
Ask HN: How can I learn how to paint? - scanny
 Hiya,
Just wondering if anyone has any advice&#x2F;anecdotes about learning how to paint?<p>I saw a thread a while ago about working with stained glass that got a lot of interest, and thought maybe the folk here might know a thing or two about this as well.<p>I have really gotten into looking at the works of impressionists ( https:&#x2F;&#x2F;artsandculture.google.com&#x2F;entity&#x2F;m03xj1 ) like Monet and Edward Hopper&#x27;s early work, and would love to try my hand at it. If anything it would be to get more of an appreciation for the art, and as an emotional outlet after writing code every day.<p>I am pretty independent and would like to do as much as I can myself before going to a course and wasting someones time trying to understand things I could learn on my own, and have a better foundation for learning.<p>Any input would be greatly appreciated.
======
kingkawn
I will tell you what I tell my students;

To learn to make art you spend time working with the materials. That is it.

When the urge arises to judge the quality of your work, it will be tempting to
say this is good or this is bad.

Take that energy that you might put into assessing the aesthetic and put it
back into the materials instead.

Persist and grow. Avoid aesthetic judgements, and instead produce work.

Inevitably as you deepen your experience you will begin to autonomously
develop techniques and content that you find yourself returning to.

As you progress through this process your style will begin to take unique,
identifiable shape.

Through this process you will become a true painter.

Many people mistake technical capacity at predefined aesthetics as painting,
but I would argue that this produces uninteresting work.

Every identifiable style was born from people who chose to work outside of
preexisting style.

Goodluck.

~~~
morley
Surely there has to be some aesthetic guidance along the way?

Up until my senior year of college, every writing course I took, I would never
get any _aesthetic_ feedback on my work. In grade school, my grammar and
spelling would get corrected, but otherwise, what I wrote was what I wrote.

It wasn't until I took a sitcom-writing course in college that a teacher gave
me feedback that would make my writing better: "this sentence is too long, you
don't need to use these words, this character is too inactive, this scene has
no point."

If someone had been that direct with me when I was in middle school, I'd have
spent a lot less time writing crap.

~~~
massivecali
The problem with aesthetic guidance is it invariably leads to creation of
'product' over 'art'. Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make
it art.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>Just because you can make a pretty painting doesn't make it art. //

How to start a fight at an art school!

------
jason_slack
I worked in an adult care facility. One of the patients, a 90 year old man,
was a painter. He made so many of the pieces that hung around the facility.

We were friendly. He would talk to me. He would ask for me when he needed
something. He told me I reminded him of his son.

He asked me one day if I knew how to paint. I said no. He asked if I wanted to
learn. I said yes. He said go buy these supplies and show up here tomorrow
morning. $500 later I was ready.

We watched Bob Ross literally for a week. Then he showed me how to gesso a
canvas. Then we painted. And painted. And pulled all nighters like we were 20.

He passed away 2 months after. I still paint and I never would have otherwise.

Edit: just one funny thing I remember. This man asked my wife to the movies!
She said yet. She went to pick him up but he was tired. They watched “Dumb and
Dumber” (in 2017) and had popcorn. He fell asleep before the moves was 1/4
over. :-)

~~~
forkandwait
One, that's beautiful and makes me want to cry.

Two, it speaks to getting over the hump of learning something hard, where you
have to work 100s of hours, feeling incompetent, before the payoff. Maybe
intensives like you did are the best way to get through those gross learning
curve stages.

Thanks for sharing the best thing I read on the internet this year.

~~~
jason_slack
Thank you. Very sweet of you.

It’s funny how you embark on something because you just want to try it and
then it becomes something more.

I hope my children embrace life early on. Maybe if that is all the wisdom I
pass on to them it mean I will have been successful.

~~~
forkandwait
[https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-bob-ross-
every...](https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-bob-ross-everyones-
favorite-art-teacher)

~~~
jason_slack
Thank you.

------
spectramax
In order to paint, you must first learn how to draw. There is a ton of
misinformation on the internet and in literature, especially the famous book -
"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook" [1]. This is a completely
wrong way to learn how to draw. It gets you to point where your results may
look pleasing but your foundation is going to be weak and it will fall apart.

Let me explain.

In order to draw convincingly, you must first internalize the object in 3
dimensions. You have to learn how to "think" in 3D - more specifically, given
an object, you must be able to draw it from any angle, with or without
foreshortening, and with any arrangement of illumination and with any camera
focal length. Start with simple shapes - they're boring but that is a
__must__. Then, start stacking primitives such as cones, cubes, cylinders,
etc. Draw 20 different views of the same setup of primitives. Do this everyday
for 6 months and you will pickup how to think in "3D" so to speak.

If you follow [1], you won't be able to do this. You will be able to copy a
photograph or illustration by recognizing shapes but that only goes so far. If
someone asks you to draw the same thing from a slightly different camera
angle, you're lost.

Learning how to paint then adds another layer about color harmony, texture and
stroke style. But fundamental drawing skills are __critical__ in order to
paint well. All bets are off if you're trying to do abstract art or non-
representational art.

You can take Jeffrey Watt's classes or a full course [2] or follow a few
channels such as Sycra [3] on Youtube.

[1] [https://smile.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-
Workbook/d...](https://smile.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-
Workbook/dp/1585429228/) [2]
[http://jeffreyrwatts.com/](http://jeffreyrwatts.com/) [3]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/Sycra](https://www.youtube.com/user/Sycra)

~~~
Smithalicious
This entire post sounds like a "hot take". There is indeed a ton of
misinformation around and there is no reason to believe your post isn't
exactly that, especially when you make undefended claims like "Drawing on the
Right Side of the Brain is a completely wrong way to learn".

I'm also puzzled that you explicitly put down dotrsotb but then go on to
recommend Sycra, who recommends that book frequently...

~~~
kokokokoko
It's all subjective in that most people who want to draw or paint, likely have
completely different ideas of what being good at that is.

"Drawing from the right side of the brain" is basically just a brain hack to
allow a person to essentially trace what is in front of them. To some people
that might be the goal. To make a reasonably accurate copy of what is in front
of them. For others they may want to be able to draw an accurate picture of
something from their head. Others may want to create wild stylistic
abstractions. The original post referenced impressionism. In that case a more
informed knowledge of color and composition might be more helpful.

Personally, as someone who has spent my entire life drawing(and a chunk of it
painting) I cringe at that advice to learn from that book. I have read it and
it will definitely help someone to render and accurate version of a photograph
or object in front of them. But it really boils down to a shortcut as opposed
to fundamental learning. Its like teaching math with just a series of steps to
get the answer without teaching the underlying fundamentals of what is
happening. In the short term you'll test well, but in the long term your
growth will be stunted if you do not also learn the concepts involved.

Hope that is a bit more clarification. And with all that said, for some people
that book might be wonderful. I do think it is well written and I did enjoy it
and I imagine others will as well. Its a fun read and set of exercises. Just
wanted to give you a bit more perspective on the opinions presented.

With that said, the general advice given in what you are replying to is way
over the top. No one needs to spend 6 months drawing cones in space. That
smells like your typical exaggerated internet advice that tends to prevent
people from taking the first steps.

~~~
Smithalicious
>"Drawing from the right side of the brain" is basically just a brain hack to
allow a person to essentially trace what is in front of them.

I really don't agree with this sentiment mostly due to the way it is voiced.
Yes, the core of "drawing on the right side of the brain" is learning to see
objectively and draw what you see. I wouldn't call that a "brain hack" or say
that is "essentially tracing" what's in front of them (since "tracing" is kind
of a dirty word in art context). Even if it were, that by itself is a very
valuable thing to a lot of people, since a lot of styles of drawing and
painting boil down to essentially just that, whether it's drawings of nature,
portraits, or still lives.

I would say that learning to see _is_ a fundamental drawing skill and this
book teaches you valuable things by forcing you to stop and consider what
things actually look like.

Of course, that by itself isn't sufficient, but it doesn't need to be. Nobody
is suggesting that someone use this book as their only resource. But I do
think it's a good introductory book for people who have very little to no
experience drawing.

~~~
Steel_Phoenix
Agreed. I'm a pretty solid artist who doesn't learn well from others, and I'll
still praise the book. It had another lesson in it that I never see mentioned,
one that was expanded on in Drawing on the Artist Within. Our mind has task
managers that constantly assess what we're doing. They do scheduling, handle
cost benefit analysis, etc. For someone who doesn't already have the right
aptitudes, this can lead to a nagging voice in the back of your mind telling
you that you aren't doing a good job, this is boring, you're wasting your
time. Getting people to use some simple brain hacks to stop listening to their
preconceptions and just draw what they see can bypass these issues long enough
for some people to see that they're being their own worst enemy. It isn't a
good book to teach you how to draw. It's there to help make sure you don't
give up the moment you start.

------
adpoe
Here's what I did when was in my late teens & early 20s, and taught myself.

1\. Copy famous artworks that you admire -- even just drawing in a notebook is
great, to start.

2\. Once you can copy art that you really like, start adding your own flair to
things, develop a personal style

3\. Experiment more & more

Just like with programming -- there are a ton of great books about how to
paint, how to mix colors, etc.

You can buy books and work through them, whatever is most fun.

There are 2 key points, though:

    
    
      * The only way to get better is by painting... you'll have to paint a lot
    
      * You'll want to paint a lot +only+ if you're having fun.
    

So don't worry too much. Just grab some paints and enjoy yourself. It's a
great hobby.

And try everything you can -- watercolor, oil, gouache, ink brush, encaustic,
using the palette knife only, mixing with collage, pastels, all will teach you
something. Just be consistent, and you will get good.

~~~
DJHenk
> The only way to get better is by painting... you'll have to paint a lot

As with any creative skill, especially the ones that involve fine motoric
skills, one cannot skip the practice. The advice I once read about learning
how to draw applies in some way to all of them:

"Every artist has at least a thousand bad drawings in them. It is best to get
these out as quickly as possible."

------
idlewords
I was an artist for about ten years before becoming a computer guy, doing oil
paintings from life.

I would highly suggest you take a class. There's a lot of basic tech stuff you
need to learn (how to mix paints, wash brushes, prepare canvases) and after
that come the rudiments of drawing and color.

I would compare it to learning to play an instrument. You want to pick up the
violin and just express your emotions in music after a busy day, but to get
there you need some initial help about where to put your fingers, advice from
a teacher who knows the kind of pitfalls beginners fall into, and a lot of
practice that can sometimes be frustrating.

But when you get there, it's very rewarding and enjoyable. Good luck to you!

EDIT: it's also helpful to have initial instruction so you can navigate the
thicket of art supplies. They can get very expensive and the wrong ones, or
inappropriate ones for your level of expertise, will make painting a misery.

~~~
jacquesm
I'd have been very surprised not to see a comment from you in this thread.
Could you link to some of your work?

~~~
idlewords
Sure, here are four:

[https://idlewords.com/images/ogold.jpg](https://idlewords.com/images/ogold.jpg)

[https://idlewords.com/images/csink.jpg](https://idlewords.com/images/csink.jpg)

[https://idlewords.com/images/ralcove.jpg](https://idlewords.com/images/ralcove.jpg)

[https://idlewords.com/images/qbridge.jpg](https://idlewords.com/images/qbridge.jpg)

Happy to give practical advice to anyone interested in this kind of painting.

~~~
darreld
Thanks for that. I really like these.

------
lqet
I would basically ignore any textbooks or "tutorials" and just start with
drawing first, which has the advantage that you can ignore colors. When I was
19, I learned how to draw over the course of 3 years, by using standard
printer paper, a pencil and photographs to copy. It was _incredibly_
frustrating during the first few days, but you will get better very quickly.
After a few weeks, you will realize that your perception of an image (and your
idea of drawing) will change completely. You will see an image in 3
dimensions, and you will quickly learn how you can add "depth" to an image.
It's difficult to describe, but basically it will suddenly feel like your
pencil is "diving into" the picture you are drawing, as opposed to just
scratching on the paper surface.

Something I did not expect was that the other major thing you learn during the
first few weeks is not how to draw, but how to fix mistakes you made. This was
an important realization for me, because it extends to many other professions
as well.

After you have copied a few images, you will realize the shortcomings of your
tools (paper, pencil, eraser) and you will start to look for other pencil
types or better quality paper. All of this will come naturally after a while,
you don't need textbooks for that, and you can apply this type of learning to
many other skills afterwards, because you will have developed an immunity
against these frustrating, frustrating first days.

------
robocat
By painting.

A painter is simply someone that paints.

Paint most days. Follow whatever gives you motivation.

The above is my translation from watching artistic friends of mine.

I also suspect: Whenever possible discard the that which demotivates you.
Experiment with everything, or alternatively find repetition with minute
changes or improvements, whatever is your jam. Try to avoid believing you need
to find an expert, while simultaneously copying skills from anywhere and
anyone that suits you. Or mimic nothing and noone.

Accept your work is a journey where you are always an apprentice. Mostly you
will only be proud of some parts of your results, and some parts will
disappoint you. Accept that you will look back at your best work as the work
of another person (genius or child).

But most importantly, just paint.

------
ardme
My SO went to RISD, is an excellent painter technically and that is what she
does for a living. From what she has said the first year or two of art school
was just a huge grind of doing lots of drawings 8-12 hours a day, ect trying
to get as photo-realistically perfect as possible. Lot of drawing people ect.
Then there are different styles of painting she would focus specifically on a
given style and practice it. But she always starts with a sketch, then under
layers, so drawing comes first.

She practices drawing all of the time. She goes to live figure drawing at the
local art school every week. Basically what I am saying is that from what I
understand to get to a high level of technical skill painting, you start with
a high level of technical skill drawing. There may be other ways, but this
seems to be the typical path.

------
iillexial
There's a great tutorial.

[http://drawabox.com/](http://drawabox.com/)

They also have a subreddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/)

~~~
nevode
I'm taking this course and I'm loving it. The course is free but I'm using
patron to support the creator.

------
sizzzzlerz
I'm not a painter but I think my experience at learning to play the piano in
my 50s is applicable. 30 years after college, where my musical career
(clarinet) ended, I finally decided to try to learn to play the piano, having
had a desire to do so for decades. I started out by purchasing an inexpensive
Yamaha electronic keyboard and some beginner's books, sat down and starting
banging away. A year later, after gaining some competency, and, more
importantly, learning that I really enjoyed it, I went out a purchased a real
piano. While my late start and relative lack of innate talent means that I
probably will never be as good as I wished, I can play well enough for my own
tastes and I still enjoy both practicing and playing. My only regret is not
doing this earlier.

As so many others have stated, the key to learning how to do something is to
actually get yourself dirty and do it. The tools you can acquire, the variety
of things to paint are endless. The only thing you're missing is the will.

Good luck!

------
Jemaclus
I know a lot of people who have just painted along with Bob Ross. Maybe that's
an option?

~~~
tabtab
Ross's approach is probably closest to instant gratification: the scenes are
intentionally designed to be easy, quick, and striking.

Water color can also be instant gratification, but you can't really paint over
mistakes, unlike oils (if you wait for them to dry).

Looking online, people's early Ross-clone works are not so hot, but practice
makes perfect. I would suggest picking one segment of a scene, such as part of
mountain, and keep trying until you perfect it.

Take a break from the sub-scene for a few days so that you revisit it with a
fresh viewpoint. Maybe rotate sub-scenes to rework. Staring at the same thing
too long in one sitting can dampen one's objectivity, I've found. This applies
to writing also.

Keep in mind that Ross used to crank out such paintings for Alaskan tourist
shops en masse. He has the experience of many thousands of paintings, making
it look easier than it is. I'm sure his first dozen were clunkers or took a
while.

~~~
tjr
_I would suggest picking one segment of a scene, such as part of mountain, and
keep trying until you perfect it._

I remember Ross doing a training video along these lines... the resulting
painting at the end was not one whole scene, but a bunch of discrete
components: trees, mountains, water, etc.

I did a few paintings in his technique years ago. I was surprised at how easy
it was to produce something decent.

------
justanothersys
There are so many interesting approaches you could take to enjoy painting as a
programmer! Welcome to the fun:
[https://youtu.be/Up2-myTEviE](https://youtu.be/Up2-myTEviE)

Definitely spending lots of time with yourself and your materials, working on
pictures, is the easiest way to learn and trust your intuition, and have the
best time.

If you enjoy Impressionism, early American Modernism, etc. then you would
probably also enjoy the range of practices that were inspired by them over the
decades. Recently a rather important computer artist John F. Simon Jr. wrote a
book: Drawing Your Own Path, which is great:
[https://www.drawingyourownpath.com](https://www.drawingyourownpath.com)

I’d also recommend looking into Harold Cohen’s work, and Casey Reas:
[https://vimeo.com/22955812](https://vimeo.com/22955812)

To go back a bit further I’d suggest the BW film Painter’s Painting, and Shock
of The New, the BBC documentary series by Robert Hughes, both of which you can
find on YouTube.

Just paint man and have fun exploring your emotions while broadening your
knowledge of the ways others have explored theirs throughout time.

~~~
tudelo
I watched the first link. My first thought is that a pool makes for a very
strange meeting space, especially for digital art. I know, pretty complex
analysis.

------
peterlk
Paint more!

[https://excellentjourney.net/2015/03/04/art-fear-the-
ceramic...](https://excellentjourney.net/2015/03/04/art-fear-the-ceramics-
class-and-quantity-before-quality/)

------
willart4food
OK, in order to get some satisfaction out of it, and to continue for an
extended period of time, possibly a lifetime, you'll need to invest in some
education:

1\. [Optional] take an Art appreciation class. The problem here is that they
are all crap. Best to visit the closest Enciclopedic museum near you, and take
as many of the free tours. Sure you'll have your preferences (you mentioned
impressionists) but it's good to have a well rounded worldview

2\. Buy the book "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" and do the self-
paced course. Yes you need drawing skills in order to paint, not so much that
painting is filling the drawings with color, but painting is drawing with
paint. Also the book will teach you about negative space, proportion and more.

3\. [Optional] after #2 above, take this free course
[https://drawabox.com/](https://drawabox.com/)

4\. Take a color theory class, preferably offline, or online, or read a couple
of books. You'll be painting as well, which is good

5\. Take a composition class, you can take it before or after #4 above.
Preferably offline, or online, or read a couple of books. You'll be painting
as well, which is good

6\. Take a painting class, FINALLY! I know. Preferably offline, or online.
Start with acrylic, then - if you want - go to oils. Of if you're into
watercolors do watercolors. Best if you explore all three mediums. Blick Art
is your friend for supplies.

------
shahar2k
My career involves making visual art (drawing painting, 3d art and more) there
is a lot of great advice here,

Kingkawn is absolutely right, familiarity with the materials absolutely
shortens the gap between desired results and actual results. billfruit
mentioned what my favorite teacher always hammered at me "to learn to draw
(/paint) you have to learn to see" learning to interpret what's in front of
you as 2d forms, textures, lines, also helps in translating what you want to
paint to what you will be painting.

there's a lot more here but what I'll add is a very specific resource -
[https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/](https://www.alexhays.com/loomis/) Loomis
books got me started in art. they were written 80 years ago and still are some
of the most approachable books on how to draw and paint available.

my own favorite traditional art is figure drawing / sculpting and it doesnt
completely overlap your desires but for that I recommend a good anatomy book
(my favorites are "Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist" by peck, and
bridgeman's "constructive anatomy" which are at the photo-real and volumetric
breakdown ends of the spectrum)

really the main thing that helps learning art is to reduce your barrier to
creating. join a regular life drawing or plein air painting group, start with
a home studio you can relax at. something that can be regular and low
pressure.

hope this all helps.

~~~
acdanger
As someone who's interested in branching into the more "artistic" side of
tech, I'd love to hear what it is you do in your career.

I currently work as a web developer, but enjoy photography and animation on
the side.

------
Isamu
Anecdote: the biggest thing I am learning now is just how much professional
painters allow themselves to completely change their minds in the middle of
doing a piece. I never thought this before, I thought everybody just knocked
things out once they became proficient (and yeah, that can be true but not
always), more often when I watch a video of an entire painting session they
can decide to completely move things around, change the background, the mood,
etc, and they are using physical paint, not photoshop.

Also in drawing, there is MUCH more erasing going on than I ever thought. It's
true that some artists just work straight ahead, but I have never allowed
myself to rethink things if I don't like where it's going. I make the mistake
of abandoning works that I think are not going right, instead of fixing things
which is a very, very valuable skill to develop.

Watercolors are pretty unforgiving in my experience as a beginner because they
are transparent, and you have to be careful and plan things out in advance. I
think there is a lot of technique to master there if you are learning on your
own.

So you would want opaque colors, and you can get that with gouache +
watercolor but more likely you may like acrylics.

Color theory is important. Take time to work make your own tests and color
tables as you get used to a selection of colors.

I would add that watching videos of how different people work has changed how
I view my own process. There are a lot of different ways to work and some may
resonate with you.

------
patrickxie
My previous startup that I worked on was to solve the problem of "I want to
paint, but I don't know where to start".

We used the deep learning style transfer to stylize pictures/drawings with Van
Gogh Style. Here's the best one that turned out great (out of 10,000 pictures
we styled, this is what everyone loves unanimously)
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07831NQJ7](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07831NQJ7)

Then we turn them into paint by numbers kit.
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H2VDKM1](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H2VDKM1)

Apparently the paint is classified as Hazmat, and it took us 6 month to get
this thing approved to sell on Amazon. Which kind of killed the idea, as we
had to pivot and do other things in order to stay afloat.

I always wanted to learn to paint, but I don't know where to start. I know the
first few paintings is going to be ugly, and I don't really want to paint
apples and oranges to learn. So this whole startup idea is to make it easy and
fun to get started on painting and get the momentum going, because what you
paint is idea(picture) created by you. And the painting methodology is simply
filling in numbers with colors.

I hope one day I have the time to get back to this. I really believe in this
idea.

~~~
WA
I think you think too much about this. From my experience: I took an art class
for about a year. It improved my drawing and painting skills a lot.

Sure, the problem is that your first pictures are kind of ugly. But you can
compensate this by just painting the next one and not thinking too much about
the outcome.

Furthermore, I realized at some point, that it really doesn’t matter what you
paint. An apple and an orange can be highly satisfying.

Painting has two different aspects to it: producing a satisfying result and
the flow-like state of painting. Although I have to admit that I found
painting to be quite exhausting. It takes a lot of attention and energy to be
focused for 2-3 hours.

~~~
patrickxie
wow thanks for the perspective.

have you tried paint by numbers? are those less exhausting for you?

------
mntmoss
I'm primarily a "drawer", not a "painter", but that said, there's a lot that
translates between genres of visual art, especially when we're talking about
representational work. I work a lot with pixel art which is often compared to
painting in terms of achievable results.

When I give advice to people who want to get into pixel art, I usually give
these recommendations:

* Pick a few art fundamentals and aim to study them, by recreating real life scenes or other images with a focus on a specific principle(lots of people will study by recreating the classics). Proportion is one I regularly struggle with because I'll tend to rush along through the early part of the image: if you're drawing figures but don't add enough structure to their proportioning, they will look deformed. But I learned how to proportion better by studying typography, which elaborates greatly on measures and ratios. For any given art principle there are usually guidelines, tricks, and ways to add structure that help in conveying a desired indication without just doing guess-and-check and grinding your muscle memory. And there are a lot of working artists who produce output by grinding through it with the help of the undo key, cut+paste, etc., but traditional forms usually emphasize bringing more preparation to the image.

* Fewer colors are usually better - a principle that is true within pixel art(using more colors usually means you are adding detailed lighting and texture, which can get out of control pretty quickly and doesn't add a lot of information to a low-resolution pixel image) and only somewhat less so in other forms. Paints offer uncanny amounts of smoothness through blending, but this also means having to manage a nearly infinite number of values. Folks who really want to convey perfectly accurate representational scenes these days are likely to look towards the gamut of digital tools to help manage or automate these considerations, since fighting them with traditional materials can be so time-consuming.

* In terms of specific techniques for making marks or stylizing the image, they do depend a lot on the medium, but you don't need a lot of different techniques to do good work. For pixel art, I often suggest following castpixel's[0] style, which is to always make pixel clusters of two or more. This is a style that forces the indication of "brush strokes" throughout the image and makes it easy to resolve fine details, though it sacrifices smoothness around edges.

Across all the arts, the creative part often takes the form of setting down a
few broad conceptual rules and structures intended to communicate the idea,
and then the remainder is an exercise in the technical followthrough of those
rules. So don't feel too pressured to follow a specific set of rules or
techniques, as long as you execute consistently through the piece. As a
hobbyist you're totally free to explore any combinations that come to mind,
even if they're "inefficient" or "unpolished" \- you don't have clients
waiting on you!

[0]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/castpixel/status/1006437480059596...](https://mobile.twitter.com/castpixel/status/1006437480059596800)
(she's talked about style in more depth, but you can see the clustering rule
pretty clearly in her work)

------
aqeel
Full time coder here, who started to draw/paint 2-3 years back. (You can see
my journey so far here:
[https://www.instagram.com/aqeelvn/](https://www.instagram.com/aqeelvn/))

Haven't read all the response here, so I probably might be repeating, but the
basic idea is to spend some quality time actually doing it.

Like other arts this is also something one could learn. Take the time to
educate yourself with the concepts in visual art. There is a lot you can learn
on your own from resources out there. That was the option available to me
mostly.

A solid grasp in drawing is required for making any serious work in
representational painting.

Andrew Loomis has written a bunch of books that are now mostly available
freely on the web. Its really old but its very good.

For painting, I recommend "Alla Prima" by Richard Schmid. This is not a casual
read(even though anyone could enjoy the great paintings). Its full of solid
technical concepts and advice. You learn more and more from it as you develop
yourselves.

Draw from life as much as possible. Don't depend on photographs during your
learning phase(although that is never really over) If you don't understand why
that matters, don't bother and just stick to it. Soon you will see the
difference :)

Good luck!

------
lootsauce
First - Where does your motivation come from? Is it an emotion, an image in
your mind, a place and how it makes you feel? Go deep into that, and the
process of painting, whatever that looks like, should become a means of
lifting that up and embracing that motivation in a deeper way.

Second - Painting is a process and understanding technique is all about having
a relationship between you and your faculties in conjunction with the unique
materials and their inherent processes. Whatever you choose to paint with,
oil, acrylic, water color, guache, digital, they all have their limits and
their sublime qualities, embrace these limitations and qualities as their
strength. Get to know the history of pigments for example to develop a deeper
appreciation for this kind of stuff.

Of course drawing skills are essential but beyond a faculty in rendering the
work of learning to draw is a serious head-trip. Sure it is about developing
muscle groups. The eye to see, the arm and hand to capture, but it is equally
if not more-so a battle of overcoming the chatter and false images your mind
possess and overlays that are not matching what your eyes are seeing in the
world and on the canvas. It is about overcoming your own ego because it will
lie to you, make you lazy, invest emotion into a mark on the page and make you
frustrated and tell you you are not good enough or you are better than any
actually constructive criticism. The wepon against all these things is
clearing the page and starting over, clearing your mind and looking again, and
closer.

It is lazy and far slower to depend purely on yourself, find other people you
can learn from take what you can from their experience and repeat.

------
kraig911
As someone who paints I ask myself the same question on how to play piano. I'm
told the same thing I tell everyone else - practice.

Obviously practice fundamentals - understudy drawing, form, color, composition
etc.

One thing I think a lot of people think is when a painter looks at his work
he'll say "this is a badass painting" when in reality everyone like myself I
met is it usually ends up as a collection of compromises versus what I wanted
to achieve :)

Personally depending on the medium invest in moderate to good supplies. Don't
waste money on that one off brush, you'll find better utility getting a good
round brush from 0-5, a nice flat and a sturdy fan brush. One thing to help
with experimentation is invest more in palettes and newsprint paper or
cardboard.

If you're into digital I don't know what to tell you. I desire the feedback of
my hand on the brush and the way the hairs course through the surface
spreading the medium. However I'm sure it provides as much relaxation and
meditation as painting the conventional way it does.

Godspeed :)

------
CptMauli
Maybe you might enjoy having a look at what Zed Shaw (of Rails is a ghetto
fame) does:

[https://github.com/zedshaw/learn-painting-the-hard-
way](https://github.com/zedshaw/learn-painting-the-hard-way)

[https://zedshaw.com/category/art/](https://zedshaw.com/category/art/)

------
lizardwalk5
I think prior to painting in any style, it is useful to learn how to draw. I
found this book recently which I think is really excellent. As you progress
through the exercises, the instructor has you work in different media,
including paints (but in order to learn how to express a 3d object on 2d
material).

The Natural Way to Draw by Nicolaides. It might be found at a library but here
is a link to amazon (I don't get any credits for this just for ease of
searching)

[https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Way-Draw-KIMON-
NICOLAIDES/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Way-Draw-KIMON-
NICOLAIDES/dp/0285638386)

Otherwise if you're more experimental maybe just study your favorite
impressionists and try to copy their style on your own subjects until you find
your own way to do it. I personally am into being methodical but this approach
(starting realistically) just takes longer.

------
tuxxy
The hardest part about painting besides the techniques is composition.

Whether your work is representational or non-representational, it's extremely
difficult to go from what you have in your head to what you put on the canvas.

If you have a thought, an idea, or even an emotion you should practice putting
_that_ on canvas. The technique will come as you paint more and more. YouTube
can help for some techniques if you want to figure out how to do something.

Really, just start painting and the rest will come. Experiment with texture,
shape, and composition. Don't worry too much about color. When you start
getting better at composition the colors become obvious. I'd even recommend
your first few paintings just stay with a single color.

------
allenu
I would suggest taking a class. In my city I've taken a couple of night
classes, one for painting with acrylics/oil and one for painting with
watercolors.

On top of that, draw draw draw. This will out tremendously when painting
(which is adds onto the skill of drawing and being able to "see" things as an
artist).

Draw and paint because you want to. I get the sense from your post that you
want to learn to paint because it would be an interesting skill to pick up.
I'd say try drawing something and see if you like it. Honestly, you may not.
Don't do it because it's a neat thing to be able to do.

------
MH15
I always wanted to learn how to draw but then when my college provided me with
an iPad Pro and Pencil, I didn't have any more excuses. I think Procreate (an
amazing Photoshop-like drawing app for iPad) was only $10 at the time of
purchase so this setup completely removed all cost for me to get into the
hobby. While I'm still more invested in other forms of art (photography and CG
mainly), sketching/drawing allows me to remove my mind from my Engineering
coursework for a time and open my perspectives.

------
2038AD
IMHO I would say start simple and work your way up. Begin with doodling and
then progress to more careful drawing. It's often easier to copy another
artist's work or to draw from a photograph. One advantage is you can draw
lines over your reference imagine and make measurements. From there you can
practice shading and get a sense of tone. Don't try to cheat by smudging with
your finger. It may sound stupid but make sure you have a full set of pencils
as you'll probably want to go darker that you can with a regular pencil. Once
you're somewhat happy with that I would then move onto acrylic paints. You can
draw out the image as before with measuring and then use that pencil drawing
as a guide to paint over the top. Be careful when using black paint. It may
just be the paint I used but attempting to make darker shades by mixing black
would just give black. Once you're happy with acrylic paints I would then move
to oil paints. Oil paints take longer to dry than acrylic paints which can
throw you off. One of the great things about paint is if you make a mistake,
you can simply paint over it :-) (though with oils you may need to be a little
more patient). You may want to take what I've said with a pinch of salt as
I've not painted in years and I'm out of practice with drawing. I still make
collage-type images in Gimp though :-)

------
geuis
Beginner oil paint set < $30USD: [https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Painting-Deluxe-
Art-Set/dp/B07813...](https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Painting-Deluxe-Art-
Set/dp/B0781346C3/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=beginner+oil+paint+set&qid=1552502898&s=gateway&sr=8-3)

Bob Ross:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc](https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc)

------
zoomablemind
Learning is a continuous and long-term process, so it's important to have that
source of motivation and inspiration to propel you through the routine. Lots
of routine! Not unlike coding in that sense.

If Monet and Hopper is what fuels currently your interest, then just go for
it! Pick a work that draws you the most and set it as goal to copy it.

It's a most intimate and rewarding way to connect with your favorite artist!
You'd naturally discover and learn tons of stuff both about the artist and
techniques.

I'd opt to use just pencil at first, just to get the feeling of the lines,
shapes, and flow of the curves/angles. Pencil is the most readily available
medium, you likely already have some basic ability to draw lines ( straw man
drawings are still drawings!).

To make this 'organized', I'd buy a simple sketchbook, that you'd carry with
you, ready for use any moment you'd get time and drive to draw.

Next, very soon, you could explore the color layer by using .... a box of
Crayola pencils. Cheap, portable, Real! Same art work now with adding color,
strokes too.

Your sketchbook is your diary, good for notes and questions too!

At some point trying out paints becomes just a choice of medium. Keep your
motivation burning - the artists you like are excellent guides. But
instructors are here for that exact reason to answer your call and help
unblock your progress. Boiling in your own juices too long could get you over-
cooked :)

And, hey, your sketchbook is your passport on this fun journey! Profitez bien!

------
qrv3w
Just do it! You have a passion for it, so harness it!

Go to the dollar store and buy some brushes and canvas (both are surprisingly
good despite being cheap). Then buy a 48-color acrlyic (or oil) set, so you
don't need to worry about mixing colors (~$40, but worth it).

Paint from photos. Find a really nice photo, sketch it out with paint/pencil
and then paint what you see.

Paint with a friend or a nice teacher. Painting will be, and is always,
frusturating. Throughout every painting, at some point, you will look at it
and think its terrible. Painting with others is nice because when you get to
that point and you can ask someone to look at it and tell you its not bad (and
they are usually right). Once you paint through the frusturation you will find
anything you think is bad can be made good.

As others suggested, you might also learn to draw. IMO the best way to do this
is to go to a model drawing session. These are uninstructed and the time-
varying of the poses will help a lot.

Take pride in anything you make. Hang it up on the wall, take a picture of it.
Don't compare yourself to Monet or other painters, just paint what you like
and enjoy what you paint.

Good luck, I'm happy to share more if you'd like.

------
boltzmannbrain
Bob Ross. That is all.

[https://www.netflix.com/title/80097532](https://www.netflix.com/title/80097532)

~~~
mlok
It's all there on the official Youtube channel too :
[https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc/playlists)

------
shirajg
I have some tips for you, coming from an illustration background. You can see
some of my work here:
[https://shirajg.wordpress.com](https://shirajg.wordpress.com)

Try charcoal and a white pencil on toned paper at first. Work from dark to
light, applying large areas of tone with the charcoal, then picking out light
shapes with a kneaded eraser, and finally adding highlights with white. This
is a lot like what you eventually do with paint.

When starting to paint, use oil paint, or acrylic with a retarder in it to
slow drying time. This will give you a lot of freedom to fix mistakes.

Work in layers when painting. This can let you tackle different aspects of the
painting independently. You can start by toning your painting surface to a
base color, then doing a sketch on top of that to establish the big shapes and
edges. Once that's dry, you will always have the underdrawing to help you
along as you paint. If you screw up the painting, you can scrape off the paint
and start from the drawing again.

Learn to see values. The best way to do this is to squint. You'll see obvious
contrasts in the light and dark, these are the values. All the detail within
those values needs to sit very close to the value it's within. It will seem
like there's a lot more contrast when your eyes are wide open and you're
focused on one area, but you'll lose the gestalt effect of the light if you do
that.

Work your paint from thin to think. You can be more sketchy and loose with
thin, flowing paint. Save the thick stuff for the end, when you're sure
everything is in the right place, looking how you'd like.

Learn to mix colors to a target value. Pick a random color and paint a swatch
of that somewhere, then take another color and lighten or darken it until it's
the same value as the first swatch. You can test how close you got by dabbing
a bit of the new mix into the swatch you painted before. If the value matches
it should fade into the swatch pretty seamlessly. If there's contrast between
the dab and the swatch, the values is too light or dark. Do this enough and
you'll be able to eye it.

If you want to paint figurative works, learn to draw.

Learning the 3D form of objects is of great help and should work in tandem
with the visual stimulii you are observing.

Hope this helps, questions welcome.

------
billfruit
I have tried to pick up drawing/painting as an adult, I felt it to be much
easier to make progress than trying to learn a foreign language or learn a
musical instrument.

Most important thing is learning to see things better, to gauge their shapes
and proportions more clearly so that one can represent them on paper. I also
felt it is surprisingly easy to emulate from how other people are
painting/drawing esp from youtube videos, etc.

John Ruskin wrote that "But I have never yet, in the experiments I have made,
met with a person who could not learn to draw at all; and in general there is
a satisfactory and available power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes,
just as nearly as all persons gave the power of learning French, Latin or
arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them
to possess such knowledge."

I heartily recommend John Ruskin, "The Elements of Drawing" to all. A chance
reading of that book, lead me to trying my hand at drawing/painting.

------
dusted
I can't paint, but I do enjoy it, so my advice may not be of any help.

It is not so much about learning how to apply paint to canvas, it is much more
about learning how to see, how to take what is in front of you, and strip it
of concept, that's not a door, it's not even a square, theres something
lighter there, something darker there, maybe there's a gradient going in that
direction. Deconstruct until it becomes raw visual.

Then buy some paints (I suggest acrylics, they smell nicer and are more
forgiving, and come on! 100 years lifetime is quite enough for our paintings!)

Buy some canvas, the cheap stuff. Buy some brushes, any set will do, but you
should have large and small ones. You don't need a palette, a piece of
cardboard is just fine.

Have fun! The process of applying paint to canvas is interesting in and of
itself, so do that for a while before trying to make anything that looks like
something.

I'm a somewhat frugal person, so my emphasis on using cheap stuff may not be
relevant to others, but for me, it lowers the barrier of entry, because I'm
not "wasting" good materials, it makes me able to start a painting with less
of an idea, which means more often than I would otherwise. The blank canvas is
perfect, nothing has gone wrong with it yet, it is not tainted by idea..
Smearing paint onto it is destruction for a while, I will be destroying the
canvas, and wasting paint until it is done, and at that point, it will have no
more potential, whatever it is, it is, and it will always be less than its
potential, someone better could have done much better with those materials, so
they were wasted, and that is why I need to use cheap stuff, to feel less
guilty about wasting them. Because I waste them purely for my own pleasure.

Here are my pictures: [http://chromophiliat.dk](http://chromophiliat.dk)

------
bozoUser
My wife has been hobby painting for the last few years! Like others have said
the foremost thing that will help you improve is to enjoy the painting
experience. We have so much art lying around our apartment that soon we will
run out of space.

During her early days she would paint 1,2 paintings over the weekend, and with
time the sophistication grew and she started exploring newer techniques, and
at this stage some of her paintings take a week or 2 to complete. Some of her
colleagues and friends have shown keen interest in buying her artwork so that
tells you she`s getting good at it.

Shameless plug:
[https://instagram.com/swethareddyart](https://instagram.com/swethareddyart)

There are a lot of other artists on IG who share their work and techniques
some even goto the length of making videos explaining the techniques.

Side note: looking for tips on best ways to take a picture of the artwork and
get prints? Anyone have experience doing this.

------
danthewireman
After looking at a ton of youtube videos, taking art classes, and even an in-
person atelier (drawing in a studio while being guided by a "master"), by far
the best art teaching I've come across is Evolve Artist[0]. It focuses on
taking small steps to get the fundamentals down solid. I expect it'll take me
a few years to get through the whole course, but I can already tell my ability
to draw from life and handle brushes and paint has improved dramatically.
There's a lot of personal feedback based on what you do, and I've found that
to be a really effective way to improve with art.

I'll put my pom-poms down now. I'm not affiliated with Evolve other than being
a student. And my goal after 20 years of web dev work is to be a professional
writer/illustrator, so I'm taking this art thing pretty seriously.

[0][https://evolveartist.com/](https://evolveartist.com/)

------
blue4
\- lay out a small inch grid over your favorite painting [throw a painting
into photoshop on a tablet to have greater zoom]

\- focus on perfecting the small squares only not the larger piece, the fun is
jumping around from your favorite puzzle piece and not going in order.

\- once you're done remove the grid and blend in the edges of each square to
it's adjacent one.

------
pault
Years ago I found a thread on an art forum that started with the author saying
he wanted to learn how to draw, and progressed from childish sketches of hands
and spheres to master-level portraits. I can't find it for the life of me, but
if anyone knows what I'm talking about I would love to get a link. :)

~~~
dtn
[http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/831-Journey-...](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/831-Journey-
of-an-Absolute-Rookie-Painting-5-and-Drawing-1-\(9-18-02\))

A real shame conceptart.org is dead...

edit: [https://vimeo.com/29510470](https://vimeo.com/29510470) here's a
slideshow of his submitted works, a lot of the old hosting is gone

~~~
pault
I knew HN would remember it! I remember reading a blog post that linked to
that thread in 2012 and it totally blew my mind (actually I think it was
submitted here).

------
werber
I would highly recommend finding a place that offers figure drawing sessions
to learn to translate form to paper. That foundation will help you so much
when you're trying to translate your vision to canvas. You could also just
YouTube tips and get a friend to get naked for you. In terms of paint I'd go
to a dollar store and just buy a bunch of random paint, brushes, and canvases.
They usually have acrylic, oil and watercolor. They're obviously going to be
lower quality but they'll help you figure out what you want to pursue. YouTube
tutorials on styles you want to emulate and then grow. Grab a cheap projector
and Trace a picture you took on your phone on canvas and go crazy. Finger
paint on poster board with tempra. Try weird things that just come to mind.

------
gdubs
I think drawing and painting is a wonderful investment to make in yourself.
Others here may disagree, but I highly recommend the classic, “Drawing on the
Right Side of the Brain.”

I’d suggest getting some big paper, some fairly wide felt brushes, and India
ink. This will force you to loosen-up and get your body into it. A common
mistake is gripping a brush or whatever like it’s a #2 pencil and you’re about
to do homework. The aim is to be free, loose, smooth.

Experiment with charcoal. Use materials you don’t feel bad about “wasting”. It
takes practice.

Drawing from life is invaluable, so if you can find time to go outside and
simply draw what you see, you’ll get steady progress. Try to measure with your
hands / brush, to see how accurately you’re depicting the scene in front of
you.

It’s a rewarding challenge. Also, remember to breath :)

Good luck!

------
pcmaffey
I've been teaching myself illustration for a kid's app I'm making. It's such a
different mental exercise than coding!

And yet... I found that I was getting stuck on things while drawing. It really
wasn't until I started to bring some of my discipline and rigor from
engineering to art making, that I was able to break through. Specifically,
debugging what wasn't working with my art. Breaking it down, and trying new
ideas.

So I would say, there's actually a lot of similarities in the practice of
learning to make art and programming, even if the actual skills,
sensibilities, and motivations involved are completely different. You're
probably more equipped to make progress than you think.

------
keithnz
I'm a coder who learnt to paint, and what I did was attend a into course over
a number of weeks and I found that was a really good way to do it (for me)...
it was pretty cheap and it quickly broke my preconceptions. I went in wanting
to be quite precise, and that is nearly the opposite of what you need to do.
Painting is highly refactorable, mistakes don't doom your painting. A lot of
the trick to painting is just to paint a lot and learn what paint does how it
interacts with other paint and how you can manipulate it with various
instruments ( brushes, etc )

If you are going to teach yourself, I reckon watching Bob Ross on youtube and
try and follow along is not a bad way to go.

------
LarryMade2
Have you actually painted something yet? Start with that and see how far you
get, and then start practicing, finding the right medium, etc.

I did that - studied on how to paint a design on a shirt. At some point you
gotta just buy the stuff and start and experience how it works and what to do
next.

Just like everyone will show you the "best way to build an app" there's a lot
of books that will show you the "best way to paint". And like app development,
ultimately you will need to just work it out for yourself and hone your own
style.

I'd set your sights on whatever you want to see painted and how then do
whatever it takes to achieve it. :-)

------
talkingtab
My favorite painting is Van Gogh's wheat field with crows. Not that I
understood why for a long time. I finally realized that when I look at it, I
feel like I am standing in his shoes, looking at the field and understand just
a bit what it was like to be him at that moment.

There are lots of ways to learn to paint, starting with paint by numbers,
taking classes, reading books, but those are not the important parts and they
often get in the way. The essential thing is finding a way to get the painting
to tell someone about how you, emphasis on you, experience something.

The good news is that just making the attempt will make you a better coder!

------
essayist
If you're in/near Washington, DC, come to my wife's class. Free to students,
paid for by DC government:
[http://watercolordc.com/](http://watercolordc.com/)

------
SmileyJames
Learn go draw first. Pencil, paper, eraser, sharpener.

Best way to learn to draw is to go to a life drawing session. Drawing the
human figure will be a great challenge and will teach you to look at your
subject.

Moving onto painting... Read some basic colour theory. Artists say the primary
colours are: Red; Blue; Yellow. They mean: Magenta; Cyan; Yellow really. Start
with a 6 colour pallette, a warm version and a cool version of each primary
colour.

I'm currently attempting to forge a career as a professional artist:
[https://www.james-o.tools/](https://www.james-o.tools/)

------
patsplat
Figuring drawing is a great first step to loosen up, relax, and practice
seeing and abstraction. There's probably a class nearby.

Photography, especially digital, is a great way to explore composition and
narrative.

And a key bit of advice - take a class in oil painting first. Acrylic and
water color seem simpler, but are less forgiving of mistakes. Dedicate a
studio space / corner to practice painting.

Art is like exercise - pick what you enjoy doing and will keep doing over what
someone else says to do.

------
Dilacerate
Others have this mostly covered it seems, but I'd add: it's easy to get
discouraged when you start a painting, because everything looks rough, flat,
and badly-proportioned. A lot of people tend to give up there, but the trick
is to keep putting down more paint. Paintings by talented artists look the
same as a bad sketch when they first start and only have one layer of paint
down, but by the time a good-looking painting is done there are many layers of
paint on it.

------
dbcurtis
I would advise to go take a beginner class from the get-go. You will be less
frustrated in the long run.

What is your current ability to draw? Before you start wrangling a craft-
intensive media, develop the ability to get scale and proportion and line
correct, and learn you some composition. A sketchbook of decent paper and some
good art pencils will help you accomplish all of that. An old book that
"worked for me" w.r.t. going from crap drawings to "ok, I can practice now and
get better" is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain." I haven't seen that
book in a while, so I don't know if it is still around. Start with a drawing
class if you are not confident in your drawing ability.

But maybe you already draw well and understand composition and color, and want
to tackle a painting media. Think about which media is right for you. My
observations (I am not a painter):

Water color: My sister is a professional artist and art teacher, and does
mostly water color. This media requires modest set-up and clean-up. The paper
and tools are somewhat specialized. It rewards good use of negative space, and
color blending using washes and layering. The ultimate "less is more" media.
Color blending is reasonably logical.

Acrylic: My mother's media choice, after charcoal drawings. It acts somewhat
like oil, and you can achieve oil-like effects. But it dries much, much
faster, so wet-on-wet techniques are mostly not a thing. Set-up is a little
less work that oil, clean-up is HUGELY easier than oil. Color blending is
fairly logical.

Oil: My daughter's favorite media. Set aside space for it. Set aside painting
clothes. (Well, actually, if you go into your your painting room, stains will
leap onto whatever you are wearing, so those clothes will become oil painting
clothes.) Set up is not bad, since you have a room permanently set up for oil
painting. Clean-up is time consuming, so oils are really only practical if you
have large blocks of time. Color blending is abstruse. (My daughter is now
living in a college dorm room, so oils are not part of her life, and she is
using it as an opportunity to learn water color and acrylic. She finds
acrylic's rapid drying to be an annoyance.)

Again, for any of these media, find a class. There is a craft to each of them,
and it will save you frustration.

------
bovermyer
Shopping list:

\- small brush, medium brush

\- cheap easel

\- value pack of small (8"x10" or so) canvases

\- one of those "cheap" acrylic paint sets that includes white, black, red,
yellow, and blue paint.

1\. After buying your supplies, find images of paintings that you like.

2\. Copy them.

3\. Repeat the first two steps for awhile.

4\. Set up a bunch of inanimate objects, and paint those from life.

5\. Repeat step four for awhile.

Also, DO NOT COMPARE YOUR WORK TO OTHERS'. Compare your work to your own
previous work. You will only be perpetually angry or disappointed in your own
work otherwise.

Source: I'm an artist.

------
doublePopsicle
Ah, I was afraid to start painting at first, myself. I'm currently a full time
freelance artist, and I work with both paint and traditional/digital
illustration. I'm also nearly completely self taught.

My first piece of advice might seem a little bleh: Just start! Really. Grab
some premade canvases from wal-mart or Amazon (nothing super pricey or
massive), and a starter set of both acrylic and oil paints. I say both,
because both of them work very differently from each other. Acrylic dries much
faster, and water washes it right off, but (in my personal experience) oil
paint is much better for colors and mixing them up and doing all sorts of
crazy neat things.

Learning to draw first is nice, yes, but it isn't exactly necessary. I started
drawing and moved to painting, but I've met other artists who started with
painting and went to drawing with graphite. Art is fluid and unique to each
individual, and no one does anything the same way.

Just starting out, don't try to imagine a massive, amazing piece your first
time. It'll just bum you out. Start off with simple things, like painting a
vase, or some scattered objects around your house. You aren't trying to
impress anyone yet, so just do simple things to learn how the paint works, how
it reacts to different strokes and different brushes. With acrylic, add a
touch of water to thin it out and let other colors bleed through. Add a little
linseed oil to oil paints to make them thinner and easier to blend.

there's all sorts of videos and courses you could take, but honestly, I've
never really looked into any of that. They help, yes, but painting is a very
personal, emotional thing. In time, you'll find what you like, what you don't
like, how you like to hold brushes and use them, etc. There's no right or
wrong way to do it. It all sorta boils down to what works for /you/.

Though, I do recommend this video here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNB3XY67Q-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNB3XY67Q-I)

The guy is a little boring, but he teaches you how to make ANY color with oil
paints. This was a huge thing for me when I was learning.

If I can help any more, you can find me around the net by searching my art
name, doublePopsicle, and toss me a message wherever! (I draw NSFW furtrash
stuff, just an FYI)

------
potta_coffee
Art degree here, and fairly decent at it. I'd suggest that you learn to draw
first. Having a good handle on rendering form and value (dark and light) are a
necessary foundation for painting. You can start with painting but you're
going to have to build that foundation while also learning a bunch of things
particular to paint. If you want to try drawing first, Youtube is such an
awesome resource.

~~~
xcubic
Do you have any specific channels to recommend on youtube?

------
CyberFonic
I can recommend "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" as an excellent guide
to overcoming the initial hurdles to becoming a painter. "The Artist's Way" is
another inspirational guide.

The best advice I was given: Start right now! and don't give up! You will keep
improving and don't be afraid to cultivate your own style. Even "mistakes" can
provide great learnings.

------
c22
I'd highly recommend taking a class just to get the basics of technique and
perspective. I took one at the local community college, it was not very
expensive and it took me from "can't draw anything more expressive than a
smiley face" to "hey, that's not bad" in just 3 months. After that practice,
practice, practice (practice).

------
pvaldes
Just do it. Your errors will be your best teacher.

------
tbirdz
I have been taking some video courses at New Masters Academy, and they've been
pretty good, I would give them a recommendation. They are more focused on
traditional more realism centered art, so it might not be exactly what you are
looking for, but check them out.

[https://www.nma.art/](https://www.nma.art/)

------
Jach
I've been referred to "How to See Color and Paint It" by a self-taught
painter: [https://www.amazon.com/How-Color-Paint-Arthur-
Stern/dp/16265...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Color-Paint-Arthur-
Stern/dp/1626540632)

I haven't made the time to get into it myself yet, though.

------
dragonbonheur
Bob Ross and Porfirio Jimenez videos on Youtube.

------
dustindiamond
The most eye-opening thing for me was learning how to carve a pumpkin
(photorealistic human faces), how light and dark create dimension and shape.

[http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joystuff/macolanternsho...](http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joystuff/macolanternshowto.html)

------
alfor
I really liked the book: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

It tell you how to suspend your judgement and get into a state of flow while
drawing. The same can techniques can be applied to painting. Also spend some
on quality material, you don't need to have a lot, but make it quality
materials that inspire you.

------
aszantu
There is someone called Sycra on Youtube, he talks a lot about mileage.
Basically you draw and paint as much as you can and learn as you go. If you
draw a hundred heads, the last one will look different from the first one. A
teacher can be helpful, but the work needs to be done by you.

------
lbotos
two ideas:

\- Take an instructor lead figure drawing class. This will teach you to see
"line" which is the primary foundation of "form". I suggest this route because
any class worth it's salt will give you tasks: 5 min pose/ 10 min pose/ 1 hr
pose these will challenge you to think in different ways and get the skill of
line down vs. working on aesthetics.

\- As you start to master line, you then want to explore the "absence" of
that, which is what impressionism is; "color as form." How do you take the
essence of what you see, and capture that as color.

Impressionist art is a reaction to line, and if you start there (like a lot of
them did) you may have better luck.

Have fun!

------
tmaly
I would highly recommend watching the old episodes of Bob Ross.

His goal was to teach you how to paint.

~~~
cleetus
There is a Bob Ross channel on youtube:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc](https://www.youtube.com/user/BobRossInc)

------
pasta
I went to a master painter for years. And the advice that he always gave was
something like: to know how it will look you have to put the paint on the
canvas.

And that's it. Put paint on the canvas. Then the rest will follow.

------
sogen
1.- start with Black and White drawings.

A pack of 10 Grayscale Pastels or Conté pencils are cheap.

2.- Trace and copy

3.- innovate

4.- Then go with Acrylics: it dries fast, works with water, and it's cheap.

brushes: Get about five different ones, don't invest a lot of money in them.

5.- Learn color mixing

6.- Trace and copy

7.- Innovate

------
quadcore
I've started drawing Tintin :) What's great with Tintin is that it teaches you
basic 3d stuff. Basic 3d buildings for example, or streets. Basic 3d clothes
and characters.

------
mobilemidget
Bob Ross videos, but depends if you want to learn about awesome nature views
and mountains with snowy peaks :-)

Bob Ross, my tv painter hero

FD: I don’t paint

Edit: scrolled 2 miles more and happy to see more bob Ross fans

------
everyone
Pick up a bunch of paints / brushes and whatnot and just play with them, then
focus more on the ones you like. Maybe you wont like it.

------
lukeplato
recently found these videos by MoMA[1]. they're more entertaining than
instructional but they may be useful to get you familiar with more concepts.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/user/MoMAvideos/search?query=how+to+...](https://www.youtube.com/user/MoMAvideos/search?query=how+to+paint+like)

------
beckerdo
Watch all 2000 episodes of Bob Ross on YouTube.

------
altsyset
That is some amazing painting you shared. Is there a way to download it? I
would love to print it and hang it in my office.

------
crookshanked
BYOB painting studios are getting popular these days. Could be a good
opportunity to experience a guided painting session.

------
redmattred
A lot of communities have adult education classes that teach skills like
painting for relatively cheap.

------
MrXOR
Bob Ross: “All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction, and a
vision in your mind.”

------
swframe2
Paint is made up of fixed colored pigments. How can you compute the color of a
mixture of different color pigments? Lets say you have a mixture of particles
with color c1 and c2 and you know the concentration is x% c1 and (100-x%) c2?

The machine at the hardware store can do this but what is the formula?

------
joaofiliperocha
Bob Ross videos on youtube

------
alwayssaving
Learn, by doing.

------
ElijahLynn
Start painting.

------
aylmao
I disagree with people who claim you need to first learn how to draw. IMO
painting is about color, texture, etc. not about image.

I took a painting class in college and was stuck at one point making the
initial drawing. I thought about using a projector and tracing it, but of
course I didn't want to cheat, so I asked my professor. She thought it was a
great idea! It would give me a pretty good drawing, and get me into the actual
painting.

Some of the paintings done in that class had great drawings, some were quite
disproportionate, but what the professor was really judging was not how good
people were at drawing, but at "painting". Painting isn't "drawing, but with
liquid color", it's its own thing.

If we make the distinction between drawing and painting we also gain a deeper
appreciation into modern painting, and the reason it has evolved to be more
abstract. The assistant for that class was a grad student in painting who
didn't draw at all, but was developing some of the coolest paintings I'd seen
by focusing on experimenting with the viscosity of the paint, the texture, and
the colors. A lot of famous paintings have _alright_ drawings, but amazing use
of color, detail, texture, etc— the material.

I agree with the sentiments that you have to spend time working with the
materials. That's the "space of what painting is". I'd also look into color
theory— it really is about what colors you put next to another, how you mix,
and

Tips and exercises (some taken from my class):

\- Tip. Get both Titanium White and Zinc White (if painting with acrylic
paints). Get lots of white, a lot of colors will be the tiniest bit of some
pigment and a whole scoop of white. Titanium white makes colors duller than
Zinc white— think Titanium if you want that "pastel" vibe, Zinc if you don't.
It depends on your style but I'd recommend getting more Zinc white.

\- Tip. Different size brushes will make things much faster. I rarely used my
fan brush.

\- Exercise. Find magazines and cut a little squares of colors you like in
them. It can be anything, but it has to be printed (ei, no digital images
unless you print them). Find a combination you like out of these. Some colors
go well with each other, some not as much, though what "well" means also
depends on the what you want to convey through them (think, pastels? strong
colors? warm colors? etc).

Try to recreate these colors with paint, such that if you were to drop the
square in the middle, you wouldn't be able to tell it's there.

Try painting something with these colors!

\- Exercise. Practice color recreation by not worrying about the drawing.
Project an image on a canvas, trace it, and then paint it attempting to re-
create the original colors as best you can.

\- Tip. Disregard detail. Don't worry about showing brush strokes. At a
certain distance, or when focusing on certain things, detail doesn't matter.
You can certainly see it in impressionism, but even paintings shooting for
realism too. At a glance one could call this painting [1] incredibly detailed,
but if you zoom in and really see what the artist is doing in the coat you can
see very wide brush-strokes! The embroidery— that's not how embroidery really
looks. Some parts are just the general color, a wiggle of the brush, and white
dots here and there.

Adding too much detail can make things noisy and distract people from what
they should be looking at. It can also drop you into an "uncanny" valley of
sorts, where things are just weirdly sharp and feel like they lack texture.
Control what the viewer should focus on, and know you can give yourself a
break on anything else.

A bit of a long post, sorry OP. Hope you find at least parts of it helpful.

[1]: [https://www.theleidencollection.com/viewer/self-
portrait-2/](https://www.theleidencollection.com/viewer/self-portrait-2/)

------
logicalshift
So, I decided to teach myself a few years ago. I made notes as I went, and the
process of learning a skill like this is really quite interesting.

The first piece of advice I’d give you is to go out and buy some books.
Specifically, aim to buy things that you think you’ll still want to refer to
no matter how far you take your skill, rather than books aimed at beginners:
books designed as reference books and aimed at artists are ideal. First book I
bought was ‘Color and Light’ by James Gurney. Also, buy the book Art & Fear if
you don’t own it already.

At first, this is all about fear of failure. One of the main differences in
the way children learn to adults is that children don’t have this fear. It’s
taught and it can be unlearnt, but you’re probably going to have to confront
it at some point. Sooner is better. Books and lessons aimed at beginners
almost never help here. The usual beginner-type books instead try to teach
lessons that you can succeed at, trying to avoid doing things that trigger
that fear. To learn, you need to try to do things you can’t already do, not
avoid them (this is also the key difference between practice and rehearsal. To
learn something new, you need to make sure to practice and not rehearse).

What I think is that it's better to try to learn from sources that are beyond
you than those that are already in your grasp. The problem is that at first,
it’s very discouraging to try to do these kinds of things. So particularly at
first, I’d recommend dealing with your feelings about painting much more than
the actual skill itself. In particular, remember things that make you want to
paint so you can find a reason to paint every day. When it comes to fear,
curiosity is its antidote. If you try to achieve a specific effect in a
particular painting, you can fail and that hurts; if instead you’re just
curious about what would happen if you try something new, the results are just
interesting. Occasionally they’ll be much better than you’re expecting, and
those instances are addictive.

The overall process of learning these skills is interesting: at first it’s a
bunch of small isolated skills, like the fine motor skills needed to make your
brushes go where you intend. It’s quite frustrating because things don’t work
together at first - so you might find that you're able to draw individual
shapes quite well but they all look wrong when you try to put them together
into a picture, or your shading will always look blobby and weird in an actual
picture even though it looks OK when you focus on just that. Here’s the
interesting thing: the isolated skills start to link up and it seems to be a
sudden thing.

For example, I once set aside a day to just focus on learning how to build up
shadows as nothing had ever worked well in the past and found to my surprise
that there was nothing left to learn - things I’d already learnt just linked
together and everything I tried came out exactly as I'd intended (which was a
great feeling as I'd been learning for 2 years at that point and 'draws weird
shadows' was starting to etch it's way into my identity). I had a similar
experience with learning to draw in perspective.

There’s another stage too: after a while of things linking up it develops into
a kind of language - which makes me wonder if that’s what language actually
is: just a way to organize and regulate different interconnected parts of the
mind: it definitely explains a lot about why the experience of drawing and
painting comes so naturally to some people yet is so hard to properly explain
to others.

------
pmoriarty
Art education is a contentious topic, with many people holding very strong
opinions which depend on who their favorite artists are, what kind of art they
consider good or great, what they consider art to be, and their own knowledge
of art history and art education in general.

For hundreds of years, artists were educated in the guild or apprenticeship
system, which then transitioned to the French Academy system, and finally away
from that to almost anything goes at the turn of the 20th Century when the
Academy system was largely abandoned.

This history can be reviewed in a series of wonderful talks[1][2] by Micah
Christiansen, whose own specialty as an art historian is in the training of
artists in the 19th Century. I can't recommend his talks enough. Virtually all
of his talks range from fascinating to spectacular.

The Academy system has been undergoing somewhat of a renaissance in recent
decades, with the rising popularity of "ateliers", which teach students how to
create representational art using traditional methods. If your goal is to make
"realistic" representational art, then going through a good atelier program
would be a reliable way to reach that goal.

Jeff Watts has given some informative talks[3] about learning with this
method, and Jennifer Marie Keller has documented her own journey learning
through an atelier system here: [4]. The most impressive and inspiring videos
I've seen of the results that can be achieved by undertaking such an education
has been _" Jonathan Hardesty's 9 Year Journey From Novice to Master"_[5]

Another resource I can heartily recommend is the WetCanvas forum[6], where
there is endless amounts of information on art making of all sorts.

From the artists you name in your post, it sounds like you're mostly
interested in making representational art, but for other readers who are
interested in non-representational or abstract art, experimentation is key,
and (though this is a controversial opinion) one does not necessarily need a
foundation in drawing, composition, or color to create satisfying work --
though often such a foundation or at least some experience with creating
traditional art could help with gaining confidence to experiment -- but the
psychology behind art making, though critically important, is beyond the scope
of this post.

I'd also encourage you to regularly go to museums, as they can be a great
source of inspiration. Also see if you can personally get to know some artists
in real life, as they can be inspiring and can help you find your own way.
Taking some classes will also be very helpful, even if you don't go in to an
atelier program.

There are lots of resources online, and lots of books on making art, but most
tend to be unstructured and unless you're exceptionally disciplined and
determined, it will be difficult to get far if you're completely on your own.
Being part of some sort of artistic community can really help you stay
motivated and take your art to the next level.

Good luck!

[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45fkkNdGKOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45fkkNdGKOw)

[2] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQamD9UiNos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQamD9UiNos)

[3] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0MrnzBJ8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX0MrnzBJ8M)

[4] -
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuS3tkDFLe5PoeA7qpi6wzA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuS3tkDFLe5PoeA7qpi6wzA/videos)

[5] - [https://vimeo.com/29510470](https://vimeo.com/29510470)

[6] - [http://www.wetcanvas.com/](http://www.wetcanvas.com/)

------
black-tea
For me this is noise on hacker news, but I'm not here to complain about that.
I'm here to encourage you to go and find actual communities about painting out
there on the Web. They can give you much better advice than you'll get here.
The Web is so much bigger than just HN.

