[HN Gopher] How to draw ideas ___________________________________________________________________ How to draw ideas Author : Sujan Score : 102 points Date : 2023-01-14 18:33 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (ralphammer.com) (TXT) w3m dump (ralphammer.com) | girafffe_i wrote: | My dev team has now spent more of their career without physical | whiteboarding and seems to think of it as a waste of time, so I'm | looking for more guides like this, as well as explanation of the | psycho-mechanics of why this works. | | My understanding is that we think in abstract (we'll say | "shapes"), and then to interface with the world, we learn | language to bucket objects into words and compost them to | describe the "shapes". | | I leverage visuals heavily whenever speaking with others (Miro, | physical paper or whiteboards), and have trouble communicating | with (smart) people who can hold a lot in their head while | speaking at length about it without providing concrete | references. The transformative process of people getting their | thoughts out on paper means 1. they can share context and aren't | referring to their "shapes" referentially in their head 2. more | than 1 person can see their thoughts concretized and can share | context, discuss, and re-shape the thoughts 3. the act of | reabsorbing the concrete representation reveals incompleteness | that others can contribute to (edge cases, weird use cases) | maCDzP wrote: | Hm, this workflow is similar to the one I was taught in a writing | class. | | Does anyone write programs using the same workflow? | turtledragonfly wrote: | I do, at times, somewhat. | | I think software is often seen as a "rapid development" | process, esp. when compared to hardware development. But | somewhat ironically, I find actually writing software to be | pretty slow compared to just doodling out ideas on paper, so I | tend to do a lot of that first, especially when treading new | territory. | | On occasion, in a REPL-style environment, I can get some amount | of that same freedom of exploration and experimentation at a | keyboard, but it's still hard to come close to pencil and | paper, for me. | | Sometimes I wonder what it would be to have the mind of someone | like Tesla, who could reportedly design complex objects in his | head, down to the details. The freedom of experimentation in | one's own mind is even better than pencil-and-paper, but I have | trouble holding on to the details in that mode. | kingkongjaffa wrote: | Very fun! I've found sketching and journaling super valuable. | | I follow the methods from https://bulletjournal.com/ | | My journal is full of different layouts, diagrams, decision | making tables, for example doing a quick SWOT analysis on paper | by diving a page into 4. | | Paper is good and helpful for the process. | | I'm continually trying to produce 'evergreen notes" and writing | on paper helps me push towards that a bit. | (https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes) | gozzoo wrote: | > Internal Server Error | Simran-B wrote: | If you get an Internal Server Error like me: | http://web.archive.org/web/20230114194140/https://ralphammer... | hemmert wrote: | Beautiful! | mistermann wrote: | FTA: | | -------------------------------- | | After we have taken in as much information as possible, we now | want to go "crazy" and draw as many ideas as possible. | | But what if our mind goes blank and we don't have any? | | Then we still need to draw. | | Ok, but what? | | Anything! Just put that pen on the paper and keep it moving. | Scribble, make random marks and shapes. This will kickstart our | visual thinking process. rough sketches | | And what are we thinking about? New plant pots of course! We draw | everything that comes to mind. Everything! Those drawings just | keep pouring from our mind through our hands on that sheet of | paper. We have created a loop where our imaginations turn into | drawings and those drawings initiate new imaginations. | | -------------------------------- | | This is eerily similar to (my understanding) of how AI image | generation works. | gradys wrote: | Any recommendations for learning to draw at the level depicted in | this article? | kleer001 wrote: | Learn to see what you're looking at. An hour or so of practice | from life every day for a year is a good start. | pavlov wrote: | An hour a day is a massive commitment for most people with | lives (work, family etc.) You can get very meaningful | progress in drawing with much less. Don't be discouraged from | starting. | weaksauce wrote: | even doing < 5 min a day of learning a new language sees | results in a year. drawing probably has a higher startup | cost to get into things but i'd expect 10min to be | sufficient. | SimDeBeau wrote: | They actually link an article they wrote on some drawing | exercises. https://ralphammer.com/a-quick-beginners-guide-to- | drawing/ Remind me of a lot of what we did in some of my old | beginner art classes. | turtledragonfly wrote: | As far as I know, the main thing is to do a lot of it, and with | purpose. | | Depending on your personality, this may be a big ask -- if you | get discouraged or distracted easily, for instance. | | On the other hand, it's a very accessible skill: pen and paper | are easy to come by. | | Personally, I've always felt rewarded by doing it. It soothes | something in me, so I haven't had the struggle with self- | motivation that some report. | | I think that's a key to getting good at many things, really: | find some emotional satisfaction from what you're doing, and | the motivation will follow. As opposed to simply saying "I want | to be good at X" and mechanically pushing yourself to do it. If | you don't have some baseline love for the activity, you may | learn to dread it, by that approach. | yardshop wrote: | Step 1: be great at drawing | | Step 2: DTROTFO! [1] | | Seriously though, these seem like good steps for getting | started. Just start scribbling to get your hand warmed up, then | redraw and refine and keep practicing. | | [1] | https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/eccj2/how_to_draw_an... | imrat wrote: | Original substack article here: | https://ralphammer.substack.com/p/how-to-draw-ideas | | with a bunch of other good ones too - like The Creative Switch | DavidPiper wrote: | The Creative Switch is explores similar ideas to John Cleese's | theory of creativity: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb5oIIPO62g ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-01-14 23:00 UTC)