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

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

#131

Post by tsumnia » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

nextaccountic wrote: post #75

foxes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not a problem with the drill style per say but toxic teachers and parents. You can make someone drill without tormenting them for failing. I think doing drills is good if done in a supportive setting, but it is also and should not be the only way to teach.

Do you know any kid that signed up for math drills? It's nearly always imposed by parents or teachers.

Funny enough, this is my current gripe with learning CS in K-12 settings. The mindset I have on it is "we're just teaching it to them at younger age because they can't say no".

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

#132

Post by natmaka » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

odshoifsdhfs wrote: post #104

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…

~3% of the time for sparring seems very low to me, even for a beginner. 15% to 35% is AFAIK more common among competitors (I practice Thai boxing).

Your first fight matchmaking may have been somewhat imperfect(?), or you are gifted :-)

I'm not an expert but observed that the best way to progress as a fighter, for most, is not by overwhelmingly drilling. Drills are necessary, and may be the main component, however to win bouts sparring becomes more and more determinant as technical flaws become more rare.

AFAIK B. Lee said "A fighter who trains without sparring is like a swimmer who hasn't immersed in the water" and "Remember, actual sparring is the ultimate, and the training is only a means toward this".

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

#133

Post by blindmute » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

chris_st wrote: post #126

As much as I agree with a lot in this article, I totally don't understand the "Code Kata" thing promoted by Uncle Bob Martin and others. I understand drilling a specific skill in the arts, but writing the same piece of code over and over just makes no sense at all (and yeah, his example was solving the "Bowling Score" problem every time). So, anyone do code katas and like/recommend them? If so, what does it teach you…

I don't know why anyone would repeat the same code multiple times, but I have found that practicing leetcode does actually improve code skill, even when the coding job doesn't have any complex algorithms. Just the practice of solving the algorithm has carryover to normal work problems, which would make sense as it's basically distilled code logic practice.

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

#134

Post by btkramer9 » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:09 PM 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…

I've noticed something similar in University that was very frustrating for me.

Freshmen and Sophmore year all math classes had tens or hundreds of problems that get progressively harder and bring out every corner case e.g. take then derivative of x^2 then 2x^2 then x + 2x^2 then sqrt(x) + 2x^2 + 3x^3. Eventually you could derive the most archaic equations

Junior and Senior year Engineering homework is like 2 Epic questions with 10 parts that feed into eachother. I would have learned more and been more confident if they gave like 10-20 starter problems and then one final epic one at the end.

I feel like this is similar to the story of a pottery class having half the class make as many items as possible while the other half had to make just 1 perfect piece. The group that was targeting quantity actually produced better pieces then the group that was targeting 1 perfect piece

edit: typo

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

#135

Post by blindmute » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

I think it's unfortunate that drills in art have been culturally moved away from recently. There is an active sentiment in the amateur art community that drill is bad, and that you should just draw/paint/whatever things that you enjoy, and you'll just naturally improve over time. This is part of why you see countless online artists who draw for thousands of hours and still can barely manage a likeness.

There are very few activities for which scrimmage improves you faster than drill. Whether it's sports, art, chess, video games, cooking, or anything else, doing the actual activity is a relatively poor way to improve at it.

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

#136

Post by egypturnash » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

This reminds me of the time I picked up a brush for the first time in something like a decade and was surprised to find that all the time I’d spent drawing stuff with my Wacom tablet meant that I was able to put the ink exactly where I wanted it to, while thinking a lot about how much pressure I was putting on the brush to make its line width change organically. The last time I’d used one was when I was still struggling with properly constructing forms on the page.

You do a thing long enough and it sticks in your head in some surprising ways. Though I wonder how much the constant churn of this year’s hot language and framework gets in the way of that for programmers. I’m glad I went into art instead.

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

#137

Post by mceachen » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:30 PM UTC

blindmute wrote: post #133

chris_st wrote: post #126

As much as I agree with a lot in this article, I totally don't understand the "Code Kata" thing promoted by Uncle Bob Martin and others. I understand drilling a specific skill in the arts, but writing the same piece of code over and over just makes no sense at all (and yeah, his example was solving the "Bowling Score" problem every time). So, anyone do code katas and like/recommend them? If so, what does it teach you…

I don't know why anyone would repeat the same code multiple times, but I have found that practicing leetcode does actually improve code skill, even when the coding job doesn't have any complex algorithms. Just the practice of solving the algorithm has carryover to normal work problems, which would make sense as it's basically distilled code logic practice.

Many coding challenges are great drill work: but if you can, have your code read by someone else to ensure you're practicing how to write readable, maintainable code.

Leetcode solutions seem to be regularly "golfed" into being unreadable and intractable. Don't practice that!

At least in my experience, well-defined and functionally isolated coding challenges rarely happen at work, though.

Another skill you'll need to hone is listening to your userbase/business partners and translating what they're saying into actual specifications.

Doing this adequately is a prerequisite to success.

Doing this well (hearing what they need, separating the "need" from the "how", and being imaginative in what a clean implementation would look like) can both reduce what work is needed now, and set up future success to be more likely.

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

#138

Post by blindmute » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:33 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #55

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…

For art, it’s not skill or technique that makes someone an artist. It is simply the terrifying decision that what you make is art. Terrifying because the only gatekeeper to being an artist is you. Declare yourself an artist and you are. Call what you made art and it is.

It is however skill and technique that in large part makes someone a good artist. Like it or not, art is a physically skilled medium.

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

#139

Post by egypturnash » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

temp234 wrote: post #52

brudgers wrote: post #25

The premise of Wooden's methods is that the players already have a lot of experience playing basketball. Many many games by the time they got to UCLA. Informal and formal. And that's my caveat for this as advice on painting. If a person doesn't already have a history of painting, by which I mean starting and completing paintings as paintings, no amount of drill is going turn them into a painter. The willingness to ex…

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…

I got from “I draw isolated images” to “I draw comics” via the middle step of “I drew a Tarot deck”. I had to figure out a lot of shit about managing long projects that cannot be completed in a single day to do this. Tables to help me see at a glance what was available to work on, at what stage. Ways to think about coming back to the project again and again.

Once I had that done I could tackle stuff like “telling a story” which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Ask yourself what the shape of a finished larger thing is. How can you break it down into pieces about the same size as doing some of the drills you’re used to? What are the parts of it that require new kinds thinking and working? Make time to do that.

Take examples of stuff you want to be making and break it down. For instance I found it a useful comics-making exercise to take a short story by an artist I liked and write one sentence describing what happens on each page. That got me thinking about how much story could easily fit on one page.

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

#140

Post by blindmute » Tue, Jul 06, 2021, 3:40 PM 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…

The person who drills 90% of the time and spars 10% will pretty much always beat the reverse person. Sparring is for practicing skills under real conditions. If you don't have those skills, there's nothing to practice in the ring other than flailing about and getting hit.