by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday November 13, 2007
Drawing a hand in a difficult angle.
The assignment was to balance a piece of clear plastic on top of your left hand and draw your left hand on the plastic while looking through the plastic. That is an easy way to draw what would have one of the most difficult drawings.
But I didn’t have a piece of clear plastic and I didn’t want to go through the rain to get one. So I thought I’ll first try to draw my left hand free hand. If that didn’t work I could buy the piece of plastic tomorrow and try again.
I must say that I like the result. If you had asked me a few weeks ago I don’t think that I ever would have been able to draw my hand. Especially under this strange angle.
The trick is to close one eye. That way you get very clear edges which makes it a lot easier.
Left hand
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday November 12, 2007
The exercises in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
seem to be working.
I haven’t done much the last few days. I haven’t written any articles because I didn’t feel like talking and writing is a form of silent talking. Neither did I draw anything.
Drawings come with little stories I repeat in my head until I write them down. Since I didn’t feel like talking I couldn’t get myself to do a drawing.
The last few days I’ve just been playing some computer games. Feeling a little disappointed about the whole “Right brain” thing. It didn’t work. Nothing changed.
Only yesterday I realized that I actually couldn’t expect anything to have change since I’ve only just started with the book. I should continue.
I did and found that what I’m experiencing right now is perfectly normal. After doing the first few assignments people usually feel resistance against talking.
I am experiencing a few problems that give me the feeling that the left side of my brain won’t just give up control. But I’ll tell some more about that in a while.
For now, here the next assignment.
While looking at your left hand you have to draw the lines in your hand. You have to draw for five minutes without looking at the drawing.
The idea seems to be to bore the left side of your brain into submission.
To know when the five minutes are reached you have to set a timer.
With the first attempt I got bored and stopped. After the second attempt I felt that I might get a better result if I tried again.
I don’t think I did. Although you can’t tell by looking at the drawing since the drawing is only meant to be an tool to reach a certain feeling.
Lines inside hand
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by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday November 6, 2007
After reading some more and thinking a lot about it, I’m beginning to understand the right sided thinking and why it seems to be much more easy for me.
It turns out that I didn’t do my last two drawing in the way the book expected. With the Faces and vases drawing you were supposed to name the parts of the face you were drawing in the left face. Then draw two horizontal lines and then draw the right face.
It’s quite possible that this drawing is almost impossible if you do it that way.
But of course I didn’t. I don’t like thinking in words. I do it much to often and get very tired. Especially when I’m drawing I try to only think in pictures.
My way of drawing a face is think of a face in silhouette and trace it. The tracing part still doesn’t work that well. But it is getting easier.
With the right face I switched to the vases view and there was nothing to it.
It isn’t completely clear to me whether people were supposed to recognize the subject of the up side down drawing. For most people trying to draw an up side down picture is so taxing that they stop talking inside their mind.
The point being that talking is an ability of the left side of the brain and drawing is an ability of the right side. Drawing up side down is so taxing that the left side gives it up and leaves it up to the right side to do the job.
The book describes a special feeling people are supposed to have while they are doing this kind of drawings. You should feel more alert, more relaxed and not notice the passing of time.
I can’t say that I experienced a special feeling while doing the up side down drawing.
I do have those feelings when I concentrate on thinking in pictures. Especially noticing the passes of time seems to be something that is closely related to thinking in words.
I remember from my youth, when I primarily thought in picture, that I had very poor sense of time. But of course back then they called it day dreaming.
Could it be that one of the differences between autistic and other people is that autistics make more or better use of the right side of their brain?
I don’t know.
I do know that autistics are supposed to have a different thought process. I can think in words but it is a lot of work. Very taxing.
Any way. The book advices to do several up side down drawings before going on with the next assignment.
This was supposed to be a horse with a knight. But when I copy I always enlarge. So by the time I got to the head there was no room left for the knight.
I drew the horse up side down and then turned the page to draw in the shades.
Considering that this is the first time in my life that I’v drawn any kind of animal. I think it’s not to bad. (Except for the right fore leg.)
Horse without a knight
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by Henk ter Heide on Friday November 2, 2007
Spoiler: If you’re planning to read and use the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain you’d probably better not read this article.
After doing the somewhat strange first assignment to awaken the right side of your brain I went on with the even stranger second assignment.
The author describes how she found that her students can copy very complicated paintings with great ease if she turns the painting up side down.
The theory is that people normally use symbols when they try to draw something. So you might draw eyes as two concentric circles even if the eyes in the painting are picture perfect. But when the painting is turned up side down people don’t recognize the subject and draw what the see instead of what they “should” draw.
The second assignment uses this same technique.
Only thing was that it didn’t work for me.
Turning the page I was presented with an up side down picture of what seemed to be Einstein. But the caption read that it was a Philippe Halsman. Turning the book up side down I still thought it looked like a picture of Einstein. Turning it back and re-reading the caption I found that the picture was taken by P. Halsman.
According to the text it was indeed a picture of Einstein and apparently most people have a lot of difficulty recognizing pictures that are up side down.
The assignment was to copy an up side down drawing. Picasso’s Portrait of Igor Stravinsky. The point was stressed that you should first draw the picture before turning the book around to see what it looked like. Otherwise this assignment won’t work.
But again I didn’t see the problem. Although it’s a drawing that is very difficult to copy I had no problems what so ever in recognizing what it was about: A man in jacket and tie sitting in a wooden chair.
Up side down
Half way through the drawing I decided to give up.
Not the drawing but my neat way of drawing.
This drawing has a lot of lines that are far from straight. But if you try to copy them in exactly the way Picasso drew them they tend to get very straight. I decide to draw a little sloppy. Hoping that it would bring some life to the drawing. And it did.
Right side up
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday October 31, 2007
While trying to draw a hand I discover that shade shapes.
The book “Drawing with the right side of the brain” instructs you to draw three drawings before you receive any instruction to create a kind of base line. That’s because people tend to forget how bad they were. At the end of the book you can take these drawings to compare and see your progress.
For the third drawing the assignment was to draw the hand you don’t use for drawing. So for someone who’s right handed that would mean the left hand. But after posting the picture from which I drew yesterday I thought it would be nice to also post the picture from which I draw today. So I’ve made a picture of my right hand holding a pencil and drawn that.
Drawing a hand turns out to be a little more challenging then drawing a portrait.
There’s not much that can go wrong with a portrait. There are a few distinctive feature that should be present. But they have very clear shapes.
But that’s not the case with a hand. If you only draw the shape you end up with something out of a comic book.
But of course I didn’t know that when I started with this drawing. I kept the lessons of the last few days in mind and withstood the temptation to start with some detail.
I started out by drawing the shape of the forefinger and thumb. The rest of the hand and a little piece of the arm. Then I wanted to draw the middle finger and run into a little problem.
You can’t actually see the shape of the middle finger in the middle of the hand. You can see a little piece sticking out. But that’s about it.
It’s gets even more complicated when you try to draw the ring finger. You know it’s there but you can’t see it.
This problem left me no other choice then to try to draw shades.
Starting out with the shade where the ring finger should be. Since that’s about the darkest part. Then came the folds in the forefinger and the lighter parts that show the curve of the finger.
After that I noticed a nice dark shade under the pencil.
The tips of the fingers that stick out under the thumb where very hard to draw until I realized that the shade made them stick out. By leaving a little white you can even see the white of my nails.
All in all, although not perfect this drawing is a lot better then I had expected it to be.
Right hand drawing
The picture from which I drew:
picture of righthand with pencil
After thinking about it for a bit I decided that this drawing should go in my Favorite drawings list.
There is kind of a difference between this drawing and the other in that the others are finished and this one is much more a work in progress. Or to say it an other way. If I had to do it over I would draw the other favorites just the same. In this drawing however there is a lot of room for improvement.
That said. If I compare this drawing to my first drawing I see a lot of progress. Something to be proud about.
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by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday October 30, 2007
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.
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by Henk ter Heide on Monday October 29, 2007
Fulfilling the first assignment of “Drawing on the right side of the brain”.
As I mentioned a few days ago I’ve bought Drawing on… That is, actually I wanted to buy an other book about drawing but Amazon advised to buy this one as well. As such things go, I’m now reading Drawing on… and the book I wanted to have, will have to wait for a while.
It’s not only that Drawing on… is a famous book but after reading a little bit I found that the main theme comes close to something I’ve been experiencing over the last few months.
When I started drawing I thought I’d just draw the pictures in my mind but in trying I’m finding that I have to change the way I look at people and objects:
A few months ago when I was drawing faces I found that although I did have a general idea of how faces looked I didn’t know a lot of the details. When I started drawing clouds I experience that again. I did know what a cloud looked like. But when I wanted to draw it I found I had to do a lot of cloud watching to find out what they actually looked like.
To recognize your own progress when you’ve finished with this book the author starts out with a few assignments to find a kind of base line.
The first assignment is to draw a selfportrait by looking at yourself in the mirror.
But my only mirror is bolted to the wall in the bathroom. Which is a great to comb your hair but not for drawing. So I’ve used the picture I used on my about page. When I printed the picture out I found that my color cartridge had run out of ink. So I had to print it in b&w. Which probably made the drawing a little easier.
Selfportrait before
Although I’m not sure whether I would recognize myself from this drawing, it’s a lot better then the drawings I did a few months back.
With the older drawings I tried to start with a small detail and then work to the big picture. But it never quite worked. I found that I run into vector problems: Only being a few degrees off in the angle between the eyes and line of the nose meant that the mouth was off by miles.
This time I started as you should. By drawing the hair line and the shape of the face. The hair line gave me the placement of the eyes. The eyes gave the placement of the shades that make out the nose. Then it was logical to go on with the shades that make the cheeks. I almost forget to draw in the mouth.
I found that I had to draw the background in to be able to draw the ears. Because the ears are very light. They stand out against the black background.
One other thing I just noticed says something about the importance of looking.
After I had done my older drawings a friend of mine remarked that I should pay more attention to the ears because they were different. She thought that it would be impossible to have two different ears.
But in actual fact it isn’t so much the shape of the ears that you are drawing. It’s the shape of the ears under the angle that you’re looking at that you draw. In this picture you can see slightly more of my right ear. Partly because my head is slightly turned to the left and partly because my hair hides my ear.
So my two ears are slightly different in the picture and I tried to draw them slightly different.
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