by Henk ter Heide on Thursday January 3, 2008
I’ve finally finished my drawing of my chair without the pillows and as you can see I’m not very satisfied with the result.
It is a difficult drawing. Especially the curved lines that must be drawn at an angle.
I’m not sure what I should expect from myself with this kinds of drawings. But I keep seeing a lot of details that aren’t drawn the way they should.
Probable it just means that I’ll have to revisit this drawing at some point.
Naked chair
(For those who can’t read the comments (starting at the top and going clock wise): wrong angle, to thick, wrong shape, wrong angle, wrong angle, should be further forward, lost my patience)
I almost forgot.
This is more or less the negative space drawing assignment for the right side of the brain book. Of course the drawing for the book should only have an out line were as I tried to draw the details on the in site of the chair.
One trick that the book teaches and that I found to be something of a mix blessing is how to judge what the proportions of the different parts of the chair.
You just pick a line on your subject that is of a middle length. That line is called “one unit”. Then you compare every other line in you subject to that unit.
To translate it to your drawing you pick a unit that is nicely proportionated to the size of your paper to measure your subject.
The nice thing about this method is that it’s very easy figure out how to get the interesting parts of your subject on the paper without it being to small or to large.
I found that the down side is that it’s very hard to judge the length of lines that are much shorter then your unit. Is a line 1/5 or 1/6 of the length of the unit?
For this kind of drawing it does matter.
by Henk ter Heide on Friday December 7, 2007
Learning to draw the real shape of an object.
Tonight’s drawing isn’t one of the assignments of the book but something that I tried for myself.
I’m right in the middle of a very long and theoretical part about composition. Although it is important and I certainly learn from it. It seems to go on and on.
A few months ago I tried to draw a kind of topographic face. That was because the pictures I remember are in 3d. But drawing topographically turned out not to be much of a success.
According to the book a lot of people have problems with the fact that they know that the object they try to draw has a shape that is very different from the shape they see.
Chairs have a sitting area that is big enough for your bud. Not that thin line you’re looking at. But if you want your drawing to look real you have to draw what you see and not what you know.
To help figure out what the shape of an object is, the author introduces negative and positive space.
Positive space is what’s left of the door after Bugs Bunny has run through it. Negative space is the shape that is gone.
(Although to me it seems that should be the other way round, but that’s just me.)
Looking at the positive space it should be much easier to figure out what’s the true shape of an object under the angle you see it.
Actually I should have drawn a gray shape with white around it. Gray for the shape of the chair and white for the surroundings. But I liked it better to just draw the chair.
Negative chair
The only thing is that although it a reasonably nice drawing there is something wrong with it and I can’t figure out what.
by Henk ter Heide on Friday November 16, 2007
I got a little bored with only drawing my left hand, so I decide it would be fun to try the same technique on the chair I drew a few months ago.
But that turned out to be a little harder then I imagined. In drawing my left hand I started at the left side and worked my way to the right. Which was exactly what I tried with the chair. But for some reason the result was that the pillows got about ten times as big as they really are.
I thru two sketches out before I finally realized what I was doing wrong.
In drawing a hand you don’t have bother with details. All the fingers are about the same size. So it doesn’t matter that much were you start.
But in starting with a detail of the chair I made it very difficult to estimate how much bigger the pillows should be. To make matters worse, the pillows are at an angle. Which means that if you draw the angle even a few degrees off the pillow gets very much larger.
This time I started with the back of the chair. That’s the widest part of the chair. Since every thing else is smaller it’s a lot easier to estimate the size.
Chair
There’s only one thing I wonder about.
I’ve been reading further in the “brain book
” and the author suggests to use a right-angled cut-out to frame the picture you want to draw and a piece of plastic to draw on. That is, draw on the plastic while looking through the plastic. Which means that you’re in fact tracing the chair on to the plastic.
It seems that even a famous painters like Vincent van Gogh used some kind of frame when he was learning to paint.
I use neither.
Does that mean that I’m very good at drawing? Or does that just mean that I’m kind of stupid?
by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday November 14, 2007
I think drawing too many hands is a bit boring. But the book seems to think that it’s good practice. So here’s an other hand drawing. I think I have to do two more.
Left hand 2
The thumb nail seems a bit wide. That’s because I moved it after drawing.
I drew the first line of the forefinger wrong and wanted to erase it. Without thinking I put my left hand on the paper the hold it while erasing. Which was superfluous because I don’t need a hold when using my electrical eraser.
Getting my hand back in the pose I changed the position of the thumb.
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
