10 ms·
Drawing as a programmer
- sarreph 13y agoWouldn't other left-brain activity, such as playing a musical instrument, have the same effect?
- cinskiy 13y agoYes, probably, but it's harder to play a musical instrument in the office in day time, although everybody loves that when you do that after work.
- ludston 13y agoPlaying music is left and right brain activity.
- RogerL 13y agoAll this left/right brain stuff is a myth[1]. I don't doubt doing something other than programming when you are stuck helps. My best ideas come in the shower, for example. http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain-myth.html http://www.livescience.com/39373-left-brain-right-brain-myth...
- jes5199 13y agoYes, those terms fail to correlate to brain activity. But that doesn't mean that there's not a real, subjective quality to different kinds of productive mental activity. Working with your hands (and with shapes or sounds or patterns) is a great way to take a break from doing heavy semantic/problem-solving thinking, and it has the crazy side effect of gradually giving you skills you probably wished you had.
- jes5199 13y agoI've been playing the ukulele at home during times when normally I would be refreshing Hacker News. It definitely fills that need to take a break from deductive thought, and after only a couple months suddenly I have a skill that I never had before. I recommend it.
- dusan82 13y agoAs a programmer, I think (y)our hobbies should be non-visual. E.g. music, learning spoken languages, etc...
- 013 13y agoProgrammers aren't all the same person. People have different hobbies, lifestyles, interests. Just because someone's interested in programming, or their job is a programmer, doesn't mean they should enjoy non-visual things like music, languages etc. Some may enjoy running, skateboarding, dancing, stamp collecting. I think what I'm trying to say is, programming is just another part of someone's character, not their whole character.
- sp332 13y agoI didn't take it as a comment about character, more about eye strain!
- dusan82 13y agoWhat I meant is, if you are staring 16 hours a day on the screen, It is wise to choose something that will be not as hard for your eyes.
- erokar 13y agoVisual activities where you change focus, like drawing and photography, do not strain your eyes and might be good for your vision. One of the problems with staring at a screen is that your eyes maintain the same focus distance.
- zxcdw 13y agoI'm curious, why do you think that way?
- CmonDev 13y agoBetter don't tell this to self-sufficient indie game developers. You should have as many hobbies as you have talents.
- beobab 13y agoI also heartily recommend the book that the author of this piece recommends. I'm currently about half-way through it, and the reaction to my drawings from my family has been: "Wow! I had no idea you could draw so well."
- ntaso 13y agoI found this book a bit shallow. What I liked a lot were the before-after self-portraits shown in the book. They are really nice. However, "drawing with the right side of your brain" means simply: Don't think about the concepts you have of objects (tree, glass, house), but really LOOK at something:"What angle is this line compared to that line?" and just draw them. While this can be a revelation for some and improve drawing skills a bit, it is simply the first step. There is absolutely no way around learning how to draw but putting many hours into it. And drawing can be very exhausting. At first, you won't have the patience to sit through a drawing for more than an hour or so. It gets better though. The drawing of the OP is okay, but not particularly good, but then he never claimed that it was good but just a way to relax a little bit. I will try this. Drawing as a mental break from coding. But you could probably achieve the same result with music, taking a walk, doing some physical activity, meditation etc.
- cinskiy 13y agoI tried to squish a warning like "You won't become a good artist after reading only one book, you still need 10000 hours of practice" into the post, but couldn't find an appropriate place for it.
- euph0ria 13y agoWhich hacker news article did the post refer to?
- cinskiy 13y agoI found it after all! http://nabeelqu.com/blog/surprisingly-undervalued-books/ http://nabeelqu.com/blog/surprisingly-undervalued-books/ Old HN post now refers to dead link.
- martin-adams 13y agoI do believe that anyone can draw with enough time. In 2009 I took 8 days holiday, one per week and dedicated it to drawing. I could see the improvement vastly: http://eightweeksproject.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/projectone-weekeight/ http://eightweeksproject.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/projectone... Then in 2010 my new years resolution was to do a sketch a day. Hard going but very enjoyable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFWNlK2H29U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFWNlK2H29U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtXlhVLYYE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYtXlhVLYYE http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/l_640_480_937cc10c-5982-4acf-94eb-8837ce87083c.jpeg http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/l_640_480_937... http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/p_640_412_cb00f9bd-d6b1-4839-86be-1b23f91880bd.jpeg http://martinadams.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/p_640_412_cb0... I didn't dedicate enough time to each sketch so only got a handful of good drawings. I've fallen out of it again so would have to get right back to basics, but it shouldn't take too long before you start to feel fluid again. Being able to draw is like a muscle.
- martin-adams 13y agoAlso, yes, Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain is a great book. I would also recommend The Structure of Man (http://www.alienthink.com/ http://www.alienthink.com/) if you want to draw people from memory - but it will take a _lot_ of dedication.
- sireat 13y agoNice progress! I do note that you are under 30, which means you can still make progress. There is a famous forum post of someone starting some very basic drawings and progressing onto higher skill level a few years later. He started at 23 or 24. What I am hoping to see is someone starting at a later age.
- TheSOB888 13y agoYes, you can still learn when you're older. Especially if you have an inquisitive mind like most hackers. The brain doesn't "solidify" completely as you age, it just solidifies the knowledge you already have. People have learned languages past 30, just by immersion, which is a very complex task.
- pjgomez 13y agoFantastic article. As an ex-avid comic book reader and programmer, it certainly turns on some old hopes to draw better.
- Morendil 13y agoWant to make your 10-minute drawing breaks more fun? Try Drawception: http://drawception.com/ http://drawception.com/
- roryokane 13y agoDoodle or Die is another site that does the same thing (games of picture telephone): http://doodleordie.com/ http://doodleordie.com/
- kenshiro_o 13y agoI'd love to become good at drawing because I believe it can help presenting your ideas in a very visual and straightforward way. Moreover it is an activity that stimulates the creative and imaginative part of the brain. My main issue, aside dedication, is that I "suffer" from a natural tremor in my hands which I have been unable to shake off, even after seeing a doctors years ago and undergoing a battery of tests which showed nothing conclusive nor serious (I also took some pills which showed no results). So my main questions would be: - Can I still be good at drawing despite my trembling? - How do I cure my trembling?
- krick 13y agoIs it really that bad? Because if it is it will naturally cause some problems and then it's really about medical support. But if you mean that your hand isn't that steady then it's not a problem at all, because it doesn't have to be and with a lot of practice (just like trying to draw straight line, triangle, circle, etc. again and again thousands times) it will improve anyway. So, well, not to discourage you from medical help if you actually need some, but you shouldn't wait for getting better to start. Just find some tutorial (as I said already, I don't recommend Edwards, better start with Dodson or Loomis or anything else somewhat serious) and do something. Even if you'll be disturbed by your illness your practice lets you sublime anyway, which is good by itself. As it's been said: nothing's impossible for a willing mind.
- darkmighty 13y agoI'm not a great drawer myself, but I'd guess it depends on the intensity of your trembling. Most sketches don't rely too much on individual stroke precision, specially if you don't have very good coordination. In math terms, you can think of repeating your strokes successively so that the noise averages out; the eraser is your friend in this process also.
- krick 13y agoWhat you say here is correct, but let me point something out: that repeated stroking isn't very good thing if you can avoid it. It's like a habit for many people and you often see that good artists do that, but it's good to try being "minimalistic" as you learn. Just advising. You'll notice improvement pretty soon after you'll stop fixing every line by repeated stroking and will just try doing it right.
- krick 13y agoI really don't like how much that book (and other books of the same author) is promoted. I am into drawing for quite a long time already (and I also think it helps me as a programmer etc.) and I've heard about that book like thousand times, so I've finally read it. I understand why it's impressive: because author delivers the material like "so, there are some techniques to use your right side of the brain instead of the left one and woah… you see, you draw much better now! It's magic! By the way, I have million students who couldn't draw, but they took my courses and now they are master-artists and own their own design saloons." And you probably actually will draw better than you expect (especially when you don't expect you can draw) after some simple guidance and a few tries. What I'm saying it's very populistic, but explains many thing the wrong way, which may cause some problems if you'll want to improve your techniques later. If you are learning to draw I'd better recommend you start with Andrew Loomis: "Fun with a Pencil" or even Vilppu Studio tutorials if you have serious mindset.
- msvan 13y agoAgreed. I find that Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain has too much pseudo-science in it and that the results you get, while they may be impressive to a complete beginner, are only superficially impressive. Getting good at drawing takes time.
- philh 13y agoSuperficially-impressive is better than not-impressive-at-all for keeping someone motivated. I'm getting the impression that by analogy, DotRSB lets you play music that someone else has written; but to be good at drawing, you need to be able to play music that you've written yourself. And that's a valid criticism, but playing someone else's music is still fun, while writing music isn't going to be much fun if I can't play it well. So it seems reasonable to quickly get good at playing, and then later I can learn to write. Does this seem like a fair assessment?
- jasallen 13y agoI think it's a good analogy. I also think its why everyone who wants to be an artist but not put in the right-brain work wants to be a photographer now. It's like creating without being required to do the actual work part. I guess being certain types of "DJ" is a similar metaphor.
- frooxie 13y agoFrom what I can tell, Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain teaches you to draw things you already see, which is nice, and can help you impress your mom if you practise a bit, but as far as drawing ability goes, being a human copy machine is an extremely basic skill. Don't get me wrong, basic skills are valuable, but reading the book and practising for a couple of months will not make you a skilled artist any more than learning to touch-type and adding an existing Javascript menu to a web page will make you an expert programmer. It can be a first step, but if you want to be really good at drawing, you probably want to to spend years practising composition, perspective, anatomy, the emotional effects of lines and shapes, color theory, storytelling, creating variation/contrast/depth/movement, etc. There's much, much more to drawing than just being able to copy what you see in front of you. (I'm not writing this to discourage anyone, I just want to put the book into perspective.)
- apalmer 13y agoThe most obvious thing seems to be, those who can ALREADY draw a bit find the book to be not helpful, very basic, and somewhat misleading... People who cannot draw at all seem to get a lot out of the book however... I think it comes down to a being a human photocopier is an immensely important part of drawing, but its also a phase that you pass out of on your way to becoming a good artist. I remember me and my friends used to spend hours doing line for line copies of comic book drawings when we were 10-12 years old, its a natural part of the process i think...
- muraiki 13y agoI found the book valuable in that, as someone who is not particularly visually oriented, it helped teach me "how to see."
- tripzilch 13y ago> me and my friends used to spend hours doing line for line copies of comic book drawings when we were 10-12 years old, its a natural part of the process i think... Dunno. I strongly believe it really depends. I never did that, for exactly the reasons other people lay out in this thread, "but what if I want to draw something else?" (actually "but I want to draw something else, this drawing already exists anyway, why copy it"). Some of my friends did like to copy drawings. A lot of them never progressed past that, and some did. It really depends.
- pirateking 13y agoI recommend Fast Sketching Techniques by David Rankin. Of course, nothing beats practice and the book will help you focus your practice in a very rewarding way. I have been drawing my whole life, and still always keep an open notebook and pencil right next to my keyboard when I program.
- enbrill 13y agoI didn't get the bit about the video (the kings speech). I've never seen the movie. Seemed like a random throw in. Wish there would have been at least one sentence to tie it in.
- poseid 13y agoTo me, the important question in this article, is whether drawing (or music, dancing, acting, yoga, sports), actually helps you solving problems? Not sure, what helps solving problems is talking about them, discussing them, etc. and this can be done with social networks (or writing, tweeting, etc.) too.
- mcv 13y agoInteresting. I used to draw a lot as a kid, and was pretty good at it, but I now realize that the more I programmed, the less I drew.
- rsl7 13y agoI used to keep paper taped on my desk under the keyboard. whenever I was working something out mentally or just taking a break I'd push the keyboard to the side and add to an ever growing elaborate abstract drawing.
- jaegerpicker 13y agoI tie flies, for fly fishing when I'm working from home and it has the same effect. It's a different way of using my brain that helps me refocus. It's also really nice to physically produce something. Plus then I have a better selection for fishing. Doesn't work so well when in an office setting though. This article does make me want to draw again, I used be an amateur comics book artist/cartoonist but I haven't drawn seriously in years.
- loladesoto 13y agoif you like drawing living things (and you care about proportion, realistic renditions) studying the underlying musculoskeletal structure helps. i just try to capture something fleeting. i identify the most salient element and try to communicate that in my drawing. the most useful exercise in that book imo was the technique of trying to draw something once, then turning it upside down and trying again. ("disorienting" the object trains your mind to better identify spatial relationships.)
- egypturnash 13y agoProfessional cartoonist here. If you want to move on to the next step of drawing whatever the hell you want to out of your head, in any angle, I strongly recommend you go to http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-lessons-fundamentals-of.html http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-le..., get the Preston Blair book, and start doing these exercises. You will get a lot better, a lot faster. You can build on the simple cartoon characters in these lessons and do super realistic stuff, or you can keep on being a cartoonist. Whatever works for you.
- thedufer 13y agoThere's an extra space in there. Fixed link: http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-lessons-fundamentals-of.html http://johnkcurriculum.blogspot.com/2009/12/preston-blair-le...
- egypturnash 13y agothe link's working for me? Either someone fixed it or weird things are afoot with different browsers. Either way, thanks!
- thedufer 13y agoIts been edited since I posted. There was originally a space in the middle of blogspot.
- searine 13y agoLook no further than this post. It teaches all the underlying mechanics of visual communication without costing you a dime.
- harywilke 13y agoJohn K's blog [1] is full of great insight on drawing and cartoons. Especially the early posts. This is the John K who gave us Ren and Stimpy 1. http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com
- adcoelho 13y agoI bought this book and did find it amazing, the first exercises are very good in showing how you Can draw, specially the inverted picture exercise. However, I struggled to find the material with which to do some of the later exercises and ended up putting it aside.
- lutusp 13y agoOne can't fault a simple pencil and pad of paper, but I think if technologists become interested in drawing (which seems both likely and desirable), over time there will be more ways to do this with a tablet and stencil, with all the advantages. For me personally, notorious for moving lines around in my drawings, that would be very nice -- one would be able to delete lines that didn't work out. I've always envied people who are actually gifted draftspeople -- people who lay down the exact right line on the first try, and whose drawings are paragons of minimalism. R. Crumb, for example -- there's a video showing him drawing with a pen and never laying down a bad line. Whenever I watch that video, I have an envy meltdown. My point? With a tablet and stencil, by being able to delete things, I could pretend to have actual drawing talent. :) One of my old drawings: http://i.imgur.com/hRQY84G.jpg http://i.imgur.com/hRQY84G.jpg
- GhotiFish 13y agoI think the trick is that they are using the Bob Ross method. They don't make mistakes, they make happy accidents. There's this program for rapid sketching called alchemy http://al.chemy.org/features/ http://al.chemy.org/features/ it specifically has no undo button, for that reason. It's pretty fun to screw around with.
- gk1 13y agoI disagree that there's a trick to it. Laying down a line with precision and exactly in the way that you planned is a skill. When you watch an architect or draftsman draw a line, they've drawn that same line thousands of times before.
- adestefan 13y agoBeing a good draftsman is like being a good painter; it's all in the prep. There's a lot of work that goes into getting things setup and guides in place before the first real line hits the paper. If you watch someone that's really good with a CAD program you'll see they do more work with things that don't end up on the final drawing than they do on the actually drawing.
- 13y ago
- gk1 13y agoAside from the mental stimulation or distraction drawing provides, it's an incredible tool for solving or communicating problems... Especially to non-programmers. What other tool or method allows you to explain a development challenge or solution (at a basic level) to a non-developer, in a matter of minutes? Being able to stand up in a meeting, walk to the whiteboard, and sketch out basic concepts for everyone in the room to understand makes you a goddamn hero. You'll go from being just a developer to the developer who can communicate with the biz guys, the sales guys, the designer guys, etc. That's valuable. There's a good book on this topic, which I highly recommend: http://www.danroam.com/the-back-of-the-napkin/ http://www.danroam.com/the-back-of-the-napkin/ (I have no affiliation with the author or the book.)
- b0rsuk 13y agoI'm a beginner programmer who is attracted to aesthetic aspects of creativity ('art' is a dirty word for me because of people associated with it). I tried to learn playing a recorder, because I like the way it sounds, and I adore music in general. I couldn't stand it, and I learned something about myself in the process. I'm dreadfully bored by repetitive tasks. For me it leads to routine, and routine leads to terrible errors. I intend to try this book and drawing in general. Drawing has the potential to suck me in just like playing an instrument failed. I think drawing is to playing an instrument like solving nonograms to solving sudoku. Sudoku is inherently repetitive to solve, you need to check for all numbers in a square, one by one, then all numbers in a line, line by line... In contrast, nonograms usually have non-linear solutions - there is no single way to get to the final result. This makes the process of solving a nonogram vastly more enjoyable for me. I have no illusion that learning to draw won't require days, months, years of practice. But you can - should - try new things, and you improve in the process. No endless repetition of one piece until you can play it perfectly. Sounds a lot like Starcraft, doesn't it ? :> I think Starcraft players who like to invoke comparisons to Chess have an inferiority complex and can't enjoy Starcraft for what it is. And it is a lot more like playing guitar than Chess. It's just that Chess much more accumulated prestige. One of things putting me off Starcraft is that learning to play it violates the DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) principle. A few years from now you may be vastly better at Starcraft, and I'll be able to draw many /different/ things. I think it's a wider problem with most games. I know very few that really reward creative thinking rather than memorization of strategies and their counters, and practicing to execute them perfectly. Board games have it easier, in absence of computers they can afford to be less strict about rules, and the focus in boardgame industry is still on developing interesting mechanics rather than building on a few established genres.
- tripzilch 13y ago> 'art' is a dirty word for me because of people associated with it lol, once more I see that nobody escapes the tentacles of post-modernism :) I totally get the DRY principle regarding music btw. Every time I try to play an instrument (especially percussion), and I get it right, I find myself wishing for a "repeat" button. Somehow with drawing this is very different for me. I love zoning out on penning tiny details, cross-hatchings, or on the computer, handpixeling sprites. I think this is also what the article is really about, learning to access this other "mode" of your brain thinking. I'm all for DRY, but it's great to be able to stretch the other brainmuscle and just DRRRRRRRRRRRaw :) Also there are no terrible errors in drawing. Especially not if you do it because you love doing it.
- larve 13y agowe have a tiny blog with a friend (programmer too) where we put up our drawings, both learning to draw from various books and sources on the internet. I started 4 years ago at 28, don't know about my friend. I'm all for messy and sketchy, he likes the clean things :) http://hackingart.tumblr.com/ http://hackingart.tumblr.com/ I haven't posted much lately, been in a kind of slump and not producing much.
- poseid 13y agosome nice ones
- louischiffre 13y agoLong time lurker here. I am also a programmer who started to learn how to draw. I even put a blog documenting the process. http://louislearnstodraw.blogspot.ch/ http://louislearnstodraw.blogspot.ch/ So here is my 2 cent. Drawing is definitely more than being able to reproduce a 3d object on a 2d surface, it's about understanding how things are constructed and work. For example if you want to draw a steam locomotive, you have to understand what are the parts of a steam engine, how power is generated and transferred to the wheels, how it is built, why the parts have this shape, ... . If you don't have this understanding, there is no way you can draw a steam locomotive from imagination. Of course you can do a nice copy with beautiful rendering that will look nice, but drawing something that is realistic will be very difficult. Since I started learning to draw, I learned a lot of things on a variety of subjects: entomology, anatomy, marine biology, history, technology,... When I visit a new city the first thing I look up are the museums, where I then go to draw. I could elaborate more on that subject but I have to run. Let me know if there is any interest.
- bharatFNS 13y agoProgramming is "computer art". We have simple succeeded in making this discipline a science. All by deciding to call the discipline "computer science".
- nsxwolf 13y agoI could never draw that stick figure. It has a certain flair I could never replicate. That led me to be instantly disheartened when reading this.
- tripzilch 13y ago:( I get what you mean (about the "flair") ... and I'm not really sure what to say. Except that I hope you do try. A few stick figures. Take a look at xkcd's earliest stick figures: https://xkcd.com/6/ https://xkcd.com/6/ and compare them to the way he manages to put actual emotion into those few lines with his current cartoons. Okay yes his other drawings of that time are actually pretty good, but my point is, even when drawing stick figures, you can get better at it with practice :) But not if you get disheartened.