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An experience I had as a teenager really drove this lesson home for me, and is partly responsible for successes I’ve had since. My Dad had copy of ‘Drawing on

An experience I had as a teenager really drove this lesson home for me, and is partly responsible for successes I’ve had since. My Dad had copy of ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards lying around. I’d always been really bad at drawing - never progressed beyond the kids-drawing phase, got bad feedback on drawing at school, so stopped. Anyway, Edwards’s theory is that ‘bad’ drawers don’t look at the thing itself and draw its shape, they translate reality into abstract concepts first and then draw what that concept visually looks like. So I’ll look at a face, then decide I’ll draw the ‘eye’ first, query my mind to see what an ‘eye’ looks like, then draw the generic 'eye' shape that everyone draws. Whereas a skilled artist looks at the eye in front of them - which looks nothing like the standard symbol for ‘eye’ - and draws THAT. Edwards has a bunch of exercises to prove this, and one of them triggered a massive epiphany for me. She had a Picasso sketch in the book which was printed upside down on the page. Her instructions were to copy the drawing, keeping it upside down, and never naming the limb/whatever you’re drawing, and never turning your drawing right-side-up until it’s complete. I was sceptical, but decided to test her theory. So I started copying this upside-down drawing, fully expecting it to turn out even worse than usual. When I finished, I couldn't believe it. The drawing was AMAZING. It looked like someone else had done it. The figure I’d drawn looked alive. I went on to learn to draw pretty well. So after that, my mind always looked back and thought - well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything.

sown 14y ago
... well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything. I used to think like that. If I tried hard and applied myself I could do just about anything...until that sort of thing stopped working. It certainly helped but it won't take you to the stars. It just seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I never got better at what I had in mind. I think this kind of thinking is helpful but it has its ultimate limits, which seem to be set to 'low' for me.
- tjr 14y ago
  I find that interesting. Would you mind sharing examples of some things that you tried to improve at, but couldn't?
  - sown 14y ago
    A lifetime of observation of painful personal experiences. I don't really want to go into it publicly.
- ohgodthecat3 14y ago
  Well I think most of it is time, the whole 10,000 hours thing. Since we are talking about drawing take a look at MindCandyMan on conceptart.org (His journey sketchbook http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870 http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870) Post of an example of how far he has come: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1789531#post1789531 http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1789531#po... His website showcasing his work: http://www.jonathanhardesty.com/paintings.htm http://www.jonathanhardesty.com/paintings.htm
  - cowboyhero 14y ago
    My favorite example of this is Penny Arcade. First year: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18 Five years later: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/18 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/18
  - sown 14y ago
    Drawing at the level of that book isn't a hard problem, as, say, learning organic chemistry. Or is it? some people seem to have a natural ability in some things. In fact, the idea that some children naturally fall into "try harder" vs "this is too hard" camp points to something influenced by biology. How about creating new solutions to what are considered hard industry problems? If it takes you 10,000 hours to learn the basics Organic chemistry, can you say you succeeded? That's almost five years learning what most people do in five or ten weeks.
agumonkey 14y ago
I started like you but pushed the abstract idea further down to reality. I'm not good and my drawings have a mechanical aspect, or at best a crafted/regular organic style. Later I read the Loomis book, which is filled with delicious drawings of human figures, used the same principles. Use abstract references, refine, analyse. That said, the idea of abstracting away from abstraction/interpretation is a great one that I never considered
gwern 14y ago
+1. I heard about those theories, so I once did an upside-down drawing as well. As promised, it turned out substantially better than a regular copy of mine. (I thought this was impressive, but I didn't have any real need to learn to draw well, so I left it at that.)
gcv 14y ago
To be fair, I think drawing is an exceptionally good example of a learnable skill. Is the same true of music, though? If someone has trouble hearing and distinguishing intervals, can that person learn music? What about ballet, which pushes physicality just about as far as it can go?
- etruong42 14y ago
  It's tough to say. It partially depends on how you define the ability to play music. I definitely think that the average person can play notes on a piano given enough time for another average person to enjoy. On a person-to-person basis, we don't know until we try. Kind of like knowing the half-life of some material: we know the decay rate of a large mass, but we can only guess at a per-atom level, and we only truly know when it finally decays. I don't hope to belittle your question, but I don't find it particularly important what the average person can do. I find it much more important to figure out what I can do.
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    Keyboard instruments have the advantage that note formation is relatively straight forward compared to (say) the violin, but then you do have to play two handed, i.e. at least two lines of music. "It partially depends on how you define the ability to play music." We tend to judge ourselves against recordings of the best artists, and those recordings may have been heavily edited. Before recordings were easily available, amateur music making was much more widespread. I think I can see signs of a return to social music making for the fun of it.
    - etruong42 14y ago
      Your mention of unrealistic comparisons reminded me of the Dove evolution commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U The original question asked about whether a person can "play music" or "do ballet". I want to add "being beautiful" to the list because I think it will help me express my point that I want to make. I believe that most people can improve on most skills, and that improvement is correlated to the time and effort they put into it. I believe that "being beautiful" counts among these skills along with "playing music" and "doing ballet". The reason I added "being beautiful" to the list is because I have found an attitude among many people, even those with a "growther" mindset, that treats beauty as static. I argue that the general expectations (or at least the projected expectations, which to the projecting person is the same thing) is unreasonable, causing many people to think of their improvements as failures because they fall short of those unreasonable expectations. So if one defines the ability to "play music" as the ability to produce live music that is on par with best-selling recordings, then I argue that no, the average person cannot "play music". Likewise if one defines the ability to "be beautiful" as the ability to look as flawless as the final product in the Dove evolution commercial. I find definitions like these to be unreasonable because these definition/expectations discourage the average person to try to play music or be beautiful when it may bring them and the people around them much joy. I hope that you are right that people can shed these expectations and do things for the fun of it. I see signs of it in music too.
bitsoda 14y ago
My fallback example of overcoming something I thought I never would is playing an F chord on a guitar. Sure, a lot of people can play this easily, but just knowing that there was a time when I thought this was beyond my reach to now being able to play it as well as a C, A, G, E, D, etc chord is a constant reminder to stay in the growth mindset.
wallflower 14y ago
> Anyway, Edwards’s theory is that ‘bad’ drawers don’t look at the thing itself and draw its shape, they translate reality into abstract concepts first and then draw what that concept visually looks like. This is so true. By squinting one of your eyes (looking through only one eye) you can approximate the 'upside down' effect pretty remarkably. Drawing is all about the relation of shapes to each other. Portrait drawing is too - but has the additional constraint of very little tolerance for off-by-one errors. Everyone is particularly attuned to facial recognition - lines that are off by even a millimeter or a fraction of an inch (by position or more generally - the angle) - you notice that. It is the difference between a portrait that looks like someone, a portrait that looks like someone else (but not her). If you want to get better in portrait drawing and don't have the luxury of a live model posing for you, don't draw from pictures. Draw from live TV (like a newscast where the poses are relatively static but still fluid). I've been taking a progression of art classes for just over a year now. A year is actually a long time in art class world. Really enjoying the escape from coding. It rocks because you lose yourself (like when you are on a focused coding tear). Have gotten much better yet have still so far to go. Have plateaued many times. In my Portrait Drawing class, the thing that stopped me most was trying to draw what I thought the eye/nose looked like and actually drawing what it looks like. My internal model of what the eye/nose looks like is flawed because I lack experience. As an aside, if you look at other people's portraits of the model - there is usually part of the portrait that resembles them. The professor was amazing. She could take a blank piece of paper and in 15 min. create the person's portrait, capture their essence. If she worked on it more and more, it got even better. But she got the basic essence in a very short time. She didn't make mistakes in positioning - like most of us in class did (we did get better by the end of the course) - to draw fast - you need to draw very accurately and with confidence. Mistakes can be corrected, up to a point. If you don't draw the eye as it really looks, you can easily end up with something that looks like an egyptian mummy. There is a very clear orbital socket that needs to be shaded/drawn - without that the eye isn't an eye. Shading is so, so important. Adding the little stuff to your drawing - like adding a little more shading to the half/side of the pupil that is on the dark side (away from the light) makes a difference. By itself, it doesn't add up, but it makes it look better - when adding all the other little stuff. Now, drawing in public (e.g. someone's portrait for money in 15 min.) is a whole different ballgame. At least, starting with a controlled environment (precise teacher feedback) is a start. I believe the key is to have the basics down (and basically do a Mr. Potato Head from your experience drawing the basics)

sown 14y ago

... well, if I can learn to DRAW, and I was so BAD at drawing initially, I can pretty much learn to do anything. I used to think like that. If I tried hard and applied myself I could do just about anything...until that sort of thing stopped working. It certainly helped but it won't take you to the stars. It just seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I never got better at what I had in mind. I think this kind of thinking is helpful but it has its ultimate limits, which seem to be set to 'low' for me.

tjr 14y ago
I find that interesting. Would you mind sharing examples of some things that you tried to improve at, but couldn't?
- sown 14y ago
  A lifetime of observation of painful personal experiences. I don't really want to go into it publicly.
ohgodthecat3 14y ago
Well I think most of it is time, the whole 10,000 hours thing. Since we are talking about drawing take a look at MindCandyMan on conceptart.org (His journey sketchbook http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870 http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870) Post of an example of how far he has come: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1789531#post1789531 http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1789531#po... His website showcasing his work: http://www.jonathanhardesty.com/paintings.htm http://www.jonathanhardesty.com/paintings.htm
- cowboyhero 14y ago
  My favorite example of this is Penny Arcade. First year: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/18 Five years later: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/18 http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/11/18
- sown 14y ago
  Drawing at the level of that book isn't a hard problem, as, say, learning organic chemistry. Or is it? some people seem to have a natural ability in some things. In fact, the idea that some children naturally fall into "try harder" vs "this is too hard" camp points to something influenced by biology. How about creating new solutions to what are considered hard industry problems? If it takes you 10,000 hours to learn the basics Organic chemistry, can you say you succeeded? That's almost five years learning what most people do in five or ten weeks.

agumonkey 14y ago

I started like you but pushed the abstract idea further down to reality. I'm not good and my drawings have a mechanical aspect, or at best a crafted/regular organic style. Later I read the Loomis book, which is filled with delicious drawings of human figures, used the same principles. Use abstract references, refine, analyse. That said, the idea of abstracting away from abstraction/interpretation is a great one that I never considered

gwern 14y ago

+1. I heard about those theories, so I once did an upside-down drawing as well. As promised, it turned out substantially better than a regular copy of mine. (I thought this was impressive, but I didn't have any real need to learn to draw well, so I left it at that.)

gcv 14y ago

To be fair, I think drawing is an exceptionally good example of a learnable skill. Is the same true of music, though? If someone has trouble hearing and distinguishing intervals, can that person learn music? What about ballet, which pushes physicality just about as far as it can go?

etruong42 14y ago
It's tough to say. It partially depends on how you define the ability to play music. I definitely think that the average person can play notes on a piano given enough time for another average person to enjoy. On a person-to-person basis, we don't know until we try. Kind of like knowing the half-life of some material: we know the decay rate of a large mass, but we can only guess at a per-atom level, and we only truly know when it finally decays. I don't hope to belittle your question, but I don't find it particularly important what the average person can do. I find it much more important to figure out what I can do.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  Keyboard instruments have the advantage that note formation is relatively straight forward compared to (say) the violin, but then you do have to play two handed, i.e. at least two lines of music. "It partially depends on how you define the ability to play music." We tend to judge ourselves against recordings of the best artists, and those recordings may have been heavily edited. Before recordings were easily available, amateur music making was much more widespread. I think I can see signs of a return to social music making for the fun of it.
  - etruong42 14y ago
    Your mention of unrealistic comparisons reminded me of the Dove evolution commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U The original question asked about whether a person can "play music" or "do ballet". I want to add "being beautiful" to the list because I think it will help me express my point that I want to make. I believe that most people can improve on most skills, and that improvement is correlated to the time and effort they put into it. I believe that "being beautiful" counts among these skills along with "playing music" and "doing ballet". The reason I added "being beautiful" to the list is because I have found an attitude among many people, even those with a "growther" mindset, that treats beauty as static. I argue that the general expectations (or at least the projected expectations, which to the projecting person is the same thing) is unreasonable, causing many people to think of their improvements as failures because they fall short of those unreasonable expectations. So if one defines the ability to "play music" as the ability to produce live music that is on par with best-selling recordings, then I argue that no, the average person cannot "play music". Likewise if one defines the ability to "be beautiful" as the ability to look as flawless as the final product in the Dove evolution commercial. I find definitions like these to be unreasonable because these definition/expectations discourage the average person to try to play music or be beautiful when it may bring them and the people around them much joy. I hope that you are right that people can shed these expectations and do things for the fun of it. I see signs of it in music too.

bitsoda 14y ago

My fallback example of overcoming something I thought I never would is playing an F chord on a guitar. Sure, a lot of people can play this easily, but just knowing that there was a time when I thought this was beyond my reach to now being able to play it as well as a C, A, G, E, D, etc chord is a constant reminder to stay in the growth mindset.

wallflower 14y ago

> Anyway, Edwards’s theory is that ‘bad’ drawers don’t look at the thing itself and draw its shape, they translate reality into abstract concepts first and then draw what that concept visually looks like. This is so true. By squinting one of your eyes (looking through only one eye) you can approximate the 'upside down' effect pretty remarkably. Drawing is all about the relation of shapes to each other. Portrait drawing is too - but has the additional constraint of very little tolerance for off-by-one errors. Everyone is particularly attuned to facial recognition - lines that are off by even a millimeter or a fraction of an inch (by position or more generally - the angle) - you notice that. It is the difference between a portrait that looks like someone, a portrait that looks like someone else (but not her). If you want to get better in portrait drawing and don't have the luxury of a live model posing for you, don't draw from pictures. Draw from live TV (like a newscast where the poses are relatively static but still fluid). I've been taking a progression of art classes for just over a year now. A year is actually a long time in art class world. Really enjoying the escape from coding. It rocks because you lose yourself (like when you are on a focused coding tear). Have gotten much better yet have still so far to go. Have plateaued many times. In my Portrait Drawing class, the thing that stopped me most was trying to draw what I thought the eye/nose looked like and actually drawing what it looks like. My internal model of what the eye/nose looks like is flawed because I lack experience. As an aside, if you look at other people's portraits of the model - there is usually part of the portrait that resembles them. The professor was amazing. She could take a blank piece of paper and in 15 min. create the person's portrait, capture their essence. If she worked on it more and more, it got even better. But she got the basic essence in a very short time. She didn't make mistakes in positioning - like most of us in class did (we did get better by the end of the course) - to draw fast - you need to draw very accurately and with confidence. Mistakes can be corrected, up to a point. If you don't draw the eye as it really looks, you can easily end up with something that looks like an egyptian mummy. There is a very clear orbital socket that needs to be shaded/drawn - without that the eye isn't an eye. Shading is so, so important. Adding the little stuff to your drawing - like adding a little more shading to the half/side of the pupil that is on the dark side (away from the light) makes a difference. By itself, it doesn't add up, but it makes it look better - when adding all the other little stuff. Now, drawing in public (e.g. someone's portrait for money in 15 min.) is a whole different ballgame. At least, starting with a controlled environment (precise teacher feedback) is a start. I believe the key is to have the basics down (and basically do a Mr. Potato Head from your experience drawing the basics)