Disclaimer: Do not read this post with an angry voice or while upset. Assume a monotone and read the whole post first and don't start fragmenting and responding to every fragment out of context. I'm suggesting the latter because you might just end up unnecessarily writing yourself into a rage or something.
It's ok. (at least, I think? I don't even always know if I'm angry.). I don't expect you to know what I'm touchy about [FYI: the tiniest implication that I'm trying to make rules rather than figure out how to break them]. I get incoherent sometimes, but I really am trying to communicate.
It's a good cue, though, thanks.
You assume that I'm thinking that you're promoting hard rules. I am not.
OK.
Ai, I feel swamped. The obsession I feel in all of that is one to explain yourself (presumably you might be thinking that I said "you're wrong" when I did not?) and I'm getting some hostile vibe(or combative as you call it yourself) from it and frankly that does annoy me somewhat (feeling misunderstood simply irks me a lot... just as it presumably irks you?).
Sorry, I think my tendency to edit my message multiple times can give that kind of effect. There are at least a few overlapping / redundant thoughts in some places. And I don't really have that structured a writing process. Definitely room for improvement there.
So the question was about getting a feeling for something and not asking for technicalities or specifics.
Hm. I'd argue that getting a feeling for something is 50% about developing suitable habits and 50% about exercising them in the widest possible set of circumstances.
That's why I think a bullet point list of specific "rules" or facts (or someone elses (seemingly random) observations) is not the most useful answer to the broad/generic question of how to get a feeling for something.
That part of my post wasn't supposed to be
an answer, let alone a particularly useful answer.
The problem I see with swamping beginners with "rules" and too many specifics(e.g. counting pixels to make round things) is that if they take them as such(as real actual rules with potential punishment involved upon breaking them or something equally ridiculous), they'll just be programmed robots applying items from a list of rules but do not develop a "feel for something".
.. But I wasn't advocating even -using- those "rules" in any way. I was advocating finding your own principles. Are you saying I presented it in a way that didn't achieve that?
(that's not intended sarcastically; I really do want to know. I just edited out the entire list, but I'm not sure that the update is really an improvement.)
Like I said though, there is a use for rules, I just don't think it's useful right from the start because it takes away the possibility for someone to develop their own feelings/observations about a thing.
I think we agree then. You are possibly far more tolerant of rules than me.
It is, imo, more likely to cause someone to slavishly follow the list of rules, feverishly trying to adhere/obsess about all of them and giving away the freedom of cheerful play and experimentation which is important to keep up the motivation in the beginning.
Sure, I know what you mean here. I also wish someone had given me some direction, something to narrow down the problem I was working on, in the beginning; I didn't solve motivation properly until I accepted the idea that meaning is essential for motivation and doing series of X, then series of Y, then series of Z is much more motivating than mixing them up X Y Z X Y Z or something completely arbitrary...
(Also... the original question did not appear to be about "feature fidelity/detail granularity/sampling resolution" to me. I refused to interprete more into it than what it literally said. It seemed about canvas size and developing a feeling for how big to chose it from the start before really knowing what to pixel.)
I agree with this. I intentionally chose the more involved interpretation ('can I put X legibly in Y dimensions') because I regarded the simple interpretation as more or less solved.
(also, admittedly, because the multiscale thing is a bit of a focus for me right now -- I think it achieves the most impression-of-quality per amount of effort put in.)
Communication: It difficult.
Well, thanks for taking the time to explain your position, and I apologize again for any sloppy communication on my part. Hopefully this is a bit easier to understand and less annoying. I did shuffle around your message a little in an attempt to reply more coherently.