by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday October 17, 2007
Suffering from a little self pitty and talking about the goal of the study.
Shouldn’t drawing get easier with time? After nearly ten months I would have expected to have lost the fear of failure.
The last few days were much easier then usual so I thought I was finaly over it. But no.
Today I feel as anxious as always. And for what.
The drawing isn’t that hard.
Most times I have some kind of plan before I put the pencil to paper.
Today I want to know what happens if I take purple and blue as primary colors and yellow as secondary color. Purple for everything that has to do with the bark and blue for everything leaf like.
I also want to know what will happen if I change the drawing direction.
Tree 10
Changing the drawing direction changes the feeling I get from the drawing. Vertical line give me a feeling of strenght. The lines in this tree where not really horizontal but perpendicular on the lines in yesterdays tree.
This tree feels as thought it’s much fatter then yesterdays tree, although it’s about the same size.
Coloring yellow on top of the blue and the purple and in one stroke seeing the purple turn into brown and the blue into green was funny. A bit magical.
The problem with the (not really) horizontal lines was that the blue spills over the edge. It’s a little tricky to cover the blue with the yellow. So I get edges that are either blue or yellow but not green.
There is of course a simple sulotion to this problem and that is to draw in a background.
The question is? What will work better?
First drawing the tree and then filling in a blue background. Or coloring half the sheet blue and then sculping out the tree with yellow.
Or some combination.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday May 16, 2007
The last few day I’ve been studying trees to find out where the branches go and where the leaves go.
This morning I remembered an advice I read a few days ago on a site about drawing portraits. About the drawing of the ear the site said something like “you can get away with almost anything as long as you keep in mind what the function of the ear is”.
The function of branches is to have a place to hang the leafs and the function of the leaf is to get in the sunlight. This means that branch always grow out of the center. Except when there is an other branch that is blocking the sunlight only in that case a branch will go left or right. Sometimes the branch blocking the sunlight is also forced to go left or right because of a higher branch blocking the sunlight so it can seem as if a branches branched for no aperant reason, but there was a reason.
Color tree 3th sketch
In most cases you can reason which way the tree grew just by studying it.
Only when I reached this point I asked my self why I wanted to know how the branches grew since with most trees you can’t see the branches. Only the leafs. But I have to know.
Next question is how to draw the leafs? With paint you would use broad strokes of your brush to suggest leafs. With pencil you should draw every leaf.
But I can’t. I don’t have the patience.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 15, 2007
The problem with starting with the detail and working to the big picture is that I don’t always know what the big picture is supposed to be. I see and remember a lot of details but it seems that the big picture is often a bit vague. I’m told that that’s a symptome of autism. Maybe it is.
This is a scetch of a nettle plant that my downstairs neigbour has in his garden. He has a problem with his feet which make it very hard for him to walk. So I don’t see al lot of him working in his garden.
Four leafs
Looking down I noticed that although a nettle isn’t the kind of plant you would want to have in your garden, it has a very nice structure. Both the shape of the leaves as the way they are attached to there stems, makes them very suited for a drawing.
But only now when I try to draw the nettle I notice that I haven’t seen the stem. I’ve no idea how the leaves are attached to the stem. The shape of the leaves is about right. But I have to look again to see how to attache them to there stem.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday April 11, 2007
This morning I had an intake with a organisation called BAVO RNO (dutch). BAVO RNO guides people with mental disorders and people with autism with problems ranging from having problems with how you should deal with friend to what kind of job you should have, how to find it and how to keep it.
The last few years I’ve been working at a company called Promen. Promen is a sheltered workplace. This campony is supposed to create jobs that fit someones impairment. But all they have to offer is unskilled labor. The other problem with them is that they’re very badly organized. As a result it is next to impossible to get them to stick to an agreement.
Pointed ears
Working with them has been very tiring. To the point my brain sort of shut down and I couldn’t think about anything but the stupid work I was doing. And off course autistics don’t regnize there own feelings so I only knew that I felt bad.
The last few month, ever since I learned that I’m autistic, have been a kind of awakening. I now know what kind of circumstance tire me. Mostly in circumstances where I have to talk a lot I tire easy. Finding that I’v a photographic memory, starting with drawing, starting with this blog are all things that have me using my brain again.
Getting a job were I can use my brain is the next step on that road. That’s were BAVO RNO comes in. They actually have a plan. A few steps they help you take to find what kind of work would suit you. A relief after Promen. This man actually recognized my enthusiasm and liked it.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.