Random Acts of Art
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Aiming straight lines.
Yesterday I drew a few straight lines. Or almost straight lines.
Today at work I realized that wasn’t enough. In a real drawing you not only want to have a straight line but it has to run from one point to an other.
In this study I tried to aim the lines from one point to an other. The only thing is that these line are a little short. Tomorrow I will try longer lines.
Drawing straight lines exercise 2
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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.
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Finding that technique is as important as knowing how to look.
The last few weeks I’ve been drawing assignment out of the book “Drawing with the right side of your brain”.
Although I tried to draw what I saw I wasn’t satisfied with my last drawing of my chair. It felt like something was wrong but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Green chair
Obvious one thing that has changed in this drawing is that there are two instead of one ornaments under the armrest. In my last drawing I drew only one because I didn’t have room for the second. The problem was that I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t have room.
Hoping it would give me more room I drew this chair with a thinner pencil then last. I also thought about how big I could draw the chair to use as much of my paper as possible.
It turns out that under this angle the chair is almost diamond shaped. I tried to incorporate that knowledge in this drawing. But as you can see I drew the chair a little to big.
While I was drawing I figured out what the problem was. I’m sitting so close that lines that look parallel aren’t. The two armrest face in slightly different directions. The top line of the top pillow isn’t parallel with the bottom of the lower pillow.
At the beginning of the year I did a drawing course. Among other things we where taught about the disappearing point. That is the point where all the lines seem to cross. To judge in which direction a line goes you can run your pencil in a parallel line.
A second lesson we learn was the importance of estimating the relative size of the different parts of your object. Which you measure by closing one eye and holding you pencil in front of you object. So all and all an artist waves a lot with his pencil.
Much more then I like to do.
And then, off course, there is the fact that I want to draw the pictures in my mind. It’s quite impossible to wave my pencil in front of an object in my memory.
This drawing shows that although it is a good thing to learn how to look at your object it’s also important to know what you should expect.
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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.
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I’m finally getting some ideas about the difference in thinking processes between autistics and non-autistics.
Some 20 years ago I read somewhere that people who are autistic can’t think in symbols. I didn’t know that I was autistic myself and I didn’t understand what they meant. Don’t autistics understand symbols like the dollar ($) sign and the Euro (€) sign?
When I found out that I’m autistic, last year, I understood even less.
The book about drawing with the right side of your brain was very surprising for me.
I hadn’t expected that there would be such a big difference in the experiences I had and the experiences that were described in the book. I didn’t quite get why the faces/vases drawing would be so hard for non-autistics. But what really surprised me was how hard it apparently is to draw portraits.
I just draw what I see. I might get lost in the details. Maybe I don’t think it’s a very good portrait because the details don’t match, but I don’t make the stupid mistakes most people apparently make.
Last week my employer wanted so speak to my councelor to learn something about autism.
We met in a cramp office with an cheap, old, dented and cracked table which we filled with the arms and hands of four people, 4 plastic coffee cups each with one plastic spoon, one dairy, two notepads and a few odds and ends.
My councelor told my manager and a manager from human resources a little about autism. Hopefully they learned something from it. One of the things my councelor described is how autistics see a lot more detail. He started out by saying “we see a table with a few sheets of paper” and continued with a description of what I saw.
“A table with a few sheets of paper”?????
Is that all that you see?????
Thursday my department at work had to wait a while to get the next order. The supply room kept telling us that we would get the order in a few minutes. So we waited and waited. In the end it took a few hours.
While we waited one of our interns drew a little. This guy is 16 or 17 years old and mentally disabled but he draws very good.
He started out with a cartoon styled St. Sebastian using very strong bold lines.
Then he tried to draw a portrait of me. Before he even started, he told me that he couldn’t draw very well and proceeded with waverly lines to draw something that didn’t even look like a face (or at least in my eyes). But he thought it was quite good.
Then I left to do something else. When I return an hour later he had filled a few sheets of paper with strong confident drawings.
I finally got it.
I think I misunderstood what was meant by symbols. Not only the signs that people use to point out the road to the city or the way to the toilet but the whole condensing of ideas people use to make it easier to observe and think about the world.
I don’t see the condensed world. I see every little detail.
I’m at odds whether condensing the world is an advantage or a disadvantage. But it doesn’t really matter since you can’t choose your thinking process.
The interesting thing is that the same happens when non-autistics look at a drawing. They don’t see all the detail I see. They just see a symbol.
If it has a trunk, branches and roughly the right colors it must be a tree. The shape doesn’t matter that much.
I think that this was what had me frightened.
There is no way I can draw all the detail I see. Not only because I don’t have the skills but, more importantly, I don’t have the patience. But if most people can’t see the details I don’t have to draw them.
Symbol puppets
This may seem like a children’s drawing but for me it’s something I’ve never done. I’ve never realized that you can just take a few circles to symbolize eyes and mouth.
Symbol trees
These trees represent something I’ve been trying ever since I started with drawing.
On route to my work I come passed a lot of trees like these two. Especially now in fall a lot of leafs has fallen off. So on the one hand you see very nice green, yellow and orange colored leafs and on the other you look right through the tree and see a blue and yellow sky in the background.
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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
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?
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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.
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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
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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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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