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Drawing

Lines and leaf

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday June 21, 2009

This was a very hard drawing to design.
Going with the theory of important lines within a drawing to catch the attention of the audience. This was meant as a kind of minimalistic design. In a sense to see how empty a drawing can be and still be interesting.

The idea was for one leaf on the sidewalk. But to make it more interesting I wanted to change the size of the tiles. I spend a few days thinking about the best size for the tiles (and being busy with other things). But when I finally had time to make the drawing I couldn’t.
It felt as though something was wrong but I could put my finger on it.

After a boring day of playing computer games I realized that I had made a mistake in the design and had no problem drawing it.

Lines and leaf

Probably you’ll have seen what the problem is.
These kind of tiles they use on the sidewalk have a fixed size of about 25 * 25 centimeters. And everybody knows that.

As an artist I am allowed to change reality in any way I feel will make my drawing more interesting.
But the trick is not to be caught. Since everybody knows the size of sidewalk tiles the leaf will seem very large.

I have thought of an other design using both a sidewalk and leafs. But that’s for the next drawing.

Commenting this and my last drawing
Although it’s not really a problem with this drawing. Again I had a problem drawing the right side and the left side of the leaf symmetrical.
In this case it’s not really a problem because I shaded and it seems as though part of the leaf is lifted from the ground.

I realized that the problem is that I’m not very good in drawing curves that run from right to left. So I’m tempted to start with the curve running from left to right. Which usually is the right curve. (I turned the paper to draw the leaf). Then when I try to draw the left curve my hand covers the right curve and I can’t see what I’m doing.

Might be a good idea to start with the left curve and see how it goes.

The goal in doing EyeSee was to test the theory that putting interesting features on specific lines would trap the eye of the audience in a circular motion.
But although I did like the drawing I didn’t feel that my eyes were trapped.

It wasn’t until after I had posted the drawing that I realized that the problem was with the background.
As in. There is no background.

The point is not to draw attention to features on specific lines. The point is to help the audience find interesting features in the drawing by guiding there eyes.
For instance a row of trees in a landscape could guide the eye to a few interesting houses. Or interestingly colored clouds could guide the eye to a mountain range.

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Sliding bars

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 26, 2009

Sliding bars

Sliding bars

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Do I like my work

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday April 2, 2009

A tweet

After posting my last drawing, I got a tweet from @mayavbreemen (dutch) telling me she very much liked my drawing and asking me what my opinion was of my drawing.
At first glance that seemed a very strange question to ask of an artist. Of course do I like my drawing. Otherwise I wouldn’t have made it, right?
Wrong!

My goal in drawing isn’t to create beautiful pictures. My goal is to create interesting pictures.
Let me explain.

Beauty and the beast

Compare this picture of a sunset with this interpretation of a painting by Vincent van Gogh.
You’ll agree that the first picture is beautiful. Maybe it’s not the most beautiful sunset you’ve ever seen, but it’ll come close. Probably you’ve seen thousands of real sunsets in you live. And probably you’ve seen a few hundred in photos like this one.
But tell me. How often to you take your photo album out of the cupboard to look at one specific photo of a sunset?

I found the second picture a few weeks ago while I was looking for pictures to use in my collages and I hated it immediately. It was quite clear that this was not the kind of painting I could use. So I moved on.
But then I found that there was something about this painting that made me go back an look again.
I just did a little research on the picture and turns out that the two figures on the foreground are photoshopped on top of a painting by van Gogh. As horrible as the result might be it has something that draws me in and has me looking at this painting ones in a while.

Growth

So now for two of my drawings. Christening and First step.
Christening is one of my favorite drawings. It’s a quilt like patchwork of colors. Very pleasing to the eye.
But it is also a one off. The only purpose was to test the colors of a new pencil box. But it leads to nothing.
I could of course draw lots more of those kind of quilt like designs but it would soon become very boring for people to visit this site. Knowing that they would, again, see a quilt.

The second drawing is arguably the most horrible drawing I’ve ever done. But it’s also the first in a set.
It’s the drawing I had to get out of the way before I could try something new. Although I didn’t expect it, I did learn something by drawing it. But more important. Even while I was drawing it I got ideas about what to try next.

At the moment I’m drawing the third one in the set.
I’m finding that although I have some ideas about what it should become it’s also kind of a growing experience. As I’m learning how to use my colors I find more ways to keep the drawing interesting. Not only as an idea in my mind but also as a drawing on paper.
For me, and hopefully also for you, my visitors.

So to answer the question. Do I like my work?
Some times, but I’m not trying to.
I am trying to create pictures that are interesting enough to make you want to steal a second look.

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Interpreting fear

by Henk ter Heide on Monday March 30, 2009

Examining some feelings that prevent me from drawing.

Eye problems

Twenty years ago I tried my hand at studying to be a programmer. I went to school for a year and got the basic papers you need to get a job. Then I went on with studying on my own to get a perspective on a better job.
It was then that I run into a strange problem with my eyes.
Every time I picked up my books to do some studying my eyes would go out of focus and the letters on the paper would get vague. At the same time I felt very tired. Although I didn’t know why I felt tired I assumed it had something to do with the eye problems.
Although I had my eyes examined I never found out what the problem was.

Examining a feeling

My involuntary holiday of, coming up to, 4 months as a result of breaking my hip gave me a lot of time to examine a few things you never get to.
So I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter, a lot of time thinking about several problems we have at my job, and examining a frighting cold feeling I have in the sauna and when taking a hot shower.

I don’t know about other people with broken hips, but I found that it became very easy to take really long showers. Sitting on my shower chair. Not having a lot of interesting things to do. Not having any appointments. I found I could easily sit in the shower for two hours.
Which would have been very nice if it wasn’t for the cold feeling on my back I always have when taking a shower.
I tried making the water hotter, as I always do, but that didn’t help. It never does.

But since I didn’t have a hell of a lot to do I decided that I might as well examine what was going on. Why I would feel cold under a hot shower.
Although it was very frightening I tried to concentrate on the feeling. It took me two weeks but I finally realized that the feeling I had wasn’t cold but the feeling of water running along my skin.

I also realized how it came about that I misinterpreted the feeling.
In autistics the part of the brain that recognizes feelings doesn’t work as it should. Which makes it very hard for us to recognize our feelings.
It has happened that I only found out what I was feeling by going by the authority of other people.
Someone would tell me: “I think you feel such and so”. And since I didn’t know what I was feeling I took his word for it.

In this case I learned to interpret the feeling I was having standing on the edge of the swimming pool on a cold Saturday morning 40 years ago, by listening to what people told me.
“You must be cold”. Yes I must be.
In reality it wasn’t cold that I was feeling. It was the sensation of wind blowing along my back.

Dealing with panic

Of course this blog isn’t about recognizing feelings. It’s about drawing, what I learn while drawing and what I need to draw.
I like to draw.
But being autistic I don’t really recognize that feeling. I interpret it in the same way I interpret all my feelings. In this case by the fact that I can’t get myself to stop drawing.
I don’t draw very often so after a time I tend to think that I don’t need it any more and store my drawing stuff away.
But every time I do, I get new ideas of drawings I want to do and get my drawing stuff back out.
But then I can’t get myself to sit down and draw.

After I figured out that I misinterpreted the feeling I have in hot showers, I thought that it could very well be that I also misinterpret feelings that have something to do with drawing.
So now I’m examining several annoying and frightening feelings of which I don’t think they have very much to do with drawing.
Yesterday, for the first time in twenty years, I ran into my little I eye problem. While using Twitoria to unfollow inactive Twitter profiles I got very tired and my eyes went out of focus.
At first I though that I should stop and relax for a moment but then I recognized what was happening to me. I was experiencing some type of panic attack. So I went on with what I was doing and after a while the feeling past.

Knowing what the feeling is I now realize that it’s something I have quite a lot. While writing this kinds of entries for my blog for instants.
Translating the pictures in my mind to words is hard, sometimes even painful. Many a time I’ve stopped writing and walked away with the feeling that it would go easier when I came back. It never did.
Writing this entry I also felt the need to walk off but knowing that I was experiencing a slight panic attack helped me to go on. Although the writing process is still hard to do, the panic attack did pass.

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First step

by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday March 18, 2009

This isn’t the most beautiful drawing I’ve ever done. Actually this might be the most ugly drawing.
It’s kind of an experiment.
After concluding that I’m more interested in color then in shape this seemed a logical first step to take. No shapes, no colors. Just blobs of black on a white paper.

This is not what I had in mind. But that’s the point to draw something I don’t have in my mind. Something that’s also new to me.

First step

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Abstracting three trees

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday March 12, 2009

It’s strange how you can never see

something that’s staring you in your face. For the past two years I’ve been trying to draw photo realistic but I could never get it. But for the longest time it escaped me why that was. Only a few weeks ago it finally dawned on me.

I don’t have any pictures on my walls because they bore me. That seems to be one of the drawbacks of having a photographic memory. Within a few days a picture on the wall starts to feel like the rerun of the rerun of a show I didn’t want to see to begin with.
So why did I ever think that I could be interested in spending weeks creating an image of something I’ve seen in real life?

This drawing derived

from a picture I was planning to copy. This drawing was more fun to do then most of the drawing I’ve done so far. But I still didn’t feel satisfied.
While doing this drawing I realized that I’m actual not interested in shapes. I’m far more interested in playing with colors.

So for my next drawing I will be doing something that’s the opposite from this one.