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Struggle
In the Netherlands we have a writer who is “world famous in the Netherlands” called Maarten ‘t Hart. I’ve never read any of his books (except for the one I had to read for school) but I’ve seen him quite often on television. In the eighties and nineties he was a sought after guest on several Dutch shows were he talked about the struggles of being an artist.
(At the end of the nineties he started wearing drag and people lost interest 
)
I never quite got the struggle part. Why would artist need to struggle?
It’s not just Maarten ‘t Hart. I’ve often read about the struggle of artists. Writers seem to struggle a lot. Painters also do, but to a lesser extance.
Preforming artist don’t struggle as much. Or at least so it seems.
I’ve been drawing and writing for this blog for close to seven month now and although I hit a few bumps it wasn’t a struggle.
Actually for the most part it was a lot of fun.
I’ve made a lot of sketches and a few times I hit it lucky and produced drawings that were truly beautiful.
With some of the drawing I wanted to make I found that I couldn’t because I didn’t have the skills or didn’t know the techniques. But I’ve never had the feeling that the well was running dry.
Now I do.
Luckily I’m writing for a blog. I don’t jet have that many regular readers. (I guestimate that there are about 23 or 24 of you.) (Plus a few hundred one time visitors a day.) But there are people who seem to think that it is a nice distraction or maybe even something they can learn from.
So I can’t just stop blogging. And since my blog is about drawing I can’t just stop drawing.
Lately I’ve been reading a bit about the art of writing. One of the things that struck me is that every writers tells the same story:
There isn’t such a thing is good writing.
Good writing is a result of bad writing plus good editing.
It took me a while to realize that’s also true for drawing.
To make a beautiful drawing you need a good idea and alot of skill. Then you work.
But I’ve found that even more important than work is you confidence in your ability to draw the picture or write the story.
The struggle begins when you start to doubt your ability to draw your pictures. The moment where you realize that the skills you have aren’t enough to draw the pictures you want to draw.
The struggle begins the moment that you realize that it isn’t the well that is running dry but your self confidence.
The struggle begins the moment you decide that trying to draw your pictures is more important then knowing that you can.
Cars
There are a few autism savants who can draw complete cities from memory. Since I have a photographic memory I expected that I could do something like that. But I couldn’t.
Now I’ve been drawing for a while I’ve realized a few things.
Savants only draw buildings where I want to draw trees and animal and people.
When using ink, the drawing has a lot of straight line and right angles. Just like buildings have. But trees, animal and people dont have straight lines and right angles. Which means that the drawing won’t look like the real thing.
An other problem I’ve found is that the strength of my memory varies with my feelings. When I’m feeling happy and confident I remember a lot more then when I’m scared.
Drawing from memory is something that is very important to me. If I can’t find a way to do that, it will be that much more difficult to draw the pictures in my mind.
Since people, animal and trees are very complicated subjects I’m starting with trying to draw cars.
Here goes nothing…
Cars 1
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I’m trying to draw cars the way I see them. Which means from strange angles because I see them as a cyclist from the site of the road looking down over the cars. That leads to all sorts of problems with perspective.
I’m not sure whether I should study perspective or try to get a clearer picture in my mind.
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