Drawing a portrait from a picture instead of from memory.

For the second assignment of the “Drawing on the right side of the brain” book I should have drawn a portrait from memory. But being autistic I found that I can’t remember the eyes of anyone I would want to draw.
So instead I drew an portrait of a photograph I had lying around.

As I understand it the goal of the exercise is to find your “symbols”. Symbols are little piece of drawings you have learned as a child that guide your drawings. So if you at one time have learned to draw eyes as two concentric circles with the one on the inside colored and the one on the outside blank you will keep doing that the rest of your live. There by degrading every drawing you will ever make to a child’s drawing.

Being autistic should give me a little edge in this respect. I don’t remember where or when but I have a vague recollection of reading that one of the problems of autistics is there inability to think in symbols.

Boy in swimming trunk

Here is the picture from which I drew.