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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 24, 2024

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.