That's the same as when a person tells me that they're just not good at math, or that they don't want to touch computers because they're just not tech people.
I think everyone can get pretty far to surprise themselves doing anything if they really tried. It might take you more sweat. It might take you more time. But I have a hard time believing that you can't do this because you don't have an elusive amorphous quality called 'artistic ability'.
The visual presentation of code is one of its most important attributes. Code that looks visually appealing is code that is maintainable. I'm not sure you can be a good programmer without artistic ability because of that.
If you give any consideration at all to bracket placement, use of whitespace, grouping of code, etc. then I am certain you are much more artistic than you give yourself credit for. The rest comes down to practice with different mediums.
Between IDEs and other tools that autoformat code (ie gofmt[1])and languages that use significant whitespace, I wouldn't say programmers necessarily consider those things much these days.
Factoring might be a better example- picking the most convenient order for subroutine arguments, choosing how to bring together redundant segments of code, how to best use language constructs to express the problem. Ultimately I think it's difficult to draw a direct comparison, though- in my opinion, the similarities between graphic art and programming are rather abstract.
It's also important in concatenative languages- the choice of argument order can easily make the difference between elegant function composition which "flows" and a twisty maze of "stack noise".
I had never heard of that book, thank you! I feel the same way as many others on this thread, I wish I knew more about how to get artistic. It's nice when someone suggests a resource (and it's well-reviewed, I see).
I'm thankful to Betty Edward for "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain". This is the best book i've ever read on arts/drawing subject. First, it teaches you to see things as they are, without reasoning (mute your left brain). Hold on it (see details with your right brain). And then, it teaches you to copy what you just saw, again without reasoning. One could understand the true meaning of "Good artist copy, great artists steal" by reading this book.
What's interesting is that this is quite simple even for a programmer to follow, assuming you want to reproduce those exact shapes. For the fish, a few squares, some deformation, more shapes, and so on are trivial to do and at each step you can tweak the results until it looks visually similar. Competency with Photoshop or similar presumed, of course.
However, taking those concepts and doing a jungle theme with monkeys and vines will be a stretch if you lack the experience as there's no step-by-step to get the right proportions for those shapes.
However, taking those concepts and doing a jungle theme with monkeys and vines will be a stretch if you lack the experience as there's no step-by-step to get the right proportions for those shapes.
That's the great thing about cartoony illustrations -- the right proportions don't matter. If you're really worried about it, just trace a photograph and go from there.
Reminds me of the time I watched Dan Silva effortlessly make drawing after drawing with Deluxe Paint. Having tried, and failed, many times to be able to do stuff like this I realize that my artistic talents extend no further than block diagrams :-)
