Post #1954106

2026-05-02 23:08 UTC

@drakonic in the wider context of "learning to draw" the attitude of "you must do still-life drawing, 3-point perspective, values and colour before you do manga-style" is absolutely pervasive and is what got me to quit visual art a decade ago when "well meaning" bystanders kept shitting on my progress pics because I wasn't drawing 300 boxes a day instead. I see this continuously given as "advice" to random people on reddit as well. the fact is, all that stuff is necessary, yes, but all of it can be done *later*. let people doodle if that's what they want to do. instilling an idea that you're "learning the wrong way" kills people's motivations. my first PCBs sucked ass and the very first one didn't even work. but I got better and better with each one. somehow, I did so without learning analogue impedance formulas from a textbook first.

Replies (2)

@drakonic@wetdry.world 2026-05-02 23:15

@AmyZenunim what you're recalling is unsolicited criticism, and I'm sorry you had to deal with it. I agree that there are a lot of haughty assholes that will go "GRRR!! you're learning WRONG!" completely unprompted and I stand against that kind of behaviour. The above is advice, requested. OP doesn't have to take it. If they feel like jumping into explicitly "how to draw manga", they could. They wouldn't be much worse off, those kinds of books do teach you a tiny bit of fundamentals (like contructing with basic shapes). What the commenter is suggesting is theoretically optimal, but not necessary. Fact is, everyone learns differently, and you have to find the method that works for you. And so you cast a net for advice, like here

Open ##1954107
@goes2hard@labyrinth.zone 2026-05-03 14:52

@AmyZenunim @drakonic because I wasn’t drawing 300 boxes a day instead. this seems to allude to the well known drawabox.com course. Ironically enough, it actually explicitly states that you should spend at least as much time drawing for fun (actually nvm, it used to say that, now it says “drawing for its own sake” instead of “drawing for fun”, where it makes the difference because play and exploration is not always fun because of the frustration of failure) as you spend drawing for the course, and that if you fail to draw for fun its own sake/play/exploration at least that much, you’re doing the course wrong.

Open ##1954108