SketchAR uses machine learning and AR to teach drawing (opens in new tab)

When I first glanced at this, I was initially dismissive -- "it's just virtual tracing paper," I thought, fun as a toy but not for teaching how to draw in an active way.

But then I thought more about how a big part of drawing is building up the muscle memory and physical coordination to transition from imagined line to drawn line. The Drawabox [0] series of drawing tutorials has a good amount of emphasis on this. Art tracing projectors [1] are a useful part of various drawing/mural work too.

This AR app actually intersects with some research I've been involved with in an interesting way. I've been working on using AR for surgical telementoring [2], where a remote expert surgeon can give guidance to a less-experienced combat medic by drawing annotations directly overlaid onto the view of the patient's body. While my team and I are now looking at using HMDs like the HoloLens, earlier prototypes used a tablet held in a fixed position above the operating field. I think that this AR drawing app, in order to move beyond the toy/gimmick use case, would best be served by deployment on a tablet that is held fixed above the paper, for a user to look through without having to keep a handheld phone still.

[0] https://drawabox.com/

[1] https://www.engineersupply.com/art-tracing-projectors.aspx

[2] https://engineering.purdue.edu/starproj/

This has more details: https://medium.com/sketchar/the-method-of-progressive-marker.... Normally we'd change the URL to that, but it doesn't begin by explaining what the app does.

(Tip: if you'd like your post to get attention on HN, always begin by explaining what your product does. Assume zero prior knowledge. Otherwise your post makes sense to readers who are familiar with your work, but you lose everyone else at the start. Operate statelessly and you'll do better.)

I'm quite skeptical, it could be really handy as a reference after your drawing is done, comparing it with the example to see if all the proportions are right. I've spend the last 6 months learning to draw. Also can recommend drawabox, it becomes painfully clear that observation skills, understand space and volume is much more important than just putting a line on paper.

Drawing is a skill anyone can learn, you can learn to draw a cartoon horse in a day, but it's more valuable to understand how animals are constructed. That will give you a foundation to draw it from any angle no matter how bad or good your linework is.