by Henk ter Heide on Sunday May 3, 2009
It’s a strange feeling to sit and stare at a vacuum cleaner for a few minutes. But it is the best method to figure out how the lines run and what the relationship is between the different details of the vacuum cleaner.
Now I’m doing this I finally realizing why I’ve always had so much trouble drawing complicated pictures like this one. I have a tendency to imagine the world in three dimensions. I know, by heart, which lines are running towards me and which lines are running away from me.
But to draw them I have to learn to imagine them in two dimensions. Lines don’t run towards me or away from me but under a slight angle upwards or downwards to the left or right.
Half way through the drawing I realized that I had placed the vacuum cleaner to far away to get a good view on some of the details. Since it is not possible to move the vacuum cleaner without changing the angle and/or the perspective. I was forced to simplify the drawing somewhat. Which in the end turned out to be a good thing.
This type of vacuum cleaner has a lot of ornaments that don’t have anything to do with it’s purpose. It’s nice to look at but it doesn’t necessarily make the drawing better to understand.
Vacuum cleaner
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by Henk ter Heide on Thursday January 3, 2008
Discovering that a curse can turn into a blessing.
Dancing a little to get passed the feeling of restlessness helps me a lot with the drawing I started yesterday.
I’m now recognizing that I always felt afraid of …. something every time I tried to start with something. But now I know what caused the fear.
The feeling of restlessness was only part of it. The other part was the feeling that every thing I do is wrong.
As it turns out that feeling is right. Sort of.
At the moment I’m making a very nice drawing of a chair. The only problem is that it isn’t the chair that I’m trying to draw. It almost looks like it but the drawing has dozens of little mistakes.
In my mind the drawing doesn’t look like the chair I’m trying to draw.
For years I solved the problem of always having the feeling that everything I do is wrong by purposely adding mistakes. Which of course caused it’s own problem. If you’re planning to produce less then your best why bother at all?
Now I’m realizing that this is just the autistic curse of seeing detail.
It feels like something of a two edged sword: At the moment it’s very annoying that I feel the need to erase every line I draw and re-draw it four or five times before I’m finally satisfied.
But in the long run it will probably improve my drawing skills.
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