Ask HN: Anyone here have good material for learning how to sketch from scratch?
Possible red flags:<p>- &quot;<i>One day, eventually, if all the stars align, I want to maybe be able to X</i>&quot; pattern. Yes it&#x27;s good to have goals, and socially approved of to be humble; a risk with this is that people who are compelled to do X are already doing it right now, badly, because they enjoy <i>doing it</i>. You could have drawn many people in the time it took you to write that post, and then said &quot;draw better action scenes with people fighting&quot; or &quot;more realistic faces&quot; or etc. Something specific. The possible red flag is: &quot;I want to be in a band&quot; imagining being on stage and being worshipped, instead of &quot;I strum on the guitar and enjoy it and want to be able to play Stairway to Heaven&quot;. If by any chance you don&#x27;t like the action of drawing already right now, why will you want to draw people later if you have the ability? What will change?<p>- You want to draw &quot;people or landscapes&quot;. Also good to have goals and range, but possible red flag is that the goals are suspiciously vague. Could it be that you don&#x27;t know what you want because you don&#x27;t really want to <i>do</i> either of those things very much? Would you know if you wanted to draw wooden furniture that you are planning to make, or illustrations for a nightmare Lovecraft book? Instead of &quot;I want to play Stairway to Heaven on the electric guitar&quot; you&#x27;re saying &quot;I want to do music or singing is there a good tutorial for that?&quot;. What specific people are you drawn to? Portraits? Action movements? Cartoon style? Anime style? DC Comics style? Or what landscapes? Like Bob Ross, Bill Watterson, Studio Ghibli, or what? If you don&#x27;t know and don&#x27;t care, it&#x27;s back to liking the idea more than the activity. If you do care, maybe choosing and focusing can give you something specific to look for in a tutorial - no point in getting one that covers hands if you want to draw mountains, no point in one which covers plants in detail if you want to draw steampunk, just because you&#x27;ll be more compelled to work on things you want to work on.<p>- &quot;<i>I tried X and it didn&#x27;t work</i>&quot;. Yes guides and tutorials and things can help, red flag interpretation is also that&#x27;s is such a vague comment. &quot;<i>I want to build websites. I tried &#x27;Javascript the good parts&#x27; but it didn&#x27;t work</i>&quot; as if the book &#x27;worked&#x27; you&#x27;d be able to code and if you can&#x27;t code after reading it, the book didn&#x27;t work. As if working is a thing books can do or not do. Did it not give you anything to think about? Anything to practise? Did you do the self portrait at the start and end and not improve?<p>- &quot;I am willing to pay hudreds of dollars&quot; - Is that coming from a place of &quot;expertise and coaching is something I respect&quot; or from &quot;can I skip the hard and boring bits by throwing money at it?&quot;. Only you can know.<p>- Analysis paralysis. I understand it, and I suspect a common reason for it is that people &quot;want&quot; to do things, but don&#x27;t really want to, so there&#x27;s nothing to force any action one way or another. Consider: do you want cake or ice cream? Hard decision. Do you want cake or dog poop? Easy decision. People who &quot;want to write games&quot; can&#x27;t decide on the &quot;best way&quot; for months at a time. People who are compelled to get their game idea into reality have no time for analysis paralysis, any tutorial will do, get to the point already, I&#x27;ve got things to create! There&#x27;s no analysis paralysis in &quot;I want to plant potatoes in my garden this growing season and that gives me 2 weeks and there&#x27;s one garden center near by&quot;. There&#x27;s analysis paralysis in &quot;growing some of my own food would be nice, but what? should I get an allotment? What&#x27;s the perfect soil? Which online shop has the ~ best seeds ~? What tools do the pros use? What&#x27;s the best gardening TV show?&quot;.<p>Do you want to spend your time doing the activity of drawing? Is that something you already do, now? If yes, it makes it much easier: look for the courses which teach the thing you want to improve at, specifically. If no, maybe do that first or ask yourself why you &quot;want to be able to draw&quot; when you don&#x27;t ever draw?<p>This post brought to you by years of watching people say &quot;I want to learn to program, what would be <i>the best way</i>(tm)&quot; on the internet, when they could be opening an editor and fighting the parser to get some code working, any code. Paradox: If you don&#x27;t care what you draw, any tutorial will do. If you do care, there should be little analysis paralysis because most tutorials are irrelevant to what you want, and of all the ones which are targetted at what you want, any one of them will do.