maybe?) The "what is worth expressing" is where creativity happens. Technique makes you a competent hack. It's not enough for originality. So it's misleading to think it's all art. Technique and originality are different skills. The best artists have lots of both, b…

Thank you for linking to that gallery! It's very eye-opening. I dutifully went through several pages, trying to find something non-boring, and it was indeed all boring (with the exception of Bruegel, who shouldn't be in there).

Interestingly, I feel the same way about many works on ArtStation [1]. The artists try to draw something "cool", like a fantasy creature, but end up with just a basic picture of a human with lots of greebles [2]. Lack of imagination is very obvious.

At the other end of the spectrum for me is something like Wayne Barlowe's "Wargate" [3], an image with a whole new visual language for what it's trying to say, or Paul Veer's pixel art for Nuclear Throne [4], with very simple technique but very imaginative character designs. Apologies if my taste is pedestrian :-)

[1] https://www.artstation.com/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeble

[3] https://simotron.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/tumblr_mv4vmddu...

[4] http://i.imgur.com/7V8Di0i.gif

Re: How I became an artist

#76

Post by anilgulecha »

leafo wrote: post #8

I'm also on quest to become an artist, I created a site for keeping up consistent drawing streak (although I'm struggling at the moment). The site is for anyone to use and we have quite a few artists using it already: https://streak.club/s/8/daily-art-2015 Here's a post I wrote talking a little more about the site: http://leafo.net/posts/introducing_streakclub.html

Big fan of your work leafo. Moonscript/Lapis/streak/etc. An inspiration.. :)

Re: How I became an artist

#77

Post by jreimers »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #68
superuser2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is true. You can be happy with work that anyone skilled in the art thinks is terrible, i.e. maybe you're really proud of your $REGISTER_GLOBALS dependent, SQLi-vulnerable, spaghetti PHP app. Maybe you're really happy with your scientific paper that the peer review community has ripped to shreds as false. Or you really, really like the novel you wrote, despite well-articulated and uniformly scathing…

And on the other hand, there's Wordpress.

Humorous, but relevant. PHP and Wordpress are derided by many, perhaps rightfully so. Despite many well founded claims against them they remain ubiquitous.

Which metric do we use to define success here? Can shitty software be considered successful just because everyone uses it?

Re: How I became an artist

#78

Post by camillomiller »

jreimers wrote: post #77
xyzzy123 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the other hand, there's Wordpress.

Humorous, but relevant. PHP and Wordpress are derided by many, perhaps rightfully so. Despite many well founded claims against them they remain ubiquitous. Which metric do we use to define success here? Can shitty software be considered successful just because everyone uses it?

People have built businesses thanks to that shitty software, important news have been broken by tech unsavvy bloggers that created a website very easily thanks to the platform, hordes of youngsters approached programming writing a shitty Wordpress plugin... You would still call that a failure just because it doesn't use elegant software according to the standards of a community of professional that never come to terms with its hindering perfectionism?

Re: How I became an artist

#79

Post by jackvalentine »

jreimers wrote: post #77
xyzzy123 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And on the other hand, there's Wordpress.

Humorous, but relevant. PHP and Wordpress are derided by many, perhaps rightfully so. Despite many well founded claims against them they remain ubiquitous. Which metric do we use to define success here? Can shitty software be considered successful just because everyone uses it?

People don't buy a drill, they buy a hole in the wall.

People don't buy the best most perfect fancy publishing platform, they buy something that lets them publish their content and move on with their lives.

I think the success is pretty self-evident?

Re: How I became an artist

#80

Post by prapam2 »

ArtBot-1 wrote: post #55
Swizec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about difficulty, it's about mastery. It takes thousands of hours of practice to be able to draw the perfect line. Even if drawing said perfect line took seconds. A large part of mastery also goes beyond the technicalities of expressing, it's also about having a good eye for what is worth expressing and what is mundane/boring/etc. But it basically boils down to: art [of all kinds] is tricky and takes a lot o…

Here's a Flickr stream with lots of art with good to great technique: https://www.flickr.com/photos/7474079@N02/ Boring isn't it? (Interesting as history maybe?) The "what is worth expressing" is where creativity happens. Technique makes you a competent hack. It's not enough for originality. So it's misleading to think it's all art. Technique and originality are different skills. The best artists have lots of both, b…

I found it interesting. Why is it considered boring?
Post reply on HN