by Henk ter Heide on Sunday September 6, 2009
When I started drawing, almost 3 years ago, I chose for pencil mainly to avoid the mess.
With paint you spend a lot of time preparing your canvas and when you finish it takes a lot of time to clean your brushes. And of course if you don’t you can’t use it the next time.
I didn’t want to go through all that kind of hassle every time I wanted to draw something.
This was not because of laziness but because living with undiagnosed autism takes a lot out of you.
But over the last few years I’ve learned to deal with autism.
I no longer feel exhausted from dealing with problems I don’t understand. Life has become that much easier that I feel ready for new challenges.
Doing this drawing I realized that that I’ve come to the end of what I can artistically do with pencils. I just don’t have enough control over my colors to do the things I want to do.
So next Friday I’m going to buy my painting kit.
I feel like a child the evening before Christmas. A lot of exiting things are going to happen. I can hardly wait.
Last drawing
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday August 31, 2009
It used to be that clocks where those big, almost statue like, objects standing in the middle of the room. Heavy weight pulling chains, moving cogs, moving time.
If you stared at them long enough you could see time flow.
Then came the electrical clock,
his minute hand jumping from minute to minute.
Time moving faster and faster.
Now we have digital clocks and time has stopped flowing.
It has become some kind of calculation.
I started this project at 12 noon and finished it at 14.33. So it took me 233 minutes….
233 minutes?
Flow of time
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday August 21, 2009
The well
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by Henk ter Heide on Thursday August 13, 2009
Color pencils are made by mixing pigments with wax. How much pigment is used and how soft the wax is determents the quality of the pencil.
I have two color pencil sets. One set of 12 pencils are top of the range. With a soft wax and a lot of pigment they float about the paper. Although it’s a joy to use them I have made very many drawing with them.
Only the last few drawings I’ve done and my drawing Christening in which you can see how beautiful the colors are.
Then I have a set of 72 color pencil that are the runner up. They are good pencils but just not as good as my 12 pencil set.
The owner of my art supplies shop advised these when I started drawing two years ago. Mostly because of their price.
The runner up are € 52 for 72 pencils and the top of the range are € 138 for 72 pencils.
So the runner up are a good place to start. And I’ve enjoyed drawing with them for the last two years except for one thing.
Since they are of the same quality and presumably made in the same way you would expect that they all would have the same drawing properties. But they don’t.
Some slide fairly smoothly over the paper and others scrape over the paper in a way that make my toes curl.
I felt that most pencils scraped but I didn’t actually know how many and which pencils.
So in this drawing I examined that. The size of the surface of a color is decided by the feeling I have when I draw with it. The color the slide smoothly over the paper have a large surface. The colors that scrape a smaller surface.
And because I ran out of pencils before I ran out of paper I used a few pencils from my top of the range pencil set for the last part of the drawing.
I’ve found out a few things:
- Firstly, contrary to my expectations, I have far more pencil in the runner up that slide fairly smoothly over the paper then pencils that scrape.
- But the pencils that scrape are all very light colors. Which is a problem because I tend to use more light then dark colors.
- And the way in which the pencils of the top range set float over the paper is truly delightful.
So the conclusion is clear. I should replace my color set with a box of top range pencils. But sadly I don’t have money to do that at this moment. So I’ve started out to replace those few pencils that really make my toes curl.
Scraping, sliding and floating
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 5, 2009
I’ve been wanting to do a drawing like this for ages. But I just didn’t dare.
Actually I still don’t.
So I rushed it.
The big black part is to get it done fast.
Doing a drawing like this I understand the stories about the old masters drinking a lot of alcohol. At the moment I sure feel the need to rush down town and drink this doubting fearing feeling away.
But this drawing has one good thing.
It gives me a lot of ideas.
Strangely enough. About half of the ideas are for techniques I want to try without knowing kind of picture I would get.
And the other half are for picture I would want to make without knowing how to do them.
But something along the line I’m following now should work.
Blossom
Looking at this picture it’s clear which parts of the drawing I like and which I don’t like.
Clearly my next drawing will take a lot more time.
Good thing I’m on holiday.
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by Henk ter Heide on Sunday August 2, 2009
For my next drawing I want to mix some colors.
When I first thought of this drawing it seemed rather difficult. Yet also a nice design to try. Now I’ve been thinking about it a bit more I’m finding that it’s even more difficult then I imagined.
So I’m mixing a few colors to find the right ones.
img063
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday July 31, 2009
This was a very nice drawing to do.
Although I like to draw, it always took a large amount of effort to get myself to sit down and work on a drawing.
I always suspected that it had something to do with the autistic need for structure. But I couldn’t find a way.
On week days I could draw in the evening. But if I have a holiday I would like to draw in the morning. In the weekend I do my shopping in the morning so then I would like to draw in the afternoon.
So no structure what so ever.
After I had figured out what it is that I like about drawing I was planning to take some time out to find the best way to get some structure to drawing. But it wasn’t necessary.
Turns out that not knowing what I felt was the reason why drawing took so much effort.
This drawing almost drew it self.
Which is one reason why this was a very nice drawing to do.
Gaining heart
The other reason is a small victory.
When I first started drawing I thought that having a photographic memory would mean that I would be able to project an image on the paper (so to speak) and then trace it.
But I couldn’t.
I found I couldn’t keep up my concentration long enough. The image would get vague and disappear long before I finished drawing.
But while drawing circles in my last drawing I discovered that I could imagine how a circle looked and then almost draw it.
With this drawing I explored the technique.
I can put a dot on the paper for the center. Then I can draw a line to use as the radius. Then I can imagine that the line is a kind of cord that is attached to the point of the pencil. And draw the circle.
I checked these circles using coins and found that they are five of the best freehand circles I’ve ever done.
With the sixth I lost my concentration.
But it’s a start. A promising start.
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by Henk ter Heide on Saturday July 25, 2009
This drawing started life as a cross with circle drawn around it. The pink/purple circle was the first one I did. The light blue/dark blue the last.
As you can see the circles get progressively better.
Actually I stopped because I thought of a technique that should improve the circles. Which I’m going to try in my next drawing.
The background is a bit of a fiasco. I thought that a combination of black and purple would give a nice shine.
But it didn’t. It looks kind of horrible.
Almost balls
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by Henk ter Heide on Saturday July 18, 2009
Only one doodle for today. But I’m satisfied. Partly because I actually like the drawing. And partly because this was a very busy day and I didn’t have time to do more.
Of course there was the usual shopping to do. To have enough to eat to survive the weekend.
But this morning my pc screen suddenly died and I had to rush down town to buy a new one. Which took a lot of time. Then I had to connect it and that took even more time.
Strangely the instruction on how to connect the screen where on a CD. But not having a working screen I couldn’t watch the CD.
After trying several times to connect the screen to it’s foot I finally discovered a printed version of the instructions. Which was, very intelligently, packaged with the last part you need.
Enclosure
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday July 17, 2009
It takes far more effort to sit down and draw, not knowing what I’m going to draw, then I expected. Of course I did think about the first before I started. So it actually doesn’t count.
I was planning to do 4. But I only did 2.
I should be complimenting myself that I at least did 2. But I’m feeling a little guilty for not hitting my goal.
Flowers
Red rain
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