[commieneko]

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 making progress. I know, that sounds crazy. But it’s true.

Just do it.

Go through reams of cheap paper. Happily throw most of the drawings away. Draw anything and everything. Fall in love with nothing. It’s like practicing scales for a musician. If you get a good drawing every now and then, then cool. If not, don’t worry about it.

It’s gonna take some time.

Be prepared to adjust your expectations as to what a good drawing is. It will change, drastically, over time. The way you draw will emerge rather than be something you develop or manage. Frustrating, I know. But the basics have to develop organically, like learning to talk.

Learning to draw is much more about learning to see than making marks. 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. But we don’t know how to make a mark that the brain will read as something. If it was just a matter of reproducing something that’s in front of you, then tracing would work. But nearly all tracings suck as drawings.

Having said all that, start reading anything you can find on the subject. Be prepared to ignore most of it. You are finding your own path.

You can look through my history on ycombinator more discussion and to to see lists of books that are worth your time. But look on your own too. If you find anything new and different, please share.

As far as goals, they are great things to have. But expect them to change and evolve. Why shouldn’t they. As you get better, your tastes will change. Things you saw that seemed wonderful, may suddenly be full of flaws. Things you disdained may suddenly reveal their secret appeal.

It’s an adventure as well as a skill. And the learning never stops. I’m in my 60s and have been drawing seriously since my early teens.

I’m just getting started.

[davidrupp]

"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™.

[treeman79]

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

[jstanley]

> I’m in my 60s and have been drawing seriously since my early teens.

> I’m just getting started.

I think this is intended to be encouraging, but to me it has the opposite effect. If it's going to take me 45 years to just get started, then I won't waste my time on it, I'll do something else instead.

Is it possible that you're not just getting started, but you are still learning things, albeit at a much slower rate than you were 45 years ago?

[commieneko]

“From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.’”

[psyc]

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 now.

I'm not opposed to the idea of continuous learning and improvement. It's more like in art (and programming as well), I vastly surpassed my original goals, and I'm already overqualified to do anything that I like to do and am interested in doing. I certainly do not have the skill or knowledge to do everything that is possible to do, but I don't care about that.

I suspect my attitude may differ from that of many artists. I'm not on a journey to explore some mystery. I just need the skills to execute on the projects that I imagine.

[jodrellblank]

> "If it's going to take me 45 years to just get started, then I won't waste my time on it"

You'll spend your 45 years one way or another; see also "life is a journey, not a destination" and "find something you love and you'll never work a day in your life". If you hate drawing. If you love doing the activity 'drawing' then 45 years of drawing will seem like a life well spent even if you still consider yourself just getting started.

What are you going to do when you get to "I can draw"? Draw things? Spend your time drawing things? But you don't want to spend your time drawing things to get there? You know you can pay people to do that for you if you just want the result 'pictures of things', right?

[xtrohnx]

I think it has a lot to do with what they said about your goals changing. When I first started painting a decade ago, my goal was to do a good oil portrait. But now, painting has become so personal and spiritual to me, that my goals aren't as external like they used to be. I realized a few years ago that while I am in the process of painting something, I have no fear in my heart. Exploring that has become more of my goal, and one could spend many lifetimes working through it.

[ethbr0]

It takes decades to get professional good at precision physical skills.

That's not to say you won't be twice as good of a drawer as you are now, in 2 years of serious practice.

But if you're measuring yourself against people who have spent their entire lives working on a thing... it's going to take some time to get to that level.

[odessacubbage]

you can get decent at drawing in 1-2 years, getting good will take a lifetime. the issue is that as you are learning to draw, you are also learning to see. your operable definition of good will be continuously changing, but the fruits of your labour probably would've been very impressive to the 'you' of 2 years ago.

[jpm48]

"Just getting started", I feel the same with the guitar. Been playing since I was 12, 40 years on with quite a few breaks still love it and having fun will never be a pro! I work with loads of great artists, I really can't draw (but am according to the deeds of my apprenticeship a qualified draftsman!) but still love to doodle and sketch. The awesome artists I teach and work with always amaze me, mostly the really good ones always have a sketch book with them and always doodle. This is the key, love it, practice it and enjoy :-)

[brimble]

> 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 get better at it with tons of drilling (and probably just starting over from scratch, technique-wise—I expect I'd have to totally re-train the way I do the entire activity, to fix whatever's wrong) but a little drawing here and there with lots of attention to trying to fix that has done nothing. I cannot make a remotely straight line of any length at all (an inch would be pushing my abilities, and I'd probably fail like half the time). Circles are right out. I have a good enough eye for perspective that I can make useful and recognizable sketches for e.g. home projects, but they look like a 2-year-old drew them because the lines are so bad.

Step 1 for me absolutely would be learning how to make marks that are anywhere near my intention.

[NumberWangMan]

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.

[Benjamin_Dobell]

If you're anything like me, I think it's a matter of visualisation, not coordination. I tend to shake if I try hold my hand still (and always have), my hand-writing is downright awful. My sketches / drawings are terrible - I dislike visual brainstorming sessions quite a bit!

However, I did start going through Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain a while back and seriously impressed myself by following the exercises. No, I can't draw a circle or a straight line, but those things don't exist in nature; especially when you factor in perspective.

When in the right mind-set I found I wasn't thinking about shapes at all, I was just trying to make something look the way I was visualising it. For me that's the hard part. I normally think analytically "A stop sign is a octagon with some straight lines. Stop lights are circles." That's simply not true when you're trying to draw. Which is just as well, because I can't draw those shapes for squat!

I don't think I'll ever be able to draw diagrams/charts. However, I'm sure if I kept practising I could get reasonably good at drawing people & objects. Even in a cartoon style, I think I could, with a lot of effort, improve to an acceptable standard. Even cartoons tend to have some sort of perspective and characters are not symmetrical.

[aklemm]

This is EXACTLY my experience. I took an adult learning class at a community art center and it almost literally opened my eyes. On day one, we were to draw an egg and mine looked awful. The instructor said I draw like a child, which really stung but it was true and he was being literal, not cruel.

I was stuck there my whole life, but this class taught me to stop using lines and “sketch light” (shading instead of line drawings) and use the whole arm with elbow up off the table for those circles and lines.

Draw a Box will help you, and pay a mentor if needed too.

[chris_st]

_Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain_ is fantastic. Helped me enormously when I learned to draw. I'd encourage you to do the exercise in order, and spend some time with each one, and then draw a lot between them, trying to integrate what you've learned. You'll get there!

[Madmallard]

Are there any courses that help accelerate developing accuracy in sketching? I particularly want to draw figures and faces and animated poses.

Like maybe something on composition? What about that book cartooning the head & figure?

Or do u just gotta sketch 9000000000000000000 times to get it?

I'm an amateur artist and drew every day as a kid. My sketches always have incorrect proportions if I just try to freehand it. Obviously I could trace but that defeats the purpose. It's frustrating because I already have lots of actual hours put into the craft.

[skydhash]

It’s practice and learning. Drawing is just rendering volumes as shapes. You learn first how the process works, then practice to adjust your motor skills. I’ve been drawing on and off since I was 8. I’m 26 now and I’m just decent. The above is what will really help you. Like what is the form of the eye, and what would be its shape from that angle. Then If you can draw any geometric shape accurately (by comparing line length and angle), you can draw the eye.

[natnatenathan]

I came here to say this. I studied art in school (but not an art school, so I'm not very good :) but this book was really the core of the curriculum. The exercises and approach radically helped me improved my drawing. The other component is just practicing a lot. I can't remember the URL, but there was a developer I used to follow who could not draw at all and just committed to drawing every day (using similar exercises). Over the years, he got really good.

[senectus1]

This^

Be ready to and accepting of failure. lots and lots of failure. Trying and failing is the fastest and surest way to learn. Once you let yourself fail lots then the cost of failure drops significantly and the ROI increases sharply.

[sukh]

Logged in to say Thank you!