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Blogging

Why do people stop blogging? (drawing: Swimming trunk boy portrait blending colors 1th sketch)

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday June 21, 2007

Did you know that every day about 170,000 people start a blog and about 120,000 blogs die?

Apparently most people blog for about two months and then they give up. Since most people who stop blogging don’t write a goodbye note nobody really knows why, but probably because people run out of ideas to write about.

I never quite understood that. There are thousands of subjects in the world and being on the Internet you run into them on a daily basis. So how could you run out of ideas.

Swimming trunk boy portrait blending colors 1th sketch

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But this morning I run into my own little dip. I had the feeling that I was nearing the end of my rope. That it would be only a matter of time before I’d run out of things to say.

There is only so much you can tell about yourself. I’ve told you about autism. I’ve told you about my work. I’ve published my old stories that tell a lot about who I was before I found that I’m autistic (all be it in Dutch). So what to talk about next…

If this was just a other personal blog intended to tell the story of my live this would be the end of it.

But this isn’t just an other personal blog. This is the place were I publish my drawings and although I don’t know what I could talk about next, my drawings are still going strong. There are a few subjects I want to learn to draw; people, animals and trucks. Every time I run out of ideas about the next subject for a drawing, I try one of those and without exception I find that I have to try some new technique and thinking about this new technique I have several ideas about drawing I can do.

The stories I tell aren’t that important. In a sense they are only bait to get the search engine to index my page.

After climbing out of my dip I discovered that I was to pessimistic. Actually I’m still gaining speed. As I predicted a while ago my drawing skills increase and with that my drawing speed and the joy of drawing.

This week I even missed a few of my favored TV shows because I was busy drawing.

As for stories to tell. I have some. Slowly I’m getting a nose for interesting stories on sites as digg and in newspapers. Something else that I though of was something we did in school. You’d get a picture and had to think of a story. I make my own pictures, lets see if I can think up a few stories.

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Search engine optimization (drawing: Corona)

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday June 14, 2007

A few weeks ago I worked a while on a drawing I wanted to call “Nova”. But I couldn’t figure out how I should translate the shape in my mind to a color drawing.

This morning while I was working on my SEO I recognized that it should be possible to use the technique I used in Garbage draw to draw the picture of the Nova.

I’m not there jet. This is not the picture I had in my mind, but I know what I’m going to try next.

Corona

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SEO. Sounds like a chore doesn’t it? Well it kind of is.

A while back I told you that I want to reach a point where I can live from this site. That means that I need a lot more visitors then I have right now. My former website (about child abuse got about 2 visitors a week and I was very pleased with that. However to live from a site means that you have to get several thousand visitors a week. At the moment I get about 30 visitors a week who look at some 50 to 60 pages. Fifty to sixty pageviews per week on a site that has only been operational for a few months is nice, but not enough.

My stats counter tells me that I get about one third of my traffic via search engines (mainly Google) and a third via social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us. The remaining third are people who have me bookmarked. Thank you for the bookmarks!

To get more traffic I have to work on my SEO. Which in my case means that I have to tell search engines what my site is about and I have to tell social bookmarking sites about the range of articles I’ve posted.

Luckely WordPress has a lot of plugins that can help you with that task. Basically after I’ve written an article I have to gather a collection of keywords for search engine spiders and I have to post a link at several bookmarking sites.

In it selves that isn’t very much work. The only thing is that by the time I though of this I had already written about 50 articles. Right now I’m working my way through the backlog and that is a bit of a chore.

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What to call a drawing (drawing: Garbage draw)

by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday June 13, 2007

When I first started with this blog I had great trouble naming my drawings. For a while I was tempted to just numbering them. For me the drawing is kind of the message so what’s the point of naming it. But in trying I’ve found that is has become much easier.

Garbage draw

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I told you a while back that I use a thick sheet of paper as place mat on top of my desk. Drawing on a place mat is a much nicer feeling and it gives most drawings a better quality. The only problem is that over time it will get very dirty and the cleaning process has it’s own problems. A sheet of paper also gets dirty but then you through it out.

The paper gets dirty because it happens a lot that you draw just past the edge of the sheet you are drawing on.

The funny thing is that although some parts of the place mat sheet are really dirty there are also parts where I get to see some beautiful colors.

I though I try to reproduce it.

Of course after this the place mat will get even more dirty because I’ve found a few colors I want to try in real pictures.

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Picture roundup

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday June 10, 2007

Several sites regularly post articles where they remind there readers about the best post they had in the last month as a way to show new visitors what the site is about and to show of there best work.

I’ve decided to do the same. I don’t write very interesting articles but I try to draw nice pictures. Below you’ll find a list of my favorite drawing with a little story about what makes the drawing special:

Apples and pears

Sailing into the sunset

Sea edge

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Did you notice that the waves are flow away from the beach. Still I love the colors.
Hard to soft
I love these flowing colors.
Hunebed
Not perfect but almost the picture I had in my mind.
Sunset on crooked sea
Very expressive sun, almost a fire.
Mask
What started out as a study drawing to try a new technique learned me to draw beautiful pictures.
Intersecting bottles
Reminiscing of old times when the world, or at least my world, was a saver place.
Joking
The first drawing featuring an eye. I don’t yet know why but eyes are very important to me.
Flower
This is the first drawing where I combined colors by layering them on top of each other. That way you can make colors you don’t actually have in your pencil box.

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Piano genius (drawing: Apples and pears)

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday June 7, 2007

Last week I wanted to do a still live about apples and pears but for the live of me I couldn’t remember what apples looked like. Just now I though I draw a banana and the apple just flowed out of my pencil.

One of the nice things about having a blog is that you can watch who is watching you. Well not exactly. Via my stats counter I can see where people who visit my site come from. In which city there ISP lives, which ISP they use, which site pointed them to my site. But I can’t see who they are.

Apples and pears

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So a few weeks ago someone in an American town I never knew existed took an hour out to visit my site. That’s a nice all be it surprising act.

Last week while I was thinking of ways to get more visitors I though I might use Del.icio.us to publish the fact that my weblog exists. So now with every entry I post I post a link at del.icio.us.

Using my stats counter I can see that it works. Some of the people who visit me come from del.icio.us drawing page, page 6. Or del.icio.us art page, page 4. I’ve tried looking the link up. But the del.icio.us pages change rapidly. So I stopped trying to find them.

Last Monday I noticed that someone had reach me from a del.icio.us page with a tag I hadn’t used. That surprised me enough to go and have a look.

It turned out that someone found my del.icio.us bookmarks interesting enough to subscribe to my bookmark stream. That’s funny. I never though that anyone could like the way I see the world.

Curious as to what else he might find interesting I took a RSS feed on his subscription page.

The first link I got was of a Youtube showing of a documantary about the autistic music savant piano genius Derek Paravicini prepairing for a concert in the States in front of a crowd of 10,000 people.

This guy really plays the most beautiful pieces of piano music. The documantary is shown in 5 parts totaling close to 50 minutes, but it is wurth it. I’m linking to all five parts:

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Schedule, updates, upgrades and plugins (drawing: Sailing into the sunset)

by Henk ter Heide on Monday June 4, 2007

Art:

Last week I thought of this technique. I’m using three ways to hold my pencil. Starting with the background I hold my pencil almost on it’s side. Not applying to much pressure. Just grazing the paper. That way you get a nice thin layer of color which you can blend with a piece of paper.

Next applying a little more pressure I drew the sun, the airplane condensation trail and the waves. And finely holding the pencil the way you hold your pen I drew in the sailing boat.

Sailing into the sunset

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Blog:

Last week Tuesday I had a bit of a scare. I wanted to draw this picture but I was very restless. So much so that after only a few seconds of drawing I decided I couldn’t draw anymore and I tore up the sheet of paper. After that I had a few scary days in which I thought that I might as well stop with this website before I realized what the problems were.

I had two problems. One of which I will discuss now, the other one tomorrow.

After deciding that I wanted to reach a point where I could live from this website I started reading about techniques to get people to read your website and to monotize your website. As you can see I found a lot of interesting plugins and upgrades: An archive, a page that lists the links I use in my posts and a Feedburner feed are the most visual updates. There are some more but they make the process of blogging a little easier.

Although it’s a lot of fun to read about plugins and other stuff that can make blogging more fun for myself and my readers there is one problem. Autistics can only concentrate on one task at a time.

So while I’m thinking about all the pretty things I could do with my site, I’m not thinking about the next drawing I want to make.

The web logo I’ve added to the address bar will be the last update for a while. The next few weeks I will concentrate on the production of drawings.

(Don’t strain your eyes trying to see what the logo is. It’s just a bit of abstract art.)

The other thing I realized is that I need structure. I need a schedule so I’ll know when I’m expected to post again.

It seems to me that I should go on as I started. Which means that the Monday is the first day of my posting week. Especially since I will be producing most of my drawings on monday. I’ll post one drawing a day for as long as I have drawings. And then start again the next week.

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Mission statement (Drawing: Sea edge)

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday May 29, 2007

After I decide that I would like to reach a situation in which I could live from this website I’ve been reading up on ways to get more traffic to your website.

Apparently there are two way you can do that. (Well actually there are three but the third is almost cheating and I don’t cheat.)

Sea edge

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Quantity or Quality.
Problogger Darren Rowse posts up to 50 articles of a few hundred words a day. That way search engines have a lot of points of reverence to find. Steve Pavlina on the other hand post only a few articles a week but they are usually very long articles (a few thousand words) with a lot of advice in them.

Although my articles also only have a few hundred words in them they will always be only a part of the posting. The main reason to post is to show you a drawing and there is no way that I can make 50 drawings a day.

With a lot of experimenting in the last couple weeks I’ve found that I’m especially fond of the technique of blending colors. (Sometimes together with different techniques). Blending colors takes a lot of time. Depending on the subject a drawing can take several days.

I’m asuming that as I gain more experience the blending technique will take less time but I will never produce much more then three or four sketches or one (or two) drawings a day. And I won’t be drawing daily. I also have a day job.

Since quantity is impossible I will aim for quality.

Up till now I mostly posted the finished drawings. When I made several sketches I’d post those only to my Flickr account. That is something I’m going to change. It seems that some of my sketches also have some “strange” qualities. By posting them here you can see how I develop my drawings. Why I change the way I draw subjects.

Then there is the textual part of the posting. When I started the blog the main reason I had to post little stories was that search engines have a difficult time finding pictures without text.

But I can write stories. My “Henk’s verhalen” (Dutch) page proves that. I wrote most of those stories some 15 years ago. The last few years I was so tired from thinking about all the things I should tell people that they drowned out. But the last few weeks, while I try to talk less and less, I feel that the stories are slowly returning.

I will be adding some categories to the “blog” section. Probably something about the Netherlands and about drawing lessons. Maybe something about sheltered workplace in the Netherlands.

But the main focus for this site will always be on the drawings.

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Stats (Sketch: Nova 4th sketch)

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday May 6, 2007

I use Google to create statitics about the number of people that visit this site.

This afternoon I found that Google gives a great amount of information about sites. Not only can I see where in the world people come from and which provider they are using. Google even gives me information about the kind of articles that are favorite among my readers.

Nova 4th sketch

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I don’t jet have very many articles but it seems that the articles about the process of drawing and learning to draw are the most popular.

But that doesn’t mean that that’s the only subject I will be writing about

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Scanner fun (Drawing: Nova 3th sketch colors reversed)

by Henk ter Heide on Saturday May 5, 2007

When I started this site I planned to draw one picture a day and post it to this site. But with the last few pictures it has become clear that I won’t make that frequence. “Mask” took about three days to draw.

Nova 3th sketch colors reversed

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The picture I’m drawing now takes less time to draw but more time to plan. I’m not completely sure how to get the effect I want to have. I’ve made three sketches up till now (they are on my Flickr account, just click the picture) and it just possible I’ll have to draw some more before I get the picture I want.

While scanning the third sketch I noticed a “color reversed” button on my scanner. This was the result. Looks nice. I must see if it’s a technique I can use in some way.

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Drawing the pictures in my mind (Drawing: Joking)

by Henk ter Heide on Friday April 20, 2007

A few days ago I learned that the pictures in my mind are fragmented. I only see details of objects but don’t see the complete object. So I can see the handlebar of a bicycle, the wheels, the pedal and the other parts of which a bicycle excists, but I can’t see the bicycle.

That shocked me. For a while I didn’t know what I should draw, what I could draw.

Joking

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This morning I realized that I had made a mistake. I didn’t want to learn how to draw so I could draw my world. I wanted to learn to draw so I could draw the pictures in my mind. Those pictures aren’t fragmenten. Only pictures of real objects are.

I remembered a joke I wanted to tell someone, but didn’t tell.

On route to my work I noticed something funny. But when I was about to tell a collegue I realized that I didn’t have the words to tell it.

Autistics have a thinking process that’s much more visual then that of neuro typicals, (which begs the question how neuro typicals think but nobody seems to be able to tell me ), and as the saying goes: A picture says more then a thousand words. The problem I faced was that I didn’t have those thousand words.

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