8 ms·

Creativity Is Much More Than 10k Hours of Deliberate Practice

175 points by edtechdev 10y ago

jimhefferon 10y ago
Drawed?
- garrettgrimsley 10y ago
  We're more familiar with drew, but apparently drawed is a thing. [0] On another note: who claimed that 10,000 hours of practice leads to creativity? The author says that >This wealth of research on creativity contradicts the notion that deliberate practice is the sole-- or even the most important-- aspect of creativity. but this is the first time I've heard of anyone having this idea. Later down the piece we see >I have immense respect for Ericsson's body of work on deliberate practice, and do believe that deliberate practice can help you get better in virtually any skill. However, I also believe that an accurate understanding of creativity is important for how we recognize, nurture, value, and ultimately, reward it, across all sectors of society. But again, it doesn't seem like the author is disagreeing with Ericsson. Am I missing something, is there something in Ericsson's book that would make it clear that Kaufman is not simply attacking a straw-man? Maybe it is from Gladwell using creative people and groups as examples in Outliers? [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drawed https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drawed
  - takno 10y ago
    drawed only seems to appear in the type of dictionaries they let just anybody edit. The article mostly seemed to be trying to surprise us with the obvious.
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    Yeah, it's Gladwell's conflation, I think. (And the writer's conflation of Gladwell's assertions with Ericsson's.) If you're interested in this type of thing, I'd recommend ":59 Seconds" for a somewhat more down-to-earth and research-based approach. Amongst many of the more interesting findings is that just having actual physical plants around[1] helps improve creativity and that brainstorming in groups (as opposed to separately and then comparing results later) is counterproductive. (Of course that's also provisional, so some of the research referenced therein may have been refuted, so... Such is that Way of Science.) [1] Interestingly, pictures of plants/nature don't work.
madaxe_again 10y ago
Good article, but straight from the big book of the very obvious. Were this the case, children would have to spend months deliberately studying how to play. As the author says, deliberate study is antithetical to creativity. Creativity is spontaneous, playful, imaginative - and none of those things come from grinding. I have my best ideas usually while doing something totally unrelated.
- bsder 10y ago
  > Creativity is spontaneous, playful, imaginative - and none of those things come from grinding. Research shows that people who simply produce wind up producing better. So, the research disagrees with you at least somewhat. There is no creativity without production. Production, however, does not guarantee creativity.
  - madaxe_again 10y ago
    That's output vs intent, however - you can be creative but not necessarily create physical things. Most artists create nothing themselves - they leave that to their artisans. Are they uncreative because they instruct rather than construct?
    - inimino 10y ago
      > Most artists create nothing themselves Sorry, who are you talking about?
      - madaxe_again 10y ago
        The vast majority of artists. You think Damien Hirst has picked up a brush in 20 years?
- InclinedPlane 10y ago
  It's both, and it's a fine balance. That's why high quality art is a comparative rarity. If you practice too much, you will just be an automaton. Able to make but not to express. Your work will be derivative, uninteresting. There are literally millions of artists who have fallen into this trap. If you practice too little then all your creativity will be for naught as you lack the skill and ability to translate it into an expression. Michelangelo, for example, was apprenticed when he was only 13, and by the time he made the Pieta he had been studying and working for 10 years. The important thing is to find the balance. To practice as a means to hone a skill that is at your command, rather than your master.
chasing 10y ago
I mean, yes: Creativity is much, much more than some over-simplified canard presented in some Malcolm Gladwell book.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
askRich 10y ago
I think the author of the article is describing a false dichotomy. The purpose of deliberate practice is to build the underlying knowledge that leads to the creativity and also unlock the intuitive sense that comes from mastery.
- ben_jones 10y ago
  Agreed. Ten years ago what could we achieve at say, a hackathon? What could we achieve in the same amount of time today? I don't think our creativity has increased, but our ability to express it probably has, and that's why deliberate practice is a component that expands the whole process.
  - aclissold 10y ago
    Our ability to express our creativity. I'll have to think about that for a while.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  There's great creative power in not knowing what you don't know and trying out random things because you have yet to acquire the knowledge of how things are 'supposed' to be done. Knowledge is valuable but at the same time I am so over the mastery movement, which is as much about excluding people from the club by making them think they're never ready enough as it is about giving them to tools to succeed. I started painting 3 months ago at age 45 while in the throes of a massive personal crisis, out of a purely selfish need to express myself emotionally rather than accommodate other people. Turns out that I'm good at it, have original ideas, and am already getting unlooked-for interest from other people in loaning or purchasing my artwork. It's not that I have some tremendous natural talent; I work hard at it and when I can't paint I study, plus I had years of self-development in other parts of the arts that allowed me to develop my own aesthetic philosophy. But frankly the most valuable factor underlying this unexpected productivity is an uncharacteristic Not Giving A Shit about other peoples' feelings. Giving myself permission to be a less nice person has been an enormous boon to creativity.
  - 10y ago
criddell 10y ago
> the techniques of deliberate practice are most applicable to "highly developed fields" such as chess, sports, and musical performance in which the rules of the domain are well established and passed on from generation to generation Bummer. I was hoping to find some shortcuts to learning how to play the guitar. I've had one for 20 years now and still can't play it.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  Spend five minutes a day playing it. Seriously.
  - criddell 10y ago
    I really want to. Sometimes I do, for a month or two, then I don't touch it for 8 months. I've taken weekly lessons two different times, once for 6 months and once for 3 months. I even bought a guitar that I keep in my office at work. My coworkers come in and play it far more than I do. I just have too many things that I want to do. If I could afford to retire, I could easily keep busy the rest of my life doing all the things I wish I could do right now.
    - ktRolster 10y ago
      Five minutes is something you can afford to spend even if you are very busy. Don't give me any more excuses. Instead of replying to this comment, spend the two minutes it would take to get off hacker news and play a few notes.
      - criddell 10y ago
        So I just spent 5 minutes playing a few scales. While I was doing that, I wasn't reading the book I'm almost finished, or writing in my journal, or thinking about side project I have going on, or emailing a friend that I haven't spoken to in a few months, or taking a short walk, or making a cup of tea, or making lunch plans with my wife, or sketching, or desoldering a bad relay in my espresso machine, or generally making 5 minutes of progress on any other hobby or project I have. Now I probably won't touch my guitar again for another 3 months because the 5 minutes I can spare tomorrow will be spent reading or coloring a sketch I made or some other thing that I enjoy working on. You might point out that I'm wasting my time reading HN, but I get a great deal of enjoyment out of the things I find on HN.
kris-s 10y ago
I make a youtube video every day as part of a do-a-thing-for-100-days project. I've learned a lot from it but one of the key takeaways was that I have much, much more creative energy than I thought (I was really worried I would run out of stories to tell at day 20 or something). The 12 points the author listed seemed accurate but they never really reached a meaningful conclusion. My advice for anyone considering undertaking a creative project: just do it. My videos are here if you're curious: http://youtube.com/krisshamloo http://youtube.com/krisshamloo
- bgilroy26 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing your videos, they are a lot of fun!
  - kris-s 10y ago
    Sure thing, happy to :)
magice 10y ago
sigh Yet-another-worshipper-of-god-given-creativity. I lost all respect for the article the moment the author drew difference between chess/music/sport and writing/drawing/teaching/"creativity". Frankly, the way I read it, this is just another hero-worshipping article by consultants whose main contribution to the economy involves destroying R&D and shipping jobs oversea. And it truly saddens me that Hacker News keeps this on my front page. Why did the difference irk me? First, find me, seriously, find me 2 basketball matches that are exactly the same. Or 2 golf days that are exactly the same. Or 2 music performances that are exactly the same. Or 2 chess matches that are exactly the same. It's ridiculous to claim that somehow chess and music playing and sports are not creative. Second, if a person claims that somehow long period of deliberate practices do not matter on engineering, my personal opinion is that all engineers should spit at that person. Such insult! True, each engineering situation has different challenges. However, the principles of engineering (applied sciences, basically) are finite. Same things for writing or drawing. The materials & techniques (even styles!) are finite. Creativity refers to the adroitness of solving the infinite (problem space) with the finite (tools and principles). Without an intimate understanding of the finite (tools and principles), how can one bring it to bear on the infinite? Third, most of new works are old. Let's take Shakespeare. His works are lovely and creative, no? But consider this: most of his plots are derivative (similar motifs, if not outright fully-formed plots, already existed and popular); most of his language already formed. Shakespeare created at most 10% of his language. He must gain expertise of the other 90% to show case these 10%. Similarly, think of any art or design or product or whatever creative result. Most of such art/design/whatever already follows some popular styles and employs existing and popular techniques. Creativity is only the little extra. Sure, the extra sets it apart. But without the expertise of the 90%, such "extra" can't exist. Finally, creativity is very inefficient without deep expertise. Many people say things like "I am most creative when xyz" (popular xyz: in shower, on a walk, relaxed, reading, etc.). However, this actually means is that people come up with the 10% (see above) extra during this time. Since the person must create the other 90% to top off the little newness, without expertise, 10% will remain fantasy. Now, I am not saying "expertise/practice is everything!" Expertise and practice are foundation of the creativity house. Even when you have solid foundation, you don't have a roof yet, and rain will still wet you. However, without foundation, you simply can't build a house. Expertise and practice are a requirement, but alone are probably not enough. Parting words: people love stories of outsiders winning. However, why don't we talk about outsiders losing? There are vastly more of those. Let's take a simple field: web programming (1. it's appropriate here; 2. outsiders seem to look down on it). You know who built Google? Graduate students from prestige schools. You know who built Microsoft? Students with years of programming experience. You know what outsiders build? The millions of badly written websites, ready to be SQL injected or attacked by a already-patched bugs. That's outsiders' works.
ori_b 10y ago
The author seems to be conflating success with creativity. Of course the things that catch on are stochastic, but this doesn't negate the need to practice, nor does it imply that the chances of a creators work do not increase with practice.
noahbradley 10y ago
I think the study and practice of fundamental techniques is directly tied to training your creative side. But they're also independent skills, in a sense. I see far too many young artists who focus solely on technique, at the detriment of their creativity. Classical atelier programs can train an individual to create astonishingly life-like representations... but too often lacking entirely in any sort of creativity. On the flip side, a lot of art schools have focused so much on creativity that they've lost their grounding in technique. So you get a lot of creatively profound but technically incompetent graduates. Neither are great options. But training technique and creativity together seems like a good choice. Only personal experience to share here, but I can comfortably say that as my technical skills increased, so too did my creativity. I was always worried as a kid that I wasn't "creative" enough to be a decent artist. But when I knew how to express ideas, for some reason I had an easier time coming up with those ideas in the first place.
- hodwik2 10y ago
  First hand, the atelier program can kill your joy. That said, knowing how to render is the only way to get any good at representational art.
- rangibaby 10y ago
  > But when I knew how to express ideas, for some reason I had an easier time coming up with those ideas in the first place. That's the rub, being creative is not worth much if you don't have the necessary skills and technique (practice practice practice!) to express yourself.
  - Uhhrrr 10y ago
    It's another spin on "ideas are worthless" (http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html)
  - duncanawoods 10y ago
    I think this is less true than you think especially after seeing documentaries inside the world of many high-profile artists. In many real-world cases, creativity is closer to direction and composition than the nuts and bolts technique. This is especially true for works that grow in scale beyond a single practitioner. Modern artists have studios and contractors that actually do e.g. metal casting, modern musicians use engineers/producers to create the actual beats, a film score writer probably isn't a skilled trombonist etc. IMHO creativity is about decision making - its closer to "taste" and doesn't require skill to be a unique and special talent in itself. Its a bit like the Jobs/Woz divide.
hodwik2 10y ago
I'm someone who fervently studied classical drawing, painting, and sculpture, against the advice of my friends and professors (they told me to stop studying so hard and to start an art career). The problem with over-practice is that you can get caught in mindless habit. It ruined art for me. It's become very difficult for me to draw pictures that are interesting (if wrong) because I've trained so hard to draw them accurately. It's all by rote. I've tried to fix it, to rewind. Now when I draw it's with my weak hand, and that has gotten me drawing interesting (if wrong) pictures again. Another technique I've tried is using cheap materials. I usually get more interesting results from my 3 year olds acrylics than using professional oil paints. That said, the love of art never came back. That's why, to the extreme confusion of my friends and family, I'm in tech now.
- devishard 10y ago
  My karate teacher used to say: "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect." It seems like if your goal is to draw correct and interesting faces, you should figure out what in your imperfect weak hand drawings is interesting and practice either keeping that while you perfect your weak hand, or introduce that to your practice with your strong hand.
  - hodwik2 10y ago
    It's a lack of control, which produces the happy accident. Accuracy is the problem to begin with. Either I'd learn to pretend to lack control, or I hope my left hand doesn't gain control. That said, again, I no longer enjoy it so it's a moot point.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  >I've tried to fix it, to rewind. Man, focus on line: give your line energy, meaning. Everything else will flow from that.
6stringmerc 10y ago
Not sure why the author chooses to use music as some kind of arbitrary reference point about how 'uncreative' it is due to having a rather large canon of "technique" involved. The reason there aren't a lot of stories about somebody just randomly picking up a guitar, tuning it to whatever and banging away something of creative beauty is because...well...the instrument kind of doesn't allow it. I've basically run under the assumption of the following: "It really helps to know what rules you're breaking and why when doing something new."
- rangibaby 10y ago
  It's why Thelonious Monk is such a polarizing figure in jazz. He breaks every rule in the book, yet it works because he knew exactly what he was doing.
smegel 10y ago
When you start with a strawman like that, where can you go?
- startling 10y ago
  Well, where can't you go? :)
sbardle 10y ago
One of the most damaging notions of creativity is that of the lone genius, as portrayed and developed by the Romantics. To be creative you have to situate yourself in a tradition (it could be furthering the tradition, or rebelling against it).
axelfreeman 10y ago
The difference is that kids have creativity and use all skills in a not conforming way to express is. If you are grownup you think you have to e.g. paint good in way X too be successful. Nobody have to master creativity but the most people say famous artists are so much creative.
k__ 10y ago
I thought the 10k rule is about skill and not about creativity?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

175 points by edtechdev 10y ago

jimhefferon 10y ago

Drawed?

garrettgrimsley 10y ago
We're more familiar with drew, but apparently drawed is a thing. [0] On another note: who claimed that 10,000 hours of practice leads to creativity? The author says that >This wealth of research on creativity contradicts the notion that deliberate practice is the sole-- or even the most important-- aspect of creativity. but this is the first time I've heard of anyone having this idea. Later down the piece we see >I have immense respect for Ericsson's body of work on deliberate practice, and do believe that deliberate practice can help you get better in virtually any skill. However, I also believe that an accurate understanding of creativity is important for how we recognize, nurture, value, and ultimately, reward it, across all sectors of society. But again, it doesn't seem like the author is disagreeing with Ericsson. Am I missing something, is there something in Ericsson's book that would make it clear that Kaufman is not simply attacking a straw-man? Maybe it is from Gladwell using creative people and groups as examples in Outliers? [0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drawed https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/drawed
- takno 10y ago
  drawed only seems to appear in the type of dictionaries they let just anybody edit. The article mostly seemed to be trying to surprise us with the obvious.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  Yeah, it's Gladwell's conflation, I think. (And the writer's conflation of Gladwell's assertions with Ericsson's.) If you're interested in this type of thing, I'd recommend ":59 Seconds" for a somewhat more down-to-earth and research-based approach. Amongst many of the more interesting findings is that just having actual physical plants around[1] helps improve creativity and that brainstorming in groups (as opposed to separately and then comparing results later) is counterproductive. (Of course that's also provisional, so some of the research referenced therein may have been refuted, so... Such is that Way of Science.) [1] Interestingly, pictures of plants/nature don't work.

madaxe_again 10y ago

Good article, but straight from the big book of the very obvious. Were this the case, children would have to spend months deliberately studying how to play. As the author says, deliberate study is antithetical to creativity. Creativity is spontaneous, playful, imaginative - and none of those things come from grinding. I have my best ideas usually while doing something totally unrelated.

bsder 10y ago
> Creativity is spontaneous, playful, imaginative - and none of those things come from grinding. Research shows that people who simply produce wind up producing better. So, the research disagrees with you at least somewhat. There is no creativity without production. Production, however, does not guarantee creativity.
- madaxe_again 10y ago
  That's output vs intent, however - you can be creative but not necessarily create physical things. Most artists create nothing themselves - they leave that to their artisans. Are they uncreative because they instruct rather than construct?
  - inimino 10y ago
    > Most artists create nothing themselves Sorry, who are you talking about?
    - madaxe_again 10y ago
      The vast majority of artists. You think Damien Hirst has picked up a brush in 20 years?
InclinedPlane 10y ago
It's both, and it's a fine balance. That's why high quality art is a comparative rarity. If you practice too much, you will just be an automaton. Able to make but not to express. Your work will be derivative, uninteresting. There are literally millions of artists who have fallen into this trap. If you practice too little then all your creativity will be for naught as you lack the skill and ability to translate it into an expression. Michelangelo, for example, was apprenticed when he was only 13, and by the time he made the Pieta he had been studying and working for 10 years. The important thing is to find the balance. To practice as a means to hone a skill that is at your command, rather than your master.

chasing 10y ago

I mean, yes: Creativity is much, much more than some over-simplified canard presented in some Malcolm Gladwell book.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

askRich 10y ago

I think the author of the article is describing a false dichotomy. The purpose of deliberate practice is to build the underlying knowledge that leads to the creativity and also unlock the intuitive sense that comes from mastery.

ben_jones 10y ago
Agreed. Ten years ago what could we achieve at say, a hackathon? What could we achieve in the same amount of time today? I don't think our creativity has increased, but our ability to express it probably has, and that's why deliberate practice is a component that expands the whole process.
- aclissold 10y ago
  Our ability to express our creativity. I'll have to think about that for a while.
anigbrowl 10y ago
There's great creative power in not knowing what you don't know and trying out random things because you have yet to acquire the knowledge of how things are 'supposed' to be done. Knowledge is valuable but at the same time I am so over the mastery movement, which is as much about excluding people from the club by making them think they're never ready enough as it is about giving them to tools to succeed. I started painting 3 months ago at age 45 while in the throes of a massive personal crisis, out of a purely selfish need to express myself emotionally rather than accommodate other people. Turns out that I'm good at it, have original ideas, and am already getting unlooked-for interest from other people in loaning or purchasing my artwork. It's not that I have some tremendous natural talent; I work hard at it and when I can't paint I study, plus I had years of self-development in other parts of the arts that allowed me to develop my own aesthetic philosophy. But frankly the most valuable factor underlying this unexpected productivity is an uncharacteristic Not Giving A Shit about other peoples' feelings. Giving myself permission to be a less nice person has been an enormous boon to creativity.
- 10y ago

criddell 10y ago

> the techniques of deliberate practice are most applicable to "highly developed fields" such as chess, sports, and musical performance in which the rules of the domain are well established and passed on from generation to generation Bummer. I was hoping to find some shortcuts to learning how to play the guitar. I've had one for 20 years now and still can't play it.

ktRolster 10y ago
Spend five minutes a day playing it. Seriously.
- criddell 10y ago
  I really want to. Sometimes I do, for a month or two, then I don't touch it for 8 months. I've taken weekly lessons two different times, once for 6 months and once for 3 months. I even bought a guitar that I keep in my office at work. My coworkers come in and play it far more than I do. I just have too many things that I want to do. If I could afford to retire, I could easily keep busy the rest of my life doing all the things I wish I could do right now.
  - ktRolster 10y ago
    Five minutes is something you can afford to spend even if you are very busy. Don't give me any more excuses. Instead of replying to this comment, spend the two minutes it would take to get off hacker news and play a few notes.
    - criddell 10y ago
      So I just spent 5 minutes playing a few scales. While I was doing that, I wasn't reading the book I'm almost finished, or writing in my journal, or thinking about side project I have going on, or emailing a friend that I haven't spoken to in a few months, or taking a short walk, or making a cup of tea, or making lunch plans with my wife, or sketching, or desoldering a bad relay in my espresso machine, or generally making 5 minutes of progress on any other hobby or project I have. Now I probably won't touch my guitar again for another 3 months because the 5 minutes I can spare tomorrow will be spent reading or coloring a sketch I made or some other thing that I enjoy working on. You might point out that I'm wasting my time reading HN, but I get a great deal of enjoyment out of the things I find on HN.

kris-s 10y ago

I make a youtube video every day as part of a do-a-thing-for-100-days project. I've learned a lot from it but one of the key takeaways was that I have much, much more creative energy than I thought (I was really worried I would run out of stories to tell at day 20 or something). The 12 points the author listed seemed accurate but they never really reached a meaningful conclusion. My advice for anyone considering undertaking a creative project: just do it. My videos are here if you're curious: http://youtube.com/krisshamloo http://youtube.com/krisshamloo

bgilroy26 10y ago
Thank you for sharing your videos, they are a lot of fun!
- kris-s 10y ago
  Sure thing, happy to :)

magice 10y ago

sigh Yet-another-worshipper-of-god-given-creativity. I lost all respect for the article the moment the author drew difference between chess/music/sport and writing/drawing/teaching/"creativity". Frankly, the way I read it, this is just another hero-worshipping article by consultants whose main contribution to the economy involves destroying R&D and shipping jobs oversea. And it truly saddens me that Hacker News keeps this on my front page. Why did the difference irk me? First, find me, seriously, find me 2 basketball matches that are exactly the same. Or 2 golf days that are exactly the same. Or 2 music performances that are exactly the same. Or 2 chess matches that are exactly the same. It's ridiculous to claim that somehow chess and music playing and sports are not creative. Second, if a person claims that somehow long period of deliberate practices do not matter on engineering, my personal opinion is that all engineers should spit at that person. Such insult! True, each engineering situation has different challenges. However, the principles of engineering (applied sciences, basically) are finite. Same things for writing or drawing. The materials & techniques (even styles!) are finite. Creativity refers to the adroitness of solving the infinite (problem space) with the finite (tools and principles). Without an intimate understanding of the finite (tools and principles), how can one bring it to bear on the infinite? Third, most of new works are old. Let's take Shakespeare. His works are lovely and creative, no? But consider this: most of his plots are derivative (similar motifs, if not outright fully-formed plots, already existed and popular); most of his language already formed. Shakespeare created at most 10% of his language. He must gain expertise of the other 90% to show case these 10%. Similarly, think of any art or design or product or whatever creative result. Most of such art/design/whatever already follows some popular styles and employs existing and popular techniques. Creativity is only the little extra. Sure, the extra sets it apart. But without the expertise of the 90%, such "extra" can't exist. Finally, creativity is very inefficient without deep expertise. Many people say things like "I am most creative when xyz" (popular xyz: in shower, on a walk, relaxed, reading, etc.). However, this actually means is that people come up with the 10% (see above) extra during this time. Since the person must create the other 90% to top off the little newness, without expertise, 10% will remain fantasy. Now, I am not saying "expertise/practice is everything!" Expertise and practice are foundation of the creativity house. Even when you have solid foundation, you don't have a roof yet, and rain will still wet you. However, without foundation, you simply can't build a house. Expertise and practice are a requirement, but alone are probably not enough. Parting words: people love stories of outsiders winning. However, why don't we talk about outsiders losing? There are vastly more of those. Let's take a simple field: web programming (1. it's appropriate here; 2. outsiders seem to look down on it). You know who built Google? Graduate students from prestige schools. You know who built Microsoft? Students with years of programming experience. You know what outsiders build? The millions of badly written websites, ready to be SQL injected or attacked by a already-patched bugs. That's outsiders' works.

ori_b 10y ago

The author seems to be conflating success with creativity. Of course the things that catch on are stochastic, but this doesn't negate the need to practice, nor does it imply that the chances of a creators work do not increase with practice.

noahbradley 10y ago

I think the study and practice of fundamental techniques is directly tied to training your creative side. But they're also independent skills, in a sense. I see far too many young artists who focus solely on technique, at the detriment of their creativity. Classical atelier programs can train an individual to create astonishingly life-like representations... but too often lacking entirely in any sort of creativity. On the flip side, a lot of art schools have focused so much on creativity that they've lost their grounding in technique. So you get a lot of creatively profound but technically incompetent graduates. Neither are great options. But training technique and creativity together seems like a good choice. Only personal experience to share here, but I can comfortably say that as my technical skills increased, so too did my creativity. I was always worried as a kid that I wasn't "creative" enough to be a decent artist. But when I knew how to express ideas, for some reason I had an easier time coming up with those ideas in the first place.

hodwik2 10y ago
First hand, the atelier program can kill your joy. That said, knowing how to render is the only way to get any good at representational art.
rangibaby 10y ago
> But when I knew how to express ideas, for some reason I had an easier time coming up with those ideas in the first place. That's the rub, being creative is not worth much if you don't have the necessary skills and technique (practice practice practice!) to express yourself.
- Uhhrrr 10y ago
  It's another spin on "ideas are worthless" (http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html)
- duncanawoods 10y ago
  I think this is less true than you think especially after seeing documentaries inside the world of many high-profile artists. In many real-world cases, creativity is closer to direction and composition than the nuts and bolts technique. This is especially true for works that grow in scale beyond a single practitioner. Modern artists have studios and contractors that actually do e.g. metal casting, modern musicians use engineers/producers to create the actual beats, a film score writer probably isn't a skilled trombonist etc. IMHO creativity is about decision making - its closer to "taste" and doesn't require skill to be a unique and special talent in itself. Its a bit like the Jobs/Woz divide.

hodwik2 10y ago

I'm someone who fervently studied classical drawing, painting, and sculpture, against the advice of my friends and professors (they told me to stop studying so hard and to start an art career). The problem with over-practice is that you can get caught in mindless habit. It ruined art for me. It's become very difficult for me to draw pictures that are interesting (if wrong) because I've trained so hard to draw them accurately. It's all by rote. I've tried to fix it, to rewind. Now when I draw it's with my weak hand, and that has gotten me drawing interesting (if wrong) pictures again. Another technique I've tried is using cheap materials. I usually get more interesting results from my 3 year olds acrylics than using professional oil paints. That said, the love of art never came back. That's why, to the extreme confusion of my friends and family, I'm in tech now.

devishard 10y ago
My karate teacher used to say: "Practice doesn't make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Perfect practice makes perfect." It seems like if your goal is to draw correct and interesting faces, you should figure out what in your imperfect weak hand drawings is interesting and practice either keeping that while you perfect your weak hand, or introduce that to your practice with your strong hand.
- hodwik2 10y ago
  It's a lack of control, which produces the happy accident. Accuracy is the problem to begin with. Either I'd learn to pretend to lack control, or I hope my left hand doesn't gain control. That said, again, I no longer enjoy it so it's a moot point.
ktRolster 10y ago
>I've tried to fix it, to rewind. Man, focus on line: give your line energy, meaning. Everything else will flow from that.

6stringmerc 10y ago

Not sure why the author chooses to use music as some kind of arbitrary reference point about how 'uncreative' it is due to having a rather large canon of "technique" involved. The reason there aren't a lot of stories about somebody just randomly picking up a guitar, tuning it to whatever and banging away something of creative beauty is because...well...the instrument kind of doesn't allow it. I've basically run under the assumption of the following: "It really helps to know what rules you're breaking and why when doing something new."

rangibaby 10y ago
It's why Thelonious Monk is such a polarizing figure in jazz. He breaks every rule in the book, yet it works because he knew exactly what he was doing.

smegel 10y ago

When you start with a strawman like that, where can you go?

startling 10y ago
Well, where can't you go? :)

sbardle 10y ago

One of the most damaging notions of creativity is that of the lone genius, as portrayed and developed by the Romantics. To be creative you have to situate yourself in a tradition (it could be furthering the tradition, or rebelling against it).

axelfreeman 10y ago

The difference is that kids have creativity and use all skills in a not conforming way to express is. If you are grownup you think you have to e.g. paint good in way X too be successful. Nobody have to master creativity but the most people say famous artists are so much creative.

k__ 10y ago

I thought the 10k rule is about skill and not about creativity?

deleted 10y ago

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