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Autism

Left or right sided thinking (Drawing: Faces and Vases)

by Henk ter Heide on Friday November 2, 2007

To draw better you’ll have to learn to awaken the right side of your brain.

The idea behind Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is that the two halves of the brain have different tasks and different strengths. To clarify that the book has some information about research that is done and the relation between being right or left handed and thinking with the left or right side of your brain.
But I already knew most of that so I skipped that chapter.
The book did have a very interesting table of characteristics of the left and right half of the brain. I don’t know if I can put it like this but going by this table it seems that I use the right side of my brain much more then most people.

After this little explanation the book goes on with several exercises that are meant to awaken the right side of your brain.
The first is rather strange.
I had to start out to draw the left face (if you’re right handed) of the face/vase drawing and then draw the right side.

It seemed to me that would be a very easy assignment and it was. It took me about 30 seconds. The only hard bit is after you’ve drawn the forehead, of the right face, you have to decide whether the line should go to the right or to the left.
At that point you switch the picture in your mind from faces to vases.
Although it isn’t very easy to draw the vase exactly symmetrical the overall shape isn’t that hard.

Faces and vases

The confusing part started when I read on. Apparently you’re supposed to take five or six minutes to do this drawing. Why on earth would you want to take that much time?
I feel like I’m back in school and I’ve just finished some exam well before my classmates. Did I miss something?
There’s a two page explanation about why this drawing is so difficult and different solutions people chose to solve it. But there is no mention of what you should do if you didn’t have a problem.

That leave one big question. Isn’t this drawing a problem for me because the brain of autistics is wired differently. Or is this just something that is different in me.

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Need to repeat

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday October 28, 2007

I’ve finally found a solution to a problem that has been bugging me for the last 30 years.

For the last 30 years or so I’ve been talking to myself. Well, not really talking to myself. I had imaginary talks with other people.

As a child I was always afraid that I would get them confused with the real thing and would at some point start having those conversations out loud. Some 20 years ago that fear became a reality when I indeed started to have my imaginary conversations out loud. Although I never confused them with real conversations, people must have thought I was mad.

Over the years I have had innumerous theories about why I would talk to myself. Maybe it was a way to deal with tension. Maybe it was a method to suppress feelings. Maybe it was a method to think about problems. Maybe it was a way of talking to people when I had no one to talk to.

Over and over again I tried to get rid of this habit by using a brute force method. I thought that if I just were strong enough I should be able to succeed. But I wasn’t
Every time I started with not talking it felt good but within a few hours my motivation would be gone. For some reason talking to myself would feel nice again for a while and I forgot that I was trying not to do it.

Yesterday I finally realized that there is a lot of repeating going on in the imaginary conversations I have with myself. Often I just keep repeating one sentence and even when it gets very annoying I just can’t stop myself.
Thinking a little more about that I realized that actually all of my imaginary conversations have some repeating element to them. First I think of something and then I start talking about it.
In every conversation I repeat at least ones but usually dozens of times.

Loving to repeat is a major symptom of autism. Actually as much as I had thought about it I never did find this symptom in my own behavior. But here it seems to be.

I’ve made myself a little repeating toy. A chain with beads to fiddle with.
Although I made this toy less then 24 hours ago I already feel a lot more at ease with myself then I ‘ve ever done.
Every time I feel the need to talk to myself I start fiddling with my chain and the feeling fades away.

Even writing this article is a lot easier then usual. Usually it takes me days to write a story. I find a few words that could fit and keep repeating them over and over. That gets so distracting that it takes for ever to come up with some more words.
This time I jumped out of bed at 5.30 AM and the story came in one burst.

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Being autistic or having autism

by Henk ter Heide on Saturday October 27, 2007

Thinking about the relation between autism and identity.

The last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between having autism and being autistic.
When I first started writing about autism I talked about having autism primarily because there are more searches for the keyword “autism” then for the keyword “autistic” and I wanted my writings to be found. Even so I had to correct myself several times. I’m prone to using the word autistic.
In the mean time I also read about autism. At first I read about the symptoms of autism and those article were written by experts in the field who always talked about having autism.
The last few months I try to read article that are written by people that have experience with autism themselves. That turns out to be much harder for the simple fact that there don’t seem to be many people with autism who blog about autism.
But the few I’ve found are adamant in their opinion that it should be “having autism” and not “being autistic”.

They seem to hold the same opinion I come across at the sheltered workplace were I work. “I’m not a wheelchair but I sit in a wheelchair.” Or a more clear cut explanation: Not being able to walk or to see or to lift heavy objects is only one of my qualities. It’s not my foremost quality.

But I still haven the feeling that it should be “I am autistic” and not “I have autism”.

So I’ve been thinking about the difference by comparing it to being gay.
I’ve defined myself as being gay, although it is indeed only one of my qualities, ever since I was 18 yr old.
I discovered that I liked men when I was sixteen. For two years I thought about what that meant for my life and what kind of problems I would have to face and by the time I was 18 I came out of the closet. I have had my fair share of problems but I must say that hardly any of them had anything to do with being gay.

But there is more.
I’ve met several thousand gay people over the years and in general they had a good life and were happy with the choices they had made.
I’ve also met some 50 to 60 men who like men and without exception they have a lot of problems. Not only with their sexuality but with all parts of their lifes.
They don’t like the job they have. They don’t like their girlfriends/wifes. They don’t like sneaking around (although they only think about it but never actually do). And most of all they are always afraid that they will be found out and loose every thing they have. (Although I would think they hardly have anything that is worth anything.)

Reading about the problems that people who have autism describe I’m reminded of a lot of the problems that are common with men who like men.
Fears of the consequence of being different. Fears of being bullied. Fears of not fitting in. Stories about painful remarks people have made.
What I miss are stories about solutions. Thinking about the sort of problems you’re likely to face and how you will deal with them. Instead of being blindsided the moment it happens.

So what’s the difference?
Well the difference between having autism and being autistic is something I’m still thinking about. But the difference between being gay and liking men is something I’ve solved years ago.

Sexual preference is hereditary. It’s something that just happens to you. You don’t control it. It’s something that makes you different from other people and they will react.
Identity is a choice you make. Usually it entails thinking a lot about your main characteristics. It means that you’ll have to think about what you want from life and what you want to change. You’ll have to think about what you could change and how to do that. You’ll also have to think about the characteristics you can’t change and how to deal with those. You’ll have to think about the kind of problems you’ll have to face and how to deal with them.

It’s a lot of work to think about identity but at some point you’ll be finished. You will have a blue print with a describtion of the way you want to live your life. Although this blue print won’t prevent you from having problems it will make it a lot easier to deal with those problems.

Twenty five years ago I had dozens of strategies about how I could deal with the kind of problems a gay man could face. I’ve forgotten most of them because I never came across any of those problems.
I’m not sure why that is. Maybe I was to pessimistic about what could go wrong. Or maybe I was able to recognize problems and avoid them. Or maybe I displayed so much selfconfidence that people left me alone.

This time I think it’s probably better to just define an identity for myself to steer my choices. I don’t think it’s a good idea to spend to much energy in thinking out strategies for situations that might never happen.

I define my identity as autistic gay artist who will get back at his ideal weight of 65 kg at some future point.

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Twisted toilet habbits

by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 22, 2007

Autism causes some problems with feeling the need to relief myself. (A somewhat graphic description.)

For years I’ve had this annoying habit of having to go when ever I left for somewhere or arrived somewhere.
In my teens I didn’t think anything about it. I just did. At times my mother would get very angry because of my need to “go” at the last moment. But I thought that just was part of our ongoing battle.

I only realized that something strange was going on when I got my first IT job.
We worked in two shifts. An early shift from 8 AM till 5 PM and a two men late shift from 3 PM till the work was finished.
When I worked the early shift every thing went the usual way. Just before leaving at 5 PM I would go. But when I worked the late shift I began to notice something odd. The two man shift had to perform some tasks together and every man had a few task of his own.
So it would often happen that one of us was finished while the other still had a few minutes work. In such cases the first one to finish would turn out the lights in none essential areas and get his stuff so we could leave the moment the other was finished.
When I was the first to finish I also would go to the toilet knowing that we would leave within a few minutes.
The strange thing was that it happened several times that while I was leaving the toilet my colleague would announce that he was finished and that we could leave. In which case I turned around and again went to the toilet.
While going to the toilet for the second time in one minute I felt very guilty. But how ever guilty I felt I couldn’t stop myself.

It was only when I started working at the sheltered workplace that I realized that this wasn’t just a habit but something much more compulsive.
By Dutch law large companies are compelled to give employee a break every two hours and to service them with a canteen where they can eat there lunch, grab a smoke etc.
While working at the sheltered workplace I found I had to go every time on route to the canteen and on route back to the department.
It got ridiculous. Going to the toilet ten times a day: When leaving my home, when arriving at my work, when going to the canteen and coming back (6 times) and when going back to my home and when arriving at home. And then in the evening I would go ones when I went to sleep.

The last eight month’s since I started working at the shop in Cappelle my toilet compulsion is getting frightening. It’s a thirty minute drive and every day I’m afraid that I won’t make it without having an accident.

Two weeks ago the Autism center send me some help that took the shape of an “Social Psychiatric Nurse”. A gentlemen that is going to help me organize my housekeeping and deal with a few other problems.
After telling him about my toilet problems he suggested that I should eat bran to activate my bowels.

After eating bran for two weeks I’ve finally figured out what the problem was: I’ve never been able to feel my bowel movement! So I never knew when I had to go. So I always squeezed my buttocks together. Which for some reason gave me the feeling that I had to pee.

The last two weeks I’ve taken some sick leave to have some time to learn to recognize the different feelings that warn you. Which turned out to be somewhat complicated because you have no way of knowing if you really have to go without going.
So if you don’t trust your feelings and you are really afraid that you will soil yourself, you tend to go early only to find that you actual didn’t have to go. Then while you are mustering up your courage you can withstand ever stronger feelings that might mean that you have to go.

At the moment I’m reasonably certain that I will be able to recognize the feelings. So next Wednesday I’ll resume my work. Let’s see how it works out.

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My first lie ever

by Henk ter Heide on Friday October 12, 2007

My (little) problems with Theory of Mind (ToM).

I have a theory. My theory is:

That you too have self awareness.
That your knowledge differs from mine.
That you think about different thinks then I do.
That although you have the same set of feelings that I do, you feel different about different things.

That is my theory.

Well, actually it isn’t my theory. It is one of the problems of people with autism I came across when I started reading about autism.
My theory is that this theory gets it’s name from the way people think about other people. You can’t really know whether other people have feelings, thoughts and knowledge. But you can theorize about it.

As I understand it people without autism think that ToM is a very important concept in communication theory. A lot of people with autism thinks it’s not.

The first ten months after I had discovered that I have autism I didn’t think that ToM posted a problem for me. Not only do I know about self awareness and the other three points on the list. But I recognized the problem in the guy who first made me aware that something was wrong with me.

He told me that he changed after his friend died and I didn’t understand him. It took me a month before I realized that he never told me how long ago his friend died. Only when he told me that it was something like eight years ago did I realize what he tried to tell me.
He never told me when this friend died because he assumed that I knew. But since I only knew this guy for a little over a year, at the time, and we had never talked, he should have known that I wouldn’t know that.

(He didn’t want to talk about his friend but about something that happened around the same time. This was something I recognized. People with autism have a problem with either the way they remember or the way they talk about things that happened in the past. As soon as I’ve figured this one out I’ll write an article about it.)

Clearly this guy has a problem judging which kind of knowledge I could have and which kind of knowledge I couldn’t have. So he has problems with ToM. But I don’t make this kind of mistakes. Or do I?

Two months ago I caught myself doing something really stupid. Sitting in the toilet I was thinking about ways to justify the amount of sheets of toilet paper I use.
What if someone would tell me that ten sheets are to many. Maybe you should only use eight or five sheets.
I was thinking that I could tell them to bugger off and leave me alone or something along that line. I spent a large amount of time thinking about how I could defend myself against critics.
This time though I finaly realized something. How could they know?
I live alone. But even if I didn’t, I’m alone in the toilet. Nobody can see how much toilet paper I use. Using the information in there computer somebody at the grocery could calculate how much toilet paper I use. But seeing as how unimportant this is, they probably wouldn’t.

Now I know. I know that nobody can possibly know how many sheets of toilet paper I use. But even after two months of thinking about this I still catch myself defending myself against criticism. I don’t do it as much as two months ago. But I still do it.
Although I know that people can’t know I still have the feeling they do.

Which brings me to the subject of lying.
I never lie.
I know that you’re supposed to tell the wife of your boss that she has a lovely dress but I won’t. I never get in this kind of situations but if I did, I wouldn’t spare her feelings.
But of course I don’t recognize her feelings so it’s only natural that I don’t think they are important.

I thought about lying. I remember a few instances in the last 20 years that I would have wanted to hide something and I thought about lying about it. But I always felt that it was pointless because it always would come out.
I’ve been in situations where I could have volunteered information but didn’t. But that isn’t really lying, is it?
I still feel that lying is something like telling people that the ceiling is black while everybody can see that it is white!

But a few days ago I’ve done it. I’ve told my first lie ever. Everybody who visits my website can see my lie and you don’t even know it.
I’m very proud of this new ability of mine.

If you look to the left (and a little up) you’ll see a list of popular post.
I have a plugin to calculate that. It gives points for:

the times a post gets read by people visiting my site.
the amount of links to a post.
for the times a post gets read via my RSS feed.

It looks at a few more variable, but mostly at the times it gets read by visitors.

I’ve been annoyed with this plugin for as long as I have it.
There is something fundamentally flawed with any list that influences it’s own creation.

People visiting my site want to read my best work. So they will read the article that is on the top of the list. This article will get more points and stay on top.
The problem is that it is quite possible for a mediocre article to reach the top. That’s because when I first started using this plugin I didn’t have that many readers and articles didn’t get read that much.
Let’s say that when I first started using this plugin, article on average got read three times. That would mean that an article only would have to be read four time to reach top possition. After reaching top position the article would gain points just by virtue of being in first position.

I know from experience that some of my colleagues roam the internet looking for articles about the company. That means that any article about Promen – especially when I mention the name in the title of the article – will get read by four or five colleagues.
About a week after installing the popular post plugin I wrote an article entitled “Promen is running out of work (drawing: Truck 1th sketch)”. I don’t link to it because it wasn’t a very good article. For one thing the title didn’t match the subject of the article.

Today it wouldn’t matter if four or five colleagues read one of my articles only because the name Promen is mentioned. But a few months ago when I published this story it tipped the scale and put this article on top. Which resulted in the situation where one of my worst articles ever got read most.
To amend the situation I pulled the output of the plugin a few weeks ago. The plugin is still running. When I feel that the list has changed enough to be a real represent the populous of my posts I’ll put the list back in.
Or at least that was what I thought three weeks ago.

Two weeks ago I realized that nobody knows what the most popular article on my site is. Even I don’t know.
All the plugin tells me is which article has the most pageviews. But even if people leave within a second it still counts as a pageview.
So I could very easily make a list of articles and call it “popular post” and nobody would know. That is except for the people that read this site regularly. But like with most sites, although they are very important to me, the regulars only compose a small percentage of my total readership.
I could get away with it.

I thought about it for a few days. Looked at it from all angles to convince myself.
If theory of mind is really true it means that nobody knows what I know. I know that the popular post list on my site is false. But except if I tell, nobody will know.
Usually you would expect that the most popular article wouldn’t be a recent article. Since it would need some time to accumulate points. But the Blog rush site was something of a hype when it was first launched so it is possible that a lot of people would google for information and found my article that way, wouldn’t it?

Saturday I falsified my list, so here you have it. My first lie ever!

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Dialing down expectations

by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 1, 2007

I have to dial down my expectations to, hopefully, reach a point where I can fulfill my expectations.

Working at the sheltered workplace I meet a lot of people who feel that they are destined to do an important job.
Usual they are people who were born with an disability. They were told there whole lifes that people with a disability should have the same rights as other people. Sadly they were never told that they should fight as hard as other people.
For the largest part these people have hardly any schooling and never had the taste of a real job before they entered the sheltered workplace. Although they know almost nothing about real life and do the most stupid of jobs they still feel that an important job should be handed to them on a silver platter.

Although I’m also born with a disability I never knew that. A few years ago it was suggested that something might be wrong with me. I only last year it was found that I have autism.
Living in the real world I’ve always known that you have to fight for those things that are important to you. I never was very succesfull with my fight, but I did know.
I would never have expected that I would fall for the feeling that I should get something for nothing.

But I have.

When I started drawing, earlier this year, I felt that since I could see pictures clearly in my minds eye, it should be very easy to draw them. I should be able to create beautiful drawings without much of an effort.
With my first drawing I found that what I see in my minds eye looks nothing like the real thing. But I figured that with a little more experience I could make it work.
But my last two drawings make it very clear that I won’t be able to draw the pictures in my mind.

So I find myself at something of a fork in the road.
What to do next.
Feeling some what panicked last week I have been thinking about just giving up. Just putting my pencils in a cupboard and forgetting they ever excisted.
But I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t go back to a life of watching telly and playing computer games.
That would leave a big hole in my life.

The other possibility is to start experimenting. Stop trying to draw the pictures in my mind. Instead just draw.
People with autism are supposed to have very little imagination so I have no idea where that will lead me.

Maybe at some point I will find that I will have gained the skills to draw the pictures in my mind. But it is also possible that I’ll just draw nice, hopefully some beautiful, pictures without ever reaching that goal.

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Knowledge versus skills (Sketch: Tree)

by Henk ter Heide on Monday September 24, 2007

Or why having a photographic memory seems to be a disadvantage when you’re learning how to draw.

Over the last two years I’ve learned how to play poker. I won’t say that I’m the worlds best poker player but I can hold my own in free games.

Two years ago I saw something about poker sites on the telly. I’ve always been very bad in card game. But I was curious as to how poker would be played on line. I went to have a look and it turned out to be very easy… to join the game.

At first I had no idea of what I was doing. But I only had to push a few buttons and the software took care of the rest.
After a few days I found that I actually won some times. Most of the time I lost but sometimes I won.

My interest was peeked and I used the information on the poker site to find out what the rules of the game where. What card combinations would give me a fair change of winning and which card combinations always lost. After that I won some more. Or maybe I should say I lost less.

Over the last year my skills improved and my winnings improved until they topped off a few months ago.
I could go on improving my skills. But I would have to study and play a lot. I’m choosing to spend more time drawing and blogging.

The point is that I started with no expectations. When I found that this was something that I could do I improved my knowledge.
From having more knowledge and spending a lot of time at it, I gained skills and my game improved.

With drawing it’s a completely different story. Because of my photographic memory I know everything there is to know about drawing. For every picture I want to draw ten or twenty paintings, photographs and drawings pop into my mind before I’ve even sat down.
And since I can see these pictures in my mind I expected that it would be very easy to draw them. It isn’t. I don’t have the skills.

I’m finding that getting skills doesn’t work the same for me as what I see in other people (children).
Children usually start out with a very simple picture and add stuff until it looks like something. Since they don’t have any expectations of the end result anything goes.

I’ve tried that but for some reason it doesn’t work.
Could be because of all the pictures in my mind. Could be that there is some other reason. I’ll just have to figure it out.

For now. Here are the trees I’ve been promising.
They don’t look like the picture in my mind. Which means that I’m not sure whether I should be proud that I’ve put something on paper. Or that I should be disappointed because of the lack of quality of the drawing.

Tree 7

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Two methods to fail at everything you try

by Henk ter Heide on Friday September 21, 2007

Over the last forty years I’ve found two ironclad methods to never succeed at anything I try.

The first method, off course, is good old procrastination. Just don’t start at anything that could lead to some kind of succes.
At this moment for instance, I should be drawing trees. But although I have a fairly good idea how I should go about that, I’m not sure that I would succeed.
And lets be honest. Writing an article that could draw a hundred pageviews to my blog is a good investment of my time, isn’t it?

procrastination has one drawback. Everybody knows it’s your own doing. People tell you that you make your own choices.
Deep down you know that you could succeed if you just had more willpower.
To be really successful in failing you need a better method.

To solve this problem I got a habit that wrecked my concentration.
Maybe you are very shy and don’t know what you should say to people. Or maybe you have some other problem. In any case you could fantasize about the conversation you could have.
To be any good at it you should spent a lot of time and energy thinking about what people could say. While you’re thinking about the things you could say you’ll never say them.
If you’re really good at this you won’t have the energie to do anything of importance.

It will help if you can find an psychiatrist who convinces you that all your problems are your own doing and will disappear if you just learn how to talk to people.
It would be especially advantageous if this psychiatrist omits to do his job and never tells you what the actual problems are.

Now I have one good and one very good method to explain why I fail at almost everything I try, I’ve finaly learned that I’m actually autistic and have all kinds of possibilities.
To succeed I only have to unlearn my failing methods.

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Loosing an annoying habit

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday September 18, 2007

After doing my cars sketch I had to make a choice. Should I concentrate on perspective or should I try to get clearer pictures in my mind.

It wasn’t very hard to figure out what I was doing wrong. The usual. I was talking to myself while I was trying to draw from memory. When I talk to myself my concentration goes.
I should really try to break this habit.

But I’ve been trying for years. Every time it annoys me I’m motivated. But after a few hours the motivation shrivels away. I start wondering if talking to myself isn’t something I need.
It keeps the fears and other violent feelings away. Or does it?

I thought about it for a while but I didn’t find an answer. I watch some television, thought some more and went to bed.

Just before I fell a sleep I realize a few things.

Twenty five years ago a psychiatrist told me that having pictures in ones mind was a sure sign that something was very wrong and that I should learn not to have those pictures. So I did.
I don’t really talk to myself. I fantasize about conversations I could have with people and those imaginary conversation are just as tiring as the real thing.
Learning to have imaginary conversations didn’t really temper violent feelings. That I never recognized my feelings is a symptom of autism. One has nothing to do with the other.

When I figured this out it was all the more important to get rid of this habit. It also was fairly obvious how I should go about it. I should concentrate on the pictures in my mind and that way the imaginary conversations should just go away.
I’ve been at it for almost two weeks now and the imaginary conversations are getting much easier to control. I can go for hours without having one.
Just after I awake I have a hard time not to give in to this habit. The rest of the day it doesn’t seem to be that difficult.

I only had one problem when I started the process of loosing this habbit. I found that the method I use to write articles closely resembles this process of imaginary conversations.
Until last week I had a two week gab between drawing a picture and publishing it and for most articles I had a one week gab between writing the article and publishing it. That meant that I should have written last weeks articles just a few days into the process. I didn’t think that would have been a good idea.
So loosing this habbit meant I had to take a little break from blogging for a week.

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A real job (Drawing: Chair with pillows and blue t-shirt)

by Henk ter Heide on Monday August 6, 2007

BAVO RNO

Tomorrow I have a apointment at BAVO RNO. That is an organisation that helps people with autism to find a suitable job. At the moment I’m working at the sheltered workplace Promen in Gouda who also should have given me a suitable job but instead they have me doing unskilled labor.

Mind numbing job

When I say unskilled I really mean very stupid work. At the moment I’m one of a two person team cutting ends of rubber to size. Last thursday I had a headache and worked with my eyes closed. Still my work was of such quality that nobody noticed.
Sadly that’s more due to the stupidity of the job then to my skills.

better job

Three months ago I did an intake interview at BAVO RNO. They told me about a methode they use to figure out what kind of work you’d like to do. Then they school you (if nessesary) and help you find a job.
I’m hoping I’ll be able to get something that involves a little programming.
In any event I should be getting work that pays a little more. Which hopefully will mean that I can work fewer hours and spend more time drawing and writing for this blog.

Reading about art

The only thing I remember from my art history lessons in school was that they were very boring. But since I’m doing a site about drawing and art I though it would be a good idea to read a bit about art.
Luckily the library has a large collection.

Although I’ve only just started I’m already finding that art history isn’t at all like I remember. Maybe I’ve changed but it’s very interesting to read about all those famous painters.

As a sort of bonus I’m finding that reading about art is giving me all sorts of idea for drawings I could make and techniques I should try.

Van Gogh

One of the painters I’ve been reading about is Van Gogh. It seams that the famous story about him that I remember from school isn’t true. The one about him painting for his whole live without ever selling a painting isn’t entirely right.
He did sell some painting and, more important, he was reconized by is peers as doing ground breaking work. It’s just that not everybody liked the work he was doing.

Chair with pillows and blue t-shirt

One of the funny things I read about Van Gogh was that when he was in an asylum he just went on painting. Lacking other subjects he did many paintings of the furniture of his room.

After reading that I realize something that I never thought about.
I tend to think of my furniture as very common because I see it on a daily basis.
But actually there are only a few people who have ever seen my furniture. Which means it’s as good a subject for a drawing as anything I could arrange.

Chair with pillows and blue t-shirt

Less perfect

I came across the website of a Dutch painter living and working in Wales. He has a vague style of painting. It’s just as though you looked through the wrong glasses.
I wanted to do the drawing of the chair in that style but although I couldn’t, it did help me. Instead of trying to get every detail perfect I tried to capture the chair as a whole.

Featured at See me draw

This is by far the strangest site I’ve come across up till now.
Apparently Scott Wade has very dirty cars which he uses as canvas to draw.

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