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Painting is Terribly Difficult
- Animats 3y agoJust to humans. Not to an AI.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoI don't think AIs are particularly good at applying paint to a canvas using a brush. Maybe the word you were looking for was "printer"?
- spinach 3y agoWhat AI does isn't painting.
- pixl97 3y agoI mean, couple it with one of these, and it is... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LlZhlcJTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09LlZhlcJTU
- gizajob 3y agoOne of the things I enjoy about doing a painting is that it doesn’t involve technology, just me, a canvas, and paint. Machines equipped with mechanical arms are no doubt going to soon be churning out fine painting after fine painting, but nevertheless, it’s an enjoyable human activity, made by humans for humans.
- Nthringas 3y agosorry to say that "paint" meaning colored inks are a technology further, machines which churn out fine painting after fine painting already exist and are old boring technology by this point the least old instance of this tech is inkjet printers
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoIt’s called a printer, not a painter
- lamp_book 3y ago> sorry to say that "paint" meaning colored inks are a technology We all knew what the hell he meant.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago> One of the things I enjoy about doing a painting is that it doesn’t involve technology, just me, a canvas, and paint. You would actually be surprised at how much actual technology there is in the canvas, paints, and brushes. Especially, if you want the paint not to be toxic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- oblib 3y agoI think those pointing out the tech missed your point. It's fair to say that making paint is a technology but "painting" is an art and the two are very distinct. An artist can create art with most anything, dirt and sand for example. My wife has been painting lately. She has two sisters that paint as well and they're all remarkably good at it. So was her mother, and her mother's uncle was as well. He did a mural in the Ames, Iowa Post Office that was a WPA funded project that's pretty cool. Makes me wonder if there is a genetic connection :D https://ameshistory.org/content/evolution-corn-post-office-mural https://ameshistory.org/content/evolution-corn-post-office-m...
- eichin 3y agoAdmittedly unrelated to the original article, you may find https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/21/picture-essay-america-1930s-post-office-murals https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/aug/21/picture... interesting - he's been going around the country photographing those Post Office murals (I ran across this because my office is currently in a former WPA-era post office building and it is preserved in the lobby even though it hasn't been an actual post office for at least a decade - it kind of took it from "we have a weird revolutionary-war-themed painting" (it's new england, we've spent 200 years subliminally preparing to start shooting at brits again) to "this is part of a nation-wide historical collection that just happens to be in decentralised storage" :-)
- oblib 3y agoWow! That's a great project and it's very cool to see all those other murals. You can really see that same style of art in a lot of them. They have a very sturdy feel to them.
- martingalex2 3y agoI think people will continue to value human-made paintings much like we still value human-played chess games.
- zwieback 3y agoOk, I think this is a funny comment but if you think about it for more than a second it really condenses what a lot of the AI handwringing is about: humans value what's difficult to humans, or at least what's difficult to a lot of humans. We get upset when something shows up that can even partially mimic a creative process that's valued for its scarcity.
- sublinear 3y agoThere's still zero progress made towards generative AI doing anything but mimicking existing work done by humans, and very poorly and inefficiently I might add. Please tell me where I can find research demonstrating truly novel output from generative AI.
- a1o 3y agohttps://archive.ph/FHkBL https://archive.ph/FHkBL
- Buttons840 3y agoThis seems to be about how making a living as a painter is difficult. I've often thought that drawing or painting is difficult for ego reasons. Few things demonstrate my incompetence to myself better than failing to draw something. There is nothing I aspire to do that would be more uncomfortable than drawing or painting a self portrait. For these reasons, I've often thought about trying, but I'm scared.
- dieselgate 3y agoi've taken mechanical design courses where we kept a sketch book and had to do a sketch-a-day kind of thing. it's something you'll just naturally improve at the more you do it
- crq-yml 3y agoLearning some ability to draw and paint takes roughly the same amount of persistence as learning to write. That is, you have to recall what a struggle it was to hold the pencil and make a steady mark from the wrist...and then apply that to the kinds of marks you make for drawing, which can be longer, more varied, and use a different grasp on the tool. And then you also have to learn some "shape literacy" if you want to control how you see things. This is likewise comparable to learning to read in that there are ways of breaking down images to understand them as "letter", "word", and "sentence". When we know how to write but not to draw, we draw like we write, using motions from the wrist and observing things in terms of symbolic meaning - the human figure flattens out into a hand shape, an arm shape, an eye shape. But there's very little mystery to "what do you do about that" - you grab a book of exercises like Keys to Drawing or Natural Way to Draw, and you try to see the object you want to study through the exercise. Because we recognize silhouettes first, and we make marks as lines first, contour drawing is a typical starting point for practicing both "seeing" and "doing", and that's something you can spend many months on just by itself. If you want to force a designed result, rather than the result from your eye and hand, you start to apply technology, and that can mean a very old technology like using a grid and rulers(as old as the ancient Egyptians), or it can mean digital tools and tracing over photos.
- oblib 3y ago
- zer00eyz 3y agoThe first half of this, about criticism and how it shapes art was fascinating. To then go on and list canonized artists whose work will have unattainable prices is revolting. It's a bit of self referential irony. The title, is a farce as well... Bob Ross is rolling over in his grave right now! Learn to paint, do it badly, or find its something you can do well. Buy what you like, locally, and hang it on the wall of your house. It's HN, we all have those friends who think that what we do is magic, that we are some sort of tech priest class or wizards. It's a skill, some of us have a knack for it. Art is just the same, every one can few will be great, lots can be serviceable. Now go make something!
- nemo44x 3y agoRobert Hughes was a real treasure. His archive is worth exploring if only for his honesty and no bullshit approach. He was incredibly well informed and erudite. His book “The Shock of the New” is a landmark to this day for anyone interested in getting a perspective on how modern art, culture, and western humanity intersect and wind through history. The BBC made a TV version he narrated in the 1980’s that’s very good too - about 7 hours of content. You can find it on YouTube and you don’t need to be an art enthusiast or even too knowledgeable about the subject to appreciate it.
- FredPret 3y agoThough the article isn't about the act of painting, I just wanted to encourage anyone who wants to get into art to check out the Procreate app. It makes it so much easier and faster, though you don't end up with a "real" painting (this is an advantage sometimes). Having an undo button makes "painting" much more fun!
- officialchicken 3y ago"There are no mistakes, just happy accidents" - Bob Ross
- autoexec 3y agoSpeaking from second hand experience, not having an undo button can be a lot of fun too because it can inspire you to paint something you hadn't intended to when you started out, or force you to try what you were doing in a very different way. What started as "mistakes" can end up being your favorite part of a painting. That said, painters also have a lot of options for fixing errors including repainting over the whole canvas. The few painters I know often revise old works adding or removing elements months/years after they were first finished. It seems like painting in general is a lot of fun "real" or otherwise, although personally I've never been any good at it, it's still usually a good time.
- Tao3300 3y agoHonestly, I undo so much in Procreate I never get anything done. I'm best with it if I start with a rough in actual pencil, snap or scan it, then finish it in Procreate.
- exo-pla-net 3y ago# What is this article about? This text is a review of the book "Monet: The Restless Vision" by Jackie Wullschläger, discussing the art scene in New York, the ethical issues in the art world, and the life and work of Claude Monet. It highlights the corruption among art critics and curators, Monet's impact on the Impressionist movement, and the influence of his work on modern art. # What might a reader gain from reading this? A reader would gain insight into the complexities of the art world, including its ethical challenges and the profound influence of Claude Monet on the Impressionist movement and modern art.
- stavros 3y agoI'd love GPT-written summaries for articles on the front page. Dang, would such a bot be allowed?
- Applejinx 3y agoThis did not prepare me for the framing of the crusty Robert Hughes introducing the overflowing filth of corruption swamping the art market. I mean, one of the sentences mentions it, but it's a pretty pale summary. I'm not sure how useful AI summary even is. It's a best-case scenario: translate input data into 'what most people might think of this', which is a core competency of LLMs. It's stripping away the ability to convey intention or a specific vision, though, and that's a significant lack.
- AlbertCory 3y ago> There, he employed six gardeners, one of whom had the job of dusting and washing the water lilies This reminds me of a humorous book I saw in a museum gift shop once, supposedly about "wives of great painters." "Mrs. Matisse cleans the goldfish bowl" is the page that stuck in my mind. Anyway, great article. I knew nothing about Monet, which is probably the way he wanted it.
- yetanother12345 3y agoI have some skin in this game. I'd say that painting is not difficult at all. Depending on your preferred style it can be as easy as literally throwing random pigments on whatever surface you prefer to target. Painting (or drawing) to some degree of visual similarity requires practice, so some effort is needed. You have to "rewire" some muscle-vision-brain coordination. It will be perceived as hard only because a) you will know how easy it is to snap a photo and apply filters/photoshop (or, propmt an AI), and b) because you will be your own worst critic. Others will see you progress quite fast if only you do the training part. What is hard about it, really hard, is making a living from it. Or, even getting small change out of it. Most often, if you've not been to the right schools and intermingled with the right people in the right way at the right times (with an added very big portion of sheer luck) you are not going to make it, ever. Even then, it is unlikely. Regardless of your talent. Talent does not bubble up like you would imagine. You can not just build a better mousetrap and they will come. This is a very controlled market, and also one where the different niches are working in very different ways. Even in very different ways from other markets you would know about. It's not sour grapes, it's just a fact that for every art market niche there are only a very small amount of people able to gain a foothold while there are thousands or tens of thousands that may have an equal amount of skill/talent but these people just does not make it.
- yetanother12345 3y ago> not difficult at all Replying to my own comment only to admit that it is fairly easy to give yourself a task (ie. a problem to solve through the medium of painting) that will be perceived as hard, or even extremely hard. I do not negate the difficulty of solving creative puzzles. You will experience that your ability to subject yourself to difficult problems will improve with time. That is, you will become better at what you do. This does not in any way correlate with creative style. There will be quite hard problems in non-figurative painting just like there will be in painting visually identifiable stuff. The upside is that problems that were once considered complicated may not continue to be so. And, that you are your own employer, and you decide the when, how, or "if at all" of the solving.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- te_chris 3y agoWorth noting that this is by Julian Barnes, author of one of my favourite books The Noise of Time - among others.
- WalterBright 3y agoI really enjoyed Tim's Vermeer (about how Tim painted a Vermeer): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089388/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089388/
- CardiB 3y ago[flagged]