I always was very bad at drawing (and my handwriting is horrible). As a child I had no interest in the topic (I was more interested by science, maths/physics/biology/astronomy/… and later one computer science), and when I gained some interest in the issue during my late teens-early twenties when I was role-playing a lot, and would have really liked to be able to draw characters, situations, monsters, …, I had the feeling that I was too hopelessly bad, so I never tried much.
But you claim that people like me could learn to draw reasonably well if a 15-30 hours time, that sounds really interesting to me (and your arguments and experiences make sense, so I’ll give a high likelihood for you to be right). That makes it very interesting… but then, the problem is finding an appropriate teacher. I’m not sure a “common” drawing teacher would be the most appropriate teacher for a “rational geek” like me, and finding a drawing teacher that knows enough of geekness and rationality to have low inferential distance when explaining something to me will not be easy...
But I’ll pay more attention to that, thanks for this post !
One thing I’ll be trying to do is bridge the inferential gap here, in this sequence. Afterwards you’ll still need good instruction, but hopefully you’ll be able to mentally translate between what your teacher says and what you need to hear.
Compared to signing up for a course, how much would I lose by using a book such as Drawing on the right side of the brain or Thinking with a pencil and getting critical input from a friend who is a comic book artist but lacks any education in teaching? Is drawing a field that requires mentorship or can a motivated student get by with a textbook and occasional pointed advice?
I can only speak from personal experience, but I made enormous improvements on my own with a book in a pretty short period of time. I’m now at the point where I’m looking into joining a tutor-led group, because I think I’ve made most of the easy gains from pursuing it on my own.
If you’re the sort of person who can, for example, hunker down and learn a programming language over a few hours under your own steam, I imagine you can probably do the same with drawing. For me, the experiences are quite similar.
Longer answer: I am actually very interested in seeing how you progress without menthorship (for my own empirical study—I’ve seen how people respond to an intensive 8 hour seminar, I haven’t seen how people improve with 8 hours of their own efforts. Control group would be useful)
I will note that I do not have any education in teaching—I ran this workshop specifically to gain experience in it. If your friend has college level (or equivalent) art training, then e will probably be about as qualified as I am to give you feedback. The question is the value of “occasional feedback” vs “intensive dedicated training.”
In the workshop, I gave constant feedback and occasionally demonstrated my own drawing technique. Participants felt that doing so was very helpful, and I believe it was, but I don’t know for sure how important it was. (We did notice an effect where shortly after watching me draw, people improved at drawing for a little while, although the effect didn’t last indefinitely, presumably as the memory faded and their old habits returned. In the next session I intend to demonstrate once every half hour to reinforce the benefit, and then see if the improvements seem to stick longer.)
I always was very bad at drawing (and my handwriting is horrible). As a child I had no interest in the topic (I was more interested by science, maths/physics/biology/astronomy/… and later one computer science), and when I gained some interest in the issue during my late teens-early twenties when I was role-playing a lot, and would have really liked to be able to draw characters, situations, monsters, …, I had the feeling that I was too hopelessly bad, so I never tried much.
But you claim that people like me could learn to draw reasonably well if a 15-30 hours time, that sounds really interesting to me (and your arguments and experiences make sense, so I’ll give a high likelihood for you to be right). That makes it very interesting… but then, the problem is finding an appropriate teacher. I’m not sure a “common” drawing teacher would be the most appropriate teacher for a “rational geek” like me, and finding a drawing teacher that knows enough of geekness and rationality to have low inferential distance when explaining something to me will not be easy...
But I’ll pay more attention to that, thanks for this post !
One thing I’ll be trying to do is bridge the inferential gap here, in this sequence. Afterwards you’ll still need good instruction, but hopefully you’ll be able to mentally translate between what your teacher says and what you need to hear.
Compared to signing up for a course, how much would I lose by using a book such as Drawing on the right side of the brain or Thinking with a pencil and getting critical input from a friend who is a comic book artist but lacks any education in teaching? Is drawing a field that requires mentorship or can a motivated student get by with a textbook and occasional pointed advice?
Hi Adrien ! Welcome :)
Feel free to introduce yourself on the welcome thread
I can only speak from personal experience, but I made enormous improvements on my own with a book in a pretty short period of time. I’m now at the point where I’m looking into joining a tutor-led group, because I think I’ve made most of the easy gains from pursuing it on my own.
If you’re the sort of person who can, for example, hunker down and learn a programming language over a few hours under your own steam, I imagine you can probably do the same with drawing. For me, the experiences are quite similar.
Short answer: I don’t know.
Longer answer: I am actually very interested in seeing how you progress without menthorship (for my own empirical study—I’ve seen how people respond to an intensive 8 hour seminar, I haven’t seen how people improve with 8 hours of their own efforts. Control group would be useful)
I will note that I do not have any education in teaching—I ran this workshop specifically to gain experience in it. If your friend has college level (or equivalent) art training, then e will probably be about as qualified as I am to give you feedback. The question is the value of “occasional feedback” vs “intensive dedicated training.”
In the workshop, I gave constant feedback and occasionally demonstrated my own drawing technique. Participants felt that doing so was very helpful, and I believe it was, but I don’t know for sure how important it was. (We did notice an effect where shortly after watching me draw, people improved at drawing for a little while, although the effect didn’t last indefinitely, presumably as the memory faded and their old habits returned. In the next session I intend to demonstrate once every half hour to reinforce the benefit, and then see if the improvements seem to stick longer.)