Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I literally had a dream last night that Hlynka was unbanned.
In general I’ve never found dreams to be particularly interesting, my own or anyone else’s, and I’ve always been puzzled over why they held such fascination for certain thinkers like Freud. Usually their contents are either nonsensical, or they’re connected to waking events/thoughts in a relatively straightforward way.
Have you had any interesting dreams lately? What do you think about dreams in general?
Well, I dreamt that the $45 I spent on 10 months supply of Ozempic for my mom was actually a permanent $4500 a month commitment I couldn't break without her developing liver failure and dying. Relatively straight forward as dreams go, I've already gritted my teeth and prepared to hand over a chunk of my liver (and a rather high risk of dying) if she developed full blown cirrhosis.
Thankfully, Hlynka has yet to haunt my dreams. I'd classify what you saw as a nightmare.
I've always been rather annoyed that my dreams are so low resolution and blurry, and I've yet to have a lucid one. Just imagine the graphics, I could save so much on an RTX 5090! Who needs full immersion VR?
I know my brain is holding out on me. My art skills peaked at the age of 5, despite my mom being a talented artist, yet when I was halfway to dying with a fever of 105° F as a child, I had vivid photorealistic hallucinations in 3D. It just won't bother until I'm literally cooking in my own heat.
I'd give so much to have a single lucid dream, they sound like a ton of fun.
As for the actual importance of dreams, I consider them to be somewhere between offline training and garbage collection going on in the brain when we're unconscious. No particular greater significance.
Although there are unsurprisingly some highly talented artists who report having hyperphantasia, it's not a requirement. Glen Keane famously had aphantasia. My impression from watching professional artists work is that most of them simply have an average capacity for mental visualization.
The majority of learning how to draw just comes down to acquiring cached patterns and learning how to modify and combine them through trial and error, same as any other skill. It doesn't depend on any special faculties.
I spent about 7 or 8 years of my life undergoing personalized drawing and art lessons by a tutor. Other than an attempt to molest me, nothing came of it. To be fair, he wasn't very good at his job.
I'm sure you can improve to some degree with practise, but I am relatively confident that innate talent is indispensable if you want to become a "good" artist, or at least one that people want to look at, or even to the point of getting ten hearts on DeviantArt or Twitter.
Frankly, I disagree strongly with the final conclusion:
You cannot arbitrarily improve skill with effort, and even guidance and feedback. I'm unsure why this isn't as obvious to you as it is me, but just look at chess, music, sports and so on. Success in many fields is absolutely gated behind intelligence and fine motor skills, and more abstruse talents.
If I had to point to myself, writing absolutely comes naturally to me, and that was obvious at an early age. I've certainly improved with millions of words written, but there are bounds and the asymptote becomes obvious in most cases. Most people certainly become better writers from the period they learn the alphabet, but practice only takes you so far, and usually not to the point you're lauded as a good writer.
In the particular case of art, aphantasic people still have spatial skills. I dimly recall they're mildly disadvantaged as shape-rotators, but evidently not to the extent they can't draw at all. After all, it would be obvious if they couldn't write, or perform any other task that you might (possibly erroneously) assume that you need some kind of visual memory, even if they don't have a "mind's eye" as per usual.
I never said otherwise.
The average person off the street can't become Terry Tao and win a Fields Medal, no matter how much time and effort they put into math. Their brains are physically incapable of getting to that level. We're in agreement on that point.
All I was saying is that drawing ability isn't intrinsically coupled to a superior faculty of visualization, and even the best artists still have to study and practice to reach a professional level of skill.
Regarding how many people are physically capable of becoming competent artists: I don't know the exact number, but I do believe that it's higher than is generally supposed. It's higher than the number of people who are capable of winning a Fields Medal anyway.
We have to distinguish between pure drawing from reference (e.g. portraiture, still life) vs creating original pieces. I think the vast majority of otherwise developmentally normal people are capable of learning the former to a competent level. I've done it, I've seen other people do it. It's a purely rote mechanical skill.
Original pieces are a lot harder but it's not hopeless. I started from absolute zero, I have no intrinsic talent for this. In fact I have anti-talent, progress has been abnormally slow and painful for me. But I was still able to make it this far. Obviously it's not pro level even by anime standards, but I think it's kinda cute and I got a few responses saying as much when I posted it online.
I also don't think I'm anywhere near the inherent ceiling on my abilities. I struggled for years partly because traditional art education is all crap and not at all geared towards people who naturally think analytically. Now that I'm learning how to take apart drawings the same way I take apart programs I'm starting to see a lot of progress and I'm way more confident in my ability to keep going.
I may well be worse than average at art. Sure, if you don't mean to claim that performance at it can be arbitrarily improved with effort (and I didn't think you literally meant it, just that you thought it could make someone a passable artist), then we just happen to disagree on what the criteria for being "OK" at art is.
In the most degenerate case, one can trace a drawing or use a pinhole camera, but I acknowledge that drawing from imagination is probably quite a bit harder, though I'm sure Real™ artists also use references.
Not bad! I'm glad your efforts paid off.
Now, I would certainly like to be an artist, but as experience has shown, it was not easy at all for me. Thankfully with AI, I no longer need to be constrained by my hand's ability to sketch what my mind conceives. It'll get the writers too, undoubtedly, I'm just grateful for a year or two of alpha so I can say "yeah I was good before anyone could do this". I suppose you'll still draw regardless, since you presumably enjoy drawing, and I'll continue writing.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link