What advice would you give to a 12-years old boy who wants to become great at drawing and painting?
(Let’s assume that “becoming great at drawing and painting” is a given, so please no advice like “do X instead”.)
My thoughts: There is the general advice about spending “10 000 hours”, for example by allocating a fixed space in your schedule (e.g. each day between 4AM and 5AM, whether I feel like doing it or not). And the time should be best spent learning and practicing new-ish stuff, as opposed to repeating what you are already comfortable with over and over again. So for example, you could decide to spend one lesson trying to get the shadows right, another lesson trying to get the perspective right, etc.
Related things you should study: perspective, anatomy.
You should probably try different tools, e.g. acrylic paint, watercolor, chalk; or different styles, e.g. realistic or cartoon; if only to get outside of your comfort zone once in a while.
I suppose there are some great books to read, and useful online websites for beginning painters, but I am not familiar with this area. A list with a short description would be appreciated.
Make a habit of including a lot of pictures for any notes for school. Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin”.
The ability to translate ideas into good pictures is commercially valuable.
I don’t see the paint of exploring many different kinds of 2D painting. I would expect that a digital pen beats most other tools. Especially in the future as technology advances.
It might be worth looking into 3D virtual reality painting. It’s a new medium and thus valuable.
I don’t see the paint of exploring many different kinds of 2D painting. I would expect that a digital pen beats most other tools. Especially in the future as technology advances.
There are a lot of people who say that piano is the most versatile instrument, and they’re right about that on a superficial level. You can do polyphonic things with a piano that you can’t do with a clarinet or a trumpet. And like a digital pen, a digital piano can simulate a lot of other instruments, especially if you hook it up to flashy synthesis software that knows all the different articulations for those instruments.
But using a digital piano doesn’t feel very much like using those instruments, and you won’t express the same way you would if you had one.
A calligraphy brush is really fun and you can’t replicate the feeling of using it without the physical tools. Many of them have nice texture and you can feel their shape when you rotate them in your hands—they’re also lightweight, so if you’re not holding one to the page it feels more like a pencil than like a paintbrush.
A lot of my friends do art, and I do art too when they ask me to try it with them. Different art tools feel different, and for some people, some tools are more fun than others. I think it’s really important to try these things out before you make a decision about them.
There are a lot of people who say that piano is the most versatile instrument, and they’re right about that on a superficial level.
Actually the piano is one the least versatile instruments. You get control of which key you press, a chosen velocity and the sustain pedal. A piano performance can be midi recorded using these three values and reproduced in an extremely high level of detail. If you try to do the same with a truly versatile instrument like for example the violin you will find that it is impossible. Not difficult, impossible.
But using a digital piano doesn’t feel very much like using those instruments, and you won’t express the same way you would if you had one.
Yes, the point isn’t to express yourself the same way.
Different art tools feel different, and for some people, some tools are more fun than others.
I don’t think “what tool feels most fun” should be the guiding principle for a person who wants to build up drawing skills that he can use as a career.
You’re probably right! (At least some of the time.)
In music, I know a lot of people who think about things the same way you do, and they sensibly learn to use versatile tools like FM synthesis because FM synthesis covers a wide range of sounds really broadly. A lot of them even know how to make human voice-like sounds using these tools.
On average if you stick to those tools you’ll do pretty well. They still fall back on using physical instruments for a lot of techniques, because you can do elaborate expressive things with physical instruments a lot more easily than with the machine.
In music, machines have been getting better, but they aren’t perfect yet. A lot of input devices, even well-regarded ones, don’t have the build quality of instruments made for professionals. It’s really hard to simulate the physical feel of an acoustic instrument without actually building an acoustic instrument—don’t ask me why, but I’ve shopped around a lot and I’ve only found a couple input devices that really feel great for me after long-term use.
In art, there are a lot of hardware limitations. It’s hard to make a tablet that looks great and feels great, and talking to an art program means you’re subject to a lot of latency, and—if your tablet doesn’t have a display—you’re going to see your drawing appear on a different plane than you made it on. A lot of digital artists struggle with line quality and width variation because those things can be awkward on tablet input devices—and depending on medium, those are often super fundamental (1) to how you pick out parts and subparts of an image and (2) to how you read its form.
You will notice there are a lot of really good digital painters and a lot of really bad digital line artists. That’s a part of why!
Don’t get me wrong, though. I think your point totally holds for parts of art that can be rehearsed and repeated an indefinite number of times until they look right. I also think that for planning and prototyping, you need to be able to iterate really fast and it needs to be fun, or at least unobstructive. This is another one of those things that’s also true for musicians: the really good musicians spend nine hours a day in the studio and there has to be something about it that motivates them to get up in the morning.
Currently, it’s true that line quality on a device like the Surface isn’t perfect. I personally expect both Microsoft and Apple to solve the issue on their pens in the next five years.
I don’t object to doing planning and prototyping on paper with a pencil. While the 12 year old sits in school it’s likely that taking graphical notes on paper is better appreciated by the teacher than taking those notes with a tablet.
I don’t see the paint of exploring many different kinds of 2D painting.
I would imagine that various constraints imposed by their various disadvantages can take you out of your comfort zone, for example when you use a tool that is unable to create small details, you will give up the small details and instead focus on the overall composition… and learning this may somehow become useful even when you return to using a tool that allows you to do details. Like, using an insanely wide brush could make you reinvent impressionism.
I would expect that a digital pen beats most other tools.
Probably yes, but the non-digital tools might give you an idea about what settings you want to try with the digital ones. For example, do you want the new color to completely overwrite the underlying one, or rather to blend with it. Or maybe—although this is mostly a fake purpose—setting the digital tool to resemble high-status non-digital tools (something that Leonardo da Vinci would use, as opposed to what a teenage manga fan uses) could add a high-status feeling to your pictures.
On the other hand, going digital and becoming familiar with the digital tools has some added value. For example, having a nice picture is cool, but turning it into a WordPress template could be more profitable.
Find a teacher that can demonstrably draw/paint to a high level.
Observe the first few lessons to make sure that he is also good at transmitting the information and is passionate about the art.
Art has a rational component which we can call the ‘technique’ or ‘craft’ of the field. In drawing this would be light/shade, perspective, texture, drawing material etc. but it also has an intuitive component that results from developing an aesthetic sense. It is important to realise that art is not learned just from painting but by seeing the world through a painters eyes. Observing the world and understanding the way the eye perceives it and the mind reproduces it.
I once went to a workshop on Sumi-e painting at the local Japanese cultural centre, and it changed how I look at paintings. So I’d recommend taking a Sumi-e class, or these days, I suppose watching Sumi-e tutorials on Youtube might do.
In general, getting an idea of how different cultures look at visual arts can be eye-opening. In addition to learning by doing, going to different museums and galleries can be a way to learn about art from many different time periods and cultures in different mediums.
Another thing that changed my perspective is a book called An Eye For Fractals by Michael McGuire. It taught me to break down things into different types of shapes when looking at them, and to appreciate a different kind of beauty than is usually taught to children. It is an exploration of Benoit Mandelbrot’s famous quote
“Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.”—Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, 1983.
I am “not terrible” at various forms of art / media so I might be able to give some adviceL
In my case, I spent a bunch of time drawing human figures in only a few specific angles, and this hindered me a lot. So definitely focus on getting the kids drawing lots of different things. As a general note, focus more on the general shape of things than specific details (EX: have the whole body anatomy roughly done is better than just a nice-looking face).
Other than that, in my education I’m unsure there are generally accepted “core books”, comared to other subjects. I think this may also be because art/painting is a large subject.
So I’d recommend doing these obvious things (happpy to chat more via PM if you want to get into more detail):
Focus on letting the kid do the stuff he enjoys. When forced to attend drawing class, that took a lot of the fun out of it.
The first point being said, if you can find a class/teacher that specifically teaches the sorts of things the kid is interested in (i.e. they enjoy going to the class), this is a pretty good idea.
Practice. Obviously the more you draw the better you’ll get.
Google “best books / resources for X” where X is whatever things / medium the kid is interested in.
Nice materials. It’s surprising how helpful a good sketchbook / high-quality pens can make the whole process feel more excellent. I’m not suggesting you shell out several hundred for some huge Copic set, but some nice Canson paper and Prismacolor pens can go a long way.
I am not “great” at drawing and have never put any time into painting. That said, the workbook Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain caused a quantum leap in my sketching ability. (There is a separate, much longer long-form book with the same title, but the workbook consolidates all the exercises and I found it more practically useful.)
What advice would you give to a 12-years old boy who wants to become great at drawing and painting?
(Let’s assume that “becoming great at drawing and painting” is a given, so please no advice like “do X instead”.)
My thoughts: There is the general advice about spending “10 000 hours”, for example by allocating a fixed space in your schedule (e.g. each day between 4AM and 5AM, whether I feel like doing it or not). And the time should be best spent learning and practicing new-ish stuff, as opposed to repeating what you are already comfortable with over and over again. So for example, you could decide to spend one lesson trying to get the shadows right, another lesson trying to get the perspective right, etc.
Related things you should study: perspective, anatomy.
You should probably try different tools, e.g. acrylic paint, watercolor, chalk; or different styles, e.g. realistic or cartoon; if only to get outside of your comfort zone once in a while.
I suppose there are some great books to read, and useful online websites for beginning painters, but I am not familiar with this area. A list with a short description would be appreciated.
Make a habit of including a lot of pictures for any notes for school. Dan Roam’s “The Back of the Napkin”.
The ability to translate ideas into good pictures is commercially valuable.
I don’t see the paint of exploring many different kinds of 2D painting. I would expect that a digital pen beats most other tools. Especially in the future as technology advances.
It might be worth looking into 3D virtual reality painting. It’s a new medium and thus valuable.
There are a lot of people who say that piano is the most versatile instrument, and they’re right about that on a superficial level. You can do polyphonic things with a piano that you can’t do with a clarinet or a trumpet. And like a digital pen, a digital piano can simulate a lot of other instruments, especially if you hook it up to flashy synthesis software that knows all the different articulations for those instruments.
But using a digital piano doesn’t feel very much like using those instruments, and you won’t express the same way you would if you had one.
A calligraphy brush is really fun and you can’t replicate the feeling of using it without the physical tools. Many of them have nice texture and you can feel their shape when you rotate them in your hands—they’re also lightweight, so if you’re not holding one to the page it feels more like a pencil than like a paintbrush.
A lot of my friends do art, and I do art too when they ask me to try it with them. Different art tools feel different, and for some people, some tools are more fun than others. I think it’s really important to try these things out before you make a decision about them.
Actually the piano is one the least versatile instruments. You get control of which key you press, a chosen velocity and the sustain pedal. A piano performance can be midi recorded using these three values and reproduced in an extremely high level of detail. If you try to do the same with a truly versatile instrument like for example the violin you will find that it is impossible. Not difficult, impossible.
I’m confused. Isn’t it evident from the rest of my comment that I agree with you?
(On an unrelated note: I think my upvote button has vanished. Otherwise I would have clicked it for your post!)
Ah, sorry to confuse you. Yes it is obvious that you agree. I was just expanding on the point :)
(You need 20 karma to be able to upvote)
Thank you for the information! My brain does something weird when I see the word “actually,” so I don’t think I was charitable when I read your post.
No problem :)
Yes, the point isn’t to express yourself the same way.
I don’t think “what tool feels most fun” should be the guiding principle for a person who wants to build up drawing skills that he can use as a career.
You’re probably right! (At least some of the time.)
In music, I know a lot of people who think about things the same way you do, and they sensibly learn to use versatile tools like FM synthesis because FM synthesis covers a wide range of sounds really broadly. A lot of them even know how to make human voice-like sounds using these tools.
On average if you stick to those tools you’ll do pretty well. They still fall back on using physical instruments for a lot of techniques, because you can do elaborate expressive things with physical instruments a lot more easily than with the machine.
In music, machines have been getting better, but they aren’t perfect yet. A lot of input devices, even well-regarded ones, don’t have the build quality of instruments made for professionals. It’s really hard to simulate the physical feel of an acoustic instrument without actually building an acoustic instrument—don’t ask me why, but I’ve shopped around a lot and I’ve only found a couple input devices that really feel great for me after long-term use.
In art, there are a lot of hardware limitations. It’s hard to make a tablet that looks great and feels great, and talking to an art program means you’re subject to a lot of latency, and—if your tablet doesn’t have a display—you’re going to see your drawing appear on a different plane than you made it on. A lot of digital artists struggle with line quality and width variation because those things can be awkward on tablet input devices—and depending on medium, those are often super fundamental (1) to how you pick out parts and subparts of an image and (2) to how you read its form.
You will notice there are a lot of really good digital painters and a lot of really bad digital line artists. That’s a part of why!
Don’t get me wrong, though. I think your point totally holds for parts of art that can be rehearsed and repeated an indefinite number of times until they look right. I also think that for planning and prototyping, you need to be able to iterate really fast and it needs to be fun, or at least unobstructive. This is another one of those things that’s also true for musicians: the really good musicians spend nine hours a day in the studio and there has to be something about it that motivates them to get up in the morning.
Currently, it’s true that line quality on a device like the Surface isn’t perfect. I personally expect both Microsoft and Apple to solve the issue on their pens in the next five years.
I don’t object to doing planning and prototyping on paper with a pencil. While the 12 year old sits in school it’s likely that taking graphical notes on paper is better appreciated by the teacher than taking those notes with a tablet.
I like the creation of idea-related sketches.
I would imagine that various constraints imposed by their various disadvantages can take you out of your comfort zone, for example when you use a tool that is unable to create small details, you will give up the small details and instead focus on the overall composition… and learning this may somehow become useful even when you return to using a tool that allows you to do details. Like, using an insanely wide brush could make you reinvent impressionism.
Probably yes, but the non-digital tools might give you an idea about what settings you want to try with the digital ones. For example, do you want the new color to completely overwrite the underlying one, or rather to blend with it. Or maybe—although this is mostly a fake purpose—setting the digital tool to resemble high-status non-digital tools (something that Leonardo da Vinci would use, as opposed to what a teenage manga fan uses) could add a high-status feeling to your pictures.
On the other hand, going digital and becoming familiar with the digital tools has some added value. For example, having a nice picture is cool, but turning it into a WordPress template could be more profitable.
I would rather try different digital tools than different analog ones. Getting a 3D printer also imposes some constraints.
It has the added benefit that a lot of time sitting in school can be used for that purpose.
http://bearlamp.com.au/how-to-learn-a-new-area-x-that-you-have-no-idea-about/
http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mmu/how_to_learn_a_new_area_x_that_you_have_no_idea/
I wrote a guide.
Thank you!
In my opinion, the most important advice:
Find a teacher that can demonstrably draw/paint to a high level.
Observe the first few lessons to make sure that he is also good at transmitting the information and is passionate about the art.
Art has a rational component which we can call the ‘technique’ or ‘craft’ of the field. In drawing this would be light/shade, perspective, texture, drawing material etc. but it also has an intuitive component that results from developing an aesthetic sense. It is important to realise that art is not learned just from painting but by seeing the world through a painters eyes. Observing the world and understanding the way the eye perceives it and the mind reproduces it.
I once went to a workshop on Sumi-e painting at the local Japanese cultural centre, and it changed how I look at paintings. So I’d recommend taking a Sumi-e class, or these days, I suppose watching Sumi-e tutorials on Youtube might do.
In general, getting an idea of how different cultures look at visual arts can be eye-opening. In addition to learning by doing, going to different museums and galleries can be a way to learn about art from many different time periods and cultures in different mediums.
Another thing that changed my perspective is a book called An Eye For Fractals by Michael McGuire. It taught me to break down things into different types of shapes when looking at them, and to appreciate a different kind of beauty than is usually taught to children. It is an exploration of Benoit Mandelbrot’s famous quote
I am “not terrible” at various forms of art / media so I might be able to give some adviceL
In my case, I spent a bunch of time drawing human figures in only a few specific angles, and this hindered me a lot. So definitely focus on getting the kids drawing lots of different things. As a general note, focus more on the general shape of things than specific details (EX: have the whole body anatomy roughly done is better than just a nice-looking face).
Other than that, in my education I’m unsure there are generally accepted “core books”, comared to other subjects. I think this may also be because art/painting is a large subject.
So I’d recommend doing these obvious things (happpy to chat more via PM if you want to get into more detail):
Focus on letting the kid do the stuff he enjoys. When forced to attend drawing class, that took a lot of the fun out of it.
The first point being said, if you can find a class/teacher that specifically teaches the sorts of things the kid is interested in (i.e. they enjoy going to the class), this is a pretty good idea.
Practice. Obviously the more you draw the better you’ll get.
Google “best books / resources for X” where X is whatever things / medium the kid is interested in.
Nice materials. It’s surprising how helpful a good sketchbook / high-quality pens can make the whole process feel more excellent. I’m not suggesting you shell out several hundred for some huge Copic set, but some nice Canson paper and Prismacolor pens can go a long way.
Is he aware of the consequences? Maybe ask him the most important question:
https://markmanson.net/question
I am not “great” at drawing and have never put any time into painting. That said, the workbook Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain caused a quantum leap in my sketching ability. (There is a separate, much longer long-form book with the same title, but the workbook consolidates all the exercises and I found it more practically useful.)
Thanks, I was thinking about this, but I didn’t know there was a separate workbook. Now I have… ahem… purchased both.