My two are:

Making sourdough. I personally always heard like this weird almost mysticism around making it. But I bought a $7 starter from a bakery store, and using just stuff in my kitchen and cheap bread flour I’ve been eating fresh sourdough every day and been super happy with it. Some loafs aren’t super consistent because I don’t have like temperature controlled box or anything. But they’ve all been tasty.

Drawing. I’m by no means an artist, but I always felt like people who were good at drawing were like on a different level. But I buckled down and every day for a month I tried drawing my favorite anime character following an online guide. So just 30 minutes every day. The first one was so bad I almost gave up, but I was in love with the last one and made me realize that like… yeah it really is just practice. Years and years of it to be good at drawing things consistently, quickly, and a variety of things. But I had fun and got something I enjoyed much faster than I expected. So if you want to learn to draw, I would recommend just trying to draw something you really like following a guide and just try it once a day until you are happy with the result.

      • ulterno@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
        17·
        3 months ago
        • Print one this, or something like this
        • Get a scale/ruler, a pencil and an eraser
        • Use the above to draw, first a this and then a this
        • Then imagine and draw stuff like this

        The last one is not true isometric, but has a perspective. But you can make similar good looking stuff in isometric too.
        To do perspective, you can’t use the Printed isometric line/dot paper.
        Instead, it has an additional step of choosing the infinity points and making your own lines for it.

        I tried to find a good instructions page, but unfortunately, search engines just prefer YouTube videos (which I don’t like to recommend).

        Either way, this is one method that lets you git gud pretty fast, albeit in a different drawing form.

        Another thing: The last example picture I showed, has circles and semi circles. Avoid those in your drawing at this stage. That requires you to learn an extra method.

          • abbadon420@lemm.ee
            5·
            3 months ago

            Nah, these instructions are pretty clear. It’s just the same lines on a grid, but more and better arranged.

          • ulterno@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
            1·
            3 months ago

            Essentially how that works.

            At least in this case, you are using the same basics over and over again.
            What to put where, is your imagination. The first 2 steps just explain how to put the stuff there. And since I recommended an eraser, I would expect you to know to use it when it comes to the point.
            Since you desire to git gud at drawing, I would expect you to be good at imagining, which is the prerequisite.

            So yeah. I this case, the rest of the owl is the same as the first circle and ellipse.

            Oh and ignore the shadows. That comes in a completely different territory. You will need to learn shading, first. I’d never bother with that and just use a CAD software.

          • ulterno@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
            0·
            3 months ago

            Ah right, I should have said that too: don’t care about the dimensions. Just make a shape similar to that, which can be done using the vertices/dots in the provided paper (otherwise the print will be useless for the purpose of making the learning process easier).

            You are just trying to learn how to draw nicely, right? You don’t really need to care about properly matching some random example I casually picked off google images. You can change the dimensions at will as long as you understand what you are doing.