Ask HN: How do I get into art?

I'm a programmer and I also like art. My exposure to it, besides high school, has been going to exhibits, reading books and also practicing some photography myself. I think a good idea is start going to exhibits of both famous and unknown authors (this can be strange but also usually free, at least in Europe). You can then have an idea of what you can do yourself if that's your inclination. Also reading books by artists is a good idea, for instance Kandinskij was both a great artist and great writer about art.

Loosely speaking, art is a very vague and ambiguous context dependent grammar. Once you learn its syntax you can express a lot.

I recommend studying some art history. Learning when and why art happened helps it make sense. A lot of art over history is either a result of the culture or a reaction to other art. A classic example of this is Impressionism and the way it was a reaction to the Salon and the traditional ways of the time.

I don't have any resource recommendations there. I learned art history in a high school AP class and it was probably the class whose content stuck with me the most. And the exam was quite fun (some questions were literally "given this artwork, when and where do you think it was made and why?").

And go to museums! I was lucky enough to grow up in Chicagoland, so I could go to the Art Institute there as I was studying art history and afterwards.

Also check out local art and artists. Some places will have "art walks" where neighborhoods set up exhibits and galleries and you can walk around and check stuff out and sometimes even talk to the artist.

"Art" in general is hugely broad. Everything can be art if you make it so. Art can be small and ephemeral and cute and in between the lines as much as it can be finished pieces.

I recommend making art. This can be anything. The most recent thing I've gotten into is making papercraft greeting cards for family members by cutting out different shapes and colors and gluing them. It's hard work! But it's been fun iterating on my process (light table, sketching, mocking up in Krita and printing the layers in a way I can then transfer to real paper).

Find artists whose art speaks to you. They can visual artists, writers, or even rock musicians. Find interviews where they talk about art. Read their wikipedia and other sources to learn about their lives. Where the art comes from will make more sense.

Give yourself permission to change your hair and clothes and living space. Wear jewelry if you don't normally. Grow your hair out or cut it short if you want to. Try different glasses frames. Decorate your desk. Use fun stickers in your notebooks. This sounds like a non sequitur but this sort of thing is artistic thinking and when you examine many artists you'll notice they put a lot of care into little things.

I took a Philosophy of Art class in college and it exposed me to a lot of meta-thinking about art. A lot of the common STEM-minded complaints about art ("anyone can do it" "it's just because they say it's art" etc) are covered

This was in HN yesterday. It has tips in how to start:

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/30/792439555/making-art-is-good-...

As an appreciator or as a creator? Here's some good first steps either way:

- Go to museums, especially exhibits you're not familiar with.

- Get a sketchbook and draw/doodle. Don't worry about what you're drawing or if it's any good, just fill up paper. Don't think too hard about it. Fill up at least one sketchbook before you watch any "how to draw" books.

- Watch some online humanities and art history videos on youtube. Look up stuff you're wondering like "why do people like art that looks like a 5 year old could make it" or "is a banana taped to a wall really art" (or whatever you wonder about). You might not agree with the presenters but at least you'll understand more where they're coming from. Or learn about particular periods in art history that you think are interesting.

- Make some found art, next time you're throwing away something like a chair or a cardboard box, take it apart and turn it into a sculpture, paint it, and THEN throw it away.

- Look for public art (sanctioned art or unsanctioned street art) in your area. Find some interesting pieces and make a trip to see/photograph them in person. What's different about seeing them in person versus seeing pictures of them? Think about what effort would go into creating them.

- Read some poetry. You can start with someone like Brian Bilson who is pretty accesable.

If you want an introduction to the history of visual art E. H. Gombrich's The Story of Art is the classic text and takes you up to about the 1990s.

Apart from that - go to a decent gallery, find a theatre production that looks interesting, go to a classical concert, contemporary dance performance or ballet, see a jazz band. Find a friend to share the joy / boredom with. Bonus points if they know something about what you're going to.

Honestly the best thing is just to explore and give yourself licence to like things that aren't fashionable and dislike things that are.

For modern stuff, I recommend going through lists of films, albums, and books considered "the greatest", and then finding analyses and commentaries of the works.

[1] https://taylor.town/eschew-the-new

Go to an art gallery and look at the art. See what you find beautiful, see what you find boring and see what you dislike. Don’t worry about understanding its deeper meaning - just see how you react. If you find something you like, google the artist and see what words get used in relation to their art, and google those terms to find other artists that cover similar ground. Feel your way forward based on what gives you joy, and don’t worry about what other people think: your personal reaction to art is all that counts.

Have you considered trying to make some art instead of asking this question on a message board full of STEM folks?

Also, "art" is such a broad term that it's hard to even know what you're asking. This would be like someone saying "How do I get into athletics?" Well, what kind of athletics? There are hundreds of ways to be athletic. And the answer would be similar: pick a sport/activity and try it.

Do you want to explore the world of art, or do you want to _make_ art? Or both?

In art school, I studied art history and the philosophy of art. In addition, I took practical classes on:

* Sculpture

* Life drawing

* Painting

* Forging

* Ceramics

* Digital animation

* Film

* Photography

If you want to get started appreciating art, get a short book on art history with lots of pictures and less text from the library.

Then, if you want to also get started making art, see if your local community college or art collective has public art classes. Life drawing, in particular, is important if you want to develop art skill broadly. Otherwise just dabble and see what feels fun and interesting.

Do you you want to make art yourself, or experience art that's been made?

I have an art degree but I've learned more on my own than I ever learned in school. Youtube is a good resource if you want to get hands on. The "PaintCoach" channel is pretty fantastic if you want to give oil painting a shot. His videos break down the process from absolute basics and a minimum of materials are required. I'm not associated with this channel in any way.

https://www.youtube.com/@paintcoach

I am assuming by "art" you mean visual art.

Proper art curation is like writing a good research paper, except everything is in space instead of on paper. If you enjoy reading / writing research papers, then most likely you will enjoy well-curated exhibitions as well.

Of course, good exhibitions are not everywhere, but are limited to a handful of big cities. As the saying goes, where there is money there is art. You will have to come to these places and see.

One way to appreciate art is to try to make it yourself.

This book is an excellent way to try: https://archive.org/details/Keys_to_Drawing/mode/2up

Another popular book is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".

A little contrarian here, but AI/ML is a great entry point. You can learn the hottest field in the world right now and apply it to creating art. You'll be learning a lot of highly valuable skills and creating works that are aesthetically pleasing and meaningful to you.

The best way to get started is to download Discord (what all these people hang out on) and join the Discord communities of several of the top sites. There you can learn directly from current practitioners.

Simon Shama showed me how to appreciated art by explaining what he sees in it. His feelings are entirely subjective, which means my experience of a work of art is no more or less valid than anyone else's, including the artists own. This liberated me to enjoy art by enjoying the feelings and thoughts that arose in me for certain works.

The most powerful closing ever made by Simon Shama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rww2gsXc-xE

If you're interested in creating and, specifically, drawing, I cannot recommend https://drawabox.com/ highly enough. I would describe it as a "Learn X the Hard Way" programming book, but for drawing. If you say "I can't even draw a straight line," you're in luck because it starts with exercises around drawing a straight line. If you want, there's a reddit community where you can get feedback on your from either the crowd or the creator of drawabox, but that's totally optional.

About 5 years ago I was looking to get back into drawing - a hobby I'd enjoyed in grade school, but more or less dropped for a decade and a half. I tried the "just start sketching" advice a few times, but my lack of skill made it less than fun: the results were so bad that it discouraged me. Working through Drawabox got me over that skill hump where I could draw things that I considered at least ok. That made me enjoy drawing things enough to keep doing it for fun and, as a result, keep improving.

You join us at arkive.net!

If you're already past a beginner level and need to practice a lot, a good way is to actually use AI generators. Like you would do still life, paint things you see, or copy other artwork, you can copy and/or modify generative works. That way you can actually draw things much closer to your creative interest. It can help get ideas out of your head faster.

But honestly, the way to get better at art is to do a bunch of art. It's like math, it's all about the practice.

Start exposing yourself to as much art as possible. If you lucky to live in a major city, visit the major museums and see what interests you. Go to art museums when you travel. Sign up for newsletters about art events in your area. Try to make friends with a few artists-- they will also keep you in the loop and expose you to new ideas.

Once you find an area of art you identify with, try to find a class or workshop. Even if you take an art class in an unrelated field, the process of creating art, getting feedback, critiquing the work of others, etc, will help you.

Just keep in mind art can literally be anything. Had I not taken a workshop in film scanning, I never would have known that you can make art with sandwiches and scanners: https://scanwiches.com

Many schools that have art programs (as well as specialty art schools) offer online coursework in making and appreciating art. A very valuable aspect of these is the conversations with others who share your interest, you'll learn a lot from these discussions. Browsing online libraries about art and online galleries also good, but putting yourself in a place where you are directly, physically engaged with the art (museum, gallery, a local artist) really makes a difference in your perception of the work and what you bring to it. AI/ML generated work is fascinating, but may be exploitative of the artists that train the model, so maybe better to understand the labor involved with creating the training data for those models at least to start.

Pick up the book "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" by Scott McCloud. It's basically a comic book about not just comics, but other forms of media as well since comics share a lot of traits with images, film, and other forms of art. I have read it cover to cover countless times, and each time I had something new to take away from it:

http://mm12.johncaserta.info/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Unde...

There are also a lot of artists who combine technology and art in various ways. Hito Steyerl has been doing this for many years through video and art installations. I suggest checking out her 2013 short film "How Not to be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File":

https://www.artforum.com/video/hito-steyerl-how-not-to-be-se...

To expose yourself to art, a great first step is to go to a local museum and ask for a tour. The curator would love to discuss the finer details of the work with you, and depending on the museum, you'll probably see a big span in styles, from ancient to contemporary.

You can ask the curator about events at the museum and also look for local galleries and gallery openings - the gallery openings tend towards contemporary art which is only one specific slice of art, though.

To get in touch with your local art "scene", you can also look at local live events, like concerts, dance or live theater. These might be harder to find because in some places, it's hard to find a venue for independent live art like this. These are mostly advertised via word of mouth, hard to find websites or flyers.

Just like any other hobby: Start following instagram artists you like. From there, start looking at their workflows and tutorials on YouTube. Find some subreddits for art/music/whatever that you like.

r/generative

Not exactly clear from your post if you're interested in making art or just appreciating it. I feel like making art is definitely a good way to learn how to appreciate it, as you will uncover how hard making art is and you will train your eyes to spot details. You'll learn to see signs of quality and cool techniques that will enable you to appreciate more works.

I'm a programmer trying to become a better artist, specifically with drawing. I've seen all kinds of strategies about how to do that, but the one suggestion I've seen that is repeated by everyone is do the thing regularly. (Note that I specifically didn't say 'practice' regularly, since often practice and leisurely drawing/painting/etc. are disjoint. You're in this for the long term so you don't want to burn out by losing sight of what about it brings you joy)

I actually run a small daily art club online on a website I made called Streak Club. If you're interested in having a little space to keep track of your progress then I'd recommend giving it a shot: https://streak.club/s/8/daily-art-club

You won't get into art unless you get something out of it, so I would say that the 0th piece of advice is: if you aren't getting anything out of a piece of art, leave it alone for now.

Why? Because you aren't under any obligation to force yourself to 'get it', and you can always come back to it later, when it might make sense. Or not.

This does not mean you shouldn't step outside your comfort zone, or challenge yourself, or anything like that. What I mean is, people bash their heads against this stuff, and it does no good. Just step away, accept another challenge, and keep going.

In terms of a specific source: I have been reading Arts & Letters Daily for something like 25 years (!), it's a great aggregator of news and stories you can use to discover things and branch out from there.

https://www.aldaily.com/