Posts tagged as:

memory

connecting tissue

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 18, 2010

I started this color hatching sketch. It was meant as a kind of top view of a road through the forest. But as I was drawing it soon became clear that something was very wrong with this drawing.
I just couldn’t figure out why I was doing this. Drawing something of which I know it’s wrong.
But cycling to the fitness center to do my weekly workout it dawned on me.

When I tell people that I have a photographic memory, they often think that means that I never forget any thing. But that’s not the case. Never forgetting any thing is called a Eidetic memory. I do forget things.
I call it a photographic memory because the pictures in my mind have a photographic quality to them.

But as I am finding out. They are not complete.
It’s like I have these photographic plates in my mind that have to be exposed to an object to get a clear memory. But if I don’t look long enough to some detail of that object I don’t have a picture of it in my mind.

It’s like studying for an exam.
While you’re reading the book you feel like you know it by heart.
But on your exam you find that you have forgotten a few details. Usually the details aren’t very important. But sometimes they are the connecting tissue you need to make your argument.

In the same way I have a lot of pictures of tree trunks in my mind. Which isn’t strange. While cycling I get to see a lot of tree trunks.
I have several pictures of leaves and flowers in my mind. But I have hardly any pictures the point of the tree where the branches grow. That’s not the most interesting part of a tree. So I assume that I don’t look at it very much.

You know the feeling of needing a word that you can’t quit remember but you have it on the tip of your tongue? People suggest words but although you still can’t remember the word you need, you know that the suggestion is wrong.
I have something like that while doing a sketch like this.
I know it’s wrong, but I don’t know what I should change to correct it.

color hatching sketch

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Color islands

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday March 23, 2010

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For the last few years I’ve been playing a kind of game with my self. I look at an object; a tree, car or park bench. And while I’m looking at it I try to imagine it.
Doing that feels as a kind of memory practice.
That is, I’m not sure whether I’m improving my memory. But it feels like that.

The problem until recently was that it also invoked a very strong feeling. So strong that I never knew whether it was a good feeling or not.
But a few weeks ago I noticed that the feeling had changed. It’s still a very strong feeling and I still don’t recognize it. But I’m now sure that’s a good feeling.

So the last few weeks I’ve been looking a lot. At everything around me. At everything I would want to draw.
And I finally realized something that’s probably obvious for people who are not autistic. But I never saw it.
The background of an object is very important.
A tree is nothing without the park or forest it belongs to.
The reflection of an early morning sun in a black wet road is nothing without the trees and the cars that surround it.

So for the last few weeks I’ve been thinking about how to draw background. Specifically about a color pencil drawing technique I read about years ago where you hash colors together.
In this study I’m finding out how you can mix colors.
I’m finding that the nice part of this technique that you can’t actually predict what kind of colors you’ll get after mixing a few colors.

I’m must try this on a somewhat larger scale.

Color islands

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Burning circuits

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday March 2, 2010

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For years every time I felt home sick I would imagine myself roaming the halls of my old boarding school. While I walked through those halls I could remember them very clearly. Three dimensional and in color.

I always assumed that I had such a clear memory of the place because it made a big impression on me. It was only a few years ago, after I had discovered that I’m autistic, that I realized that I can remember every thing so clearly.
I not only have a clear, thee dimensional, color image of every place I’ve ever been. But also of every place I’ve ever seen on TV on in the movies. Even places I’ve only seen in my imagination after having read a description of them.

So for the last few years I’ve been thinking that it should be possible to visit places in my memory. Like a way of getting through the day, if I have less then interesting work.

But it never worked for much longer then a minute.
After about a minute I would feel very tired and start talking to myself.
Apparently for some reason I didn’t really understand, visiting the images in my memory took a lot of energy. I just couldn’t keep it up for very long.

So every now and then I try it. But I have never had much luck visiting images until yesterday.
I’m not sure why. But since yesterday I can visit every place I want to visit.

The main difference seems to be that I can now recognize why it’s difficult.

Turns out that visiting places in my imagination evokes very strong feelings in me. Almost to the point that I can’t stand them.
Now I recognize this it’s clear to me that I’ve had this before. Only thing is that until now the feelings where so strong that I couldn’t even feel if they where good or bad feelings.
I only had the feeling of burned out circuit.

Now I recognize the feeling as something good I can visit any memory I want to.
So today I’ve been enjoying a few childhood memories. And the strong feelings that accompany them.
I’ve even remembered the sandbox we had in our back yard when I was about 6.

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The end of a path

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday January 3, 2010

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It’s a good thing that keeping a new years resolution is a process and not an act. Otherwise I would have failed it already. Yesterday I did draw for more then an hour but I didn’t come around to writing this article
Ah well. Here it goes.

As my regular readers will have noticed, I haven’t done anything for some three months.
I had found that I couldn’t make the pictures I wanted with color pencil and had decided that I would start painting.
I had bought oil paints, an easel, a pallet and the lights I needed to photograph my paintings. I had even painted a few test panels.
And then everything halted.
It just stop.
I didn’t feel like painting any more.

I assumed that I would start painting again at some point. So I just waited.

The thing is that I have had this happening before. Often even.
I have had a lot of times that I am in the middle of some activity and for some reason just don’t feel like finishing it.
It used to annoy the hell out of my mother. She thought it meant that I was too lazy to finish my chores. (Although I never quite understood why she thought that joining a tennis club would be considered a chore.)

Over the years I learned that halting some activity for no apparent reason and then picking it up again a few weeks or months later, or figuring out what is wrong with it, is just part of being me.
So I waited.

The only thing that had me slightly worried was this blog.
This blog is linked to drawing and I felt that couldn’t keep all of you just hanging there. Not knowing what had happened.
I hate it when I’ve followed a blog for a few months or even years and it just stops. And I never find out what happened to the author.
Did he move on to other activities? Did he die?

A few weeks ago I started thinking that I should write some kind of brief explanation about why I wasn’t writing anymore. But a funny thing happened.
While I was thinking about how I should explain that this happens to me some times. That I didn’t know why I had stopped and didn’t know whether I would ever continue. I figured out why I had stopped.

Even better.
After I had realized why I had stopped, new ideas started flowing. And before I knew it I was drawing again.

I thought it would be best to first do a few drawing, to see if it would stick, and then tell you about my developments. But the drawing I’m doing right now is taking far too much time to do it that way. Although I drawn for more then an hour a day for the last week. I’m still only at about two thirds.

But still I feel curtain that this direction is so rewarding that I won’t stop after just a few drawings. I don’t feel that I have to test myself by finishing yet an other drawing before talking about it.

Why did I stop painting in September?
When I started thinking about it, it turned out to be fairly obvious.
I had lost my direction. I had lost my purpose.

When I started drawing early 2007 and started with this blog I had a very clear purpose.
I wasn’t trying to produce beautiful drawings. I was trying to find a way to express myself via drawings.

Being autistic and having a visual thinking process I find that I have to work very hard at expressing myself.
Before I can tell anybody anything about the people I meet and the places I go. I have to translate from the pictures and movies in my mind to words I can speak.
Although I’ve become quite good at it over the years, it’s still a lot of work.
Which means that I can write an article like this one, which is perfectly understandable.

But sitting on a stool in a bar I can either relax or talk with people. And since I go there to relax I never talk very much.
Lately a few of the costumers of my favorite bar have figured out that I’m quite knowledgeable on some subjects and they question me about them. And when they do, I answer them.
But it always feels like an interview. Never like a conversation.
To me conversation are just to much like work.

Three years ago I thought that since I have this visual thinking process and a photographic memory, it should be very easy to find a way to draw those people and places that I wanted to show the world.

But it wasn’t.
Using color pencil I quickly found that the pictures I drew never looked like the pictures in my mind.
For two reasons.
One of which turned out to be very obvious, when I finally thought about it. The pictures in my mind are of a photographic quality. Pictures I draw never are. Which, I suppose, is the charm of drawings. But it wasn’t what I had in mind.
The other problem is that I have a field of vision of 180 degrees. Just by the size of the paper that I’m using, a drawing is only about 30 degrees. Which is probably why a guy like Stephen Wiltshire draws such detail on such big canvases. It’s the only way to get the world in your drawing.

When I moved to painting I just assumed that I would solve both problems.
Bigger canvas would mean drawing a bigger part of the world. And since you can layer with oil paint you can indeed get more photo realistic pictures.

The one thing I hadn’t counted on was drying time.
With oil paint you can layer different colors on top of each other. But after each layer you have to wait until it’s dry. Otherwise the different layers will mix and everything will turn a foul color of brown.
Drying time can be as much as two or three days.

So imagine what that means.
No doubt you have seen those beautiful portrait paintings where the artist has put a little dot of white paint in the pupil of the each eye to suggest life.
Those two tiny dots of white paint take three days to paint.
That is a few seconds for every dot. And then three days of drying time before varnish can be applied.
(And after that the painting has to dry out for several months before it can be used.)

There is no way that I can work that way.
Most painters work either from postcards or from sketches they have made.
I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to draw/paint the pictures and movies in my mind.
I started out with the pictures because it seemed easier to learn. But to really show the world what I’m all about I have to draw/paint the movies.
But of course they change over time.
There is no way for me to keep an image in my mind for the several months it would take to finish the painting.

The first painting I wanted to do was a simple one of an apple tree in bloom in an English landscape.
I’ve been wanting to do a picture like that for as long as I’ve been drawing. I could never find a way to do it with color pencils.
But even such a simple idea keeps changing:
Will I put the tree in the foreground or the background. On a hill? Against a blue sky or a stone wall?

And that are only the questions I ask myself.
The color arrangement also changes. But that isn’t something I consciously think about. It’s just the way the world around me changes.
When the sun shines the pictures in my mind have all kinds of bright colors. When it’s an dreary day the pictures in my mind change to low hanging fog. And then at night I “see” a lot of greys and blues.

There is no way I can show my world using paint.
But even if there was. It’s far the much work. I was looking for an easier way to show my world then by translating the pictures in my mind.
This is far to difficult.

So without realizing what was wrong, I had reached the end of this path.

This is turning into a very long article.
Tomorrow I will tell you about this new direction I have found

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Television on cupboard 3th attempt

by Henk ter Heide on Monday May 4, 2009

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I was planning to draw a preserving bottle, but after starring it down for a moment I decided that would be to complicated for right now.
So I thought I go for something easy like the television that is sitting about a meter from me on it’s cupboard. But that drawing turned out to be deceptively complicated.
Because I’m sitting only a meter away and part of the television towers above me the perspective plays strange tricks: I never noticed but the corner that is facing me seems almost twice as high as the corner that is facing away. Which looks very strange in the drawing.
The slots on the site of the television also behave strangely. The top one is on eye level so it seems straight although it isn’t. It’s curved just like the bottom one. The same is true for the ventilation slots.
I won’t even start about how strange the cupboard looks.

It’s strange feeling. Having a photographic memory I feel that I know how the different parts of the world connect to each other. But trying to draw them it’s almost as though having a photographic memory for shape is something of a disadvantage.
Wasn’t expecting that.

Television on cupboard

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Understanding perspective and size

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday October 12, 2008

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Wandering why my perspective are always wrong when I draw a picture from my mind.

While doing my last drawing something happened that I never had before. Or at least I’ve never realized this.
The brown band at the right of the drawing is supposed to be a wall. While drawing it I realized that I didn’t know what was on the other side of that wall.
I’ve always had the feeling that I knew everything that there was to know about the objects I see in the pictures in my mind. But apparently not.

Thinking some more about this I realized that the pictures in my mind are not only 3 dimensional but I also have multiple viewing points. I literally what both this side and the other side of the tree look like. Which is why I have such a hard time to draw it. Since it is impossible to draw both side all at ones.

The reason that I know what both sides of an object look like is probably because I walked around it. Which also explains why I don’t know what is on the other side of the wall in my drawing. Probably this is a picture I saw somewhere on a picture postcard or on television.

Staring some more at my last drawing after I had scanned it I started wandering why it looked so much different from one of the first drawings I did after I started this blog last year. I copied a landscape from some picture and it looks very nice and 3 dimensional. Where as picture I draw from memory always look flat.

It took me a few days but it finally hit me.
Even though the picture in my mind are 3 dimensional I don’t see perspective in those pictures. I get them 3 dimensional by comparing the hight and width of everything to my own hight. I know how far I would have to bend my neck backwards to see the top of the tree. I know how deep I would have to dig down to get to see all the roots of a tree.
But there is no way for me to draw myself into the picture. So to get a feeling of depth I will have to use the language of perspective.

Perspective

There is also something wrong with this drawing. More specific there is something wrong with the tree.
It only took me a few hours to realize that it’s the same problem.
I relate the thickness of the trunk and the branches to myself. The trunk is as thick as I am and the branches are as thick as my arm.
Without myself in the picture I’ll have to find an other way of judging size.

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751

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday October 9, 2008

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Recognizing the feelings that have to do with drawing enables me to draw.

The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:

Cognitive behavior therapy

Strong anonymous feelings

751

Feeling scared

Accepting comments selectively

Mad as Hell

Although we’re not yet there, I asked the psychiatrist whether a strong tingling feeling in your body is a happy feeling.
He was not sure. Could be. But he did say that if I enjoyed the feeling it’s probable that it has something to do with feeling happy.
I do enjoy the feeling.

Now I know that it is supposed to be happy feeling I find that I’m able to just sit down and draw. I can resist the urge to jump through the room.

I’m also trying a new technique.
After finding that my problem isn’t with drawing techniques but with recalling techniques, I’ve decided I should draw more interesting scenes the a bunch of rising squares. And since it isn’t possible to draw a lighter color on top of a darker color, as you would with paint (Or at least it is possible but it isn’t visible if you do), I’ve decided to try a new technique.

So this drawing is based on some image I imagined a few days ago. I’m starting with the lighter colors and working my way up to the darker colors.
I’m not quite sure what I must do after this but hopefully I will know by tomorrow.

751

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Cognitive behavior therapy

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday September 23, 2008

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A new therapy is going to influence the way I draw.

The series about what I learn in cognitive behavior therapy consist of the following parts:

Cognitive behavior therapy

Strong anonymous feelings

751

Feeling scared

Accepting comments selectively

Mad as Hell

The last 25 years I’ve seen the inside of many an psychiatrists office. Talking about my feelings they tried to help me with all the problems I felt I had. I did learn to talk about the feelings and thoughts and goals they thought that I should have.
But it never worked. I always had the feeling that I had more problems.

At some point a psychiatrist accused me of being addicted to talking to psychiatrists. After that I stopped seeing them. Not because I felt that the problems were solved. But because I felt they just didn’t listen to me.

Last week I’ve started a new therapy. Or at least I don’t think it’s completely new, but it is to me.
This therapy is especially geared towards people who are autistic.
Although I’ve only had two sessions and don’t jet know how this therapy will work it has already solved more problems and given more clarity then any therapy I’ve had until now.

Analyzing my toilet problems I’ve found that I had taught myself to go to the toilet right before I left my home and again in the train on route to my work.
Which means that if the train is late (which happens every 1 out of 2 days) I have a slight panic attack. And since panic intensifies bowl movements the problems keeps getting worse.
The solution turned out to be very easy. I just have to tell myself not to use the toilet in the train but the toilet at work.
(Of course one of the main differences between autistics and non-autistics is that we look at the logic of a situation while you look at your feelings: Convince and autistic that smoking is bad for your health and he will quit. Try to convince a non-autistic and he will tell you that it makes him feel alright and therefore it can’t be bad for his health.)

A problem that is getting clarified has to do with drawing.
I started drawing and this blog in the hopes that I would learned how I should use my photographic memory. But in the last year I found that I had ever more problems remembering and drawing nice pictures.
I thought that it had something to do with my lack of drawing skills. But thanks to the therapy I’m finding that it has something to do with my lack of memory skills.
More specifically. Trying to remember details in picture evokes very strong feelings. Although I don’t recognize the feelings I’m assuming they are nice feelings.
But I still find it very hard to deal with strong feelings that I don’t recognize. To the point were I tend to avoid those strong feelings. And since remembering details evokes strong feelings I tend to avoid remembering details.

In the therapy I’m going to work on recognizing strong feelings and dealing with strong feelings. I’m fairly optimistic that my drawings will improve as I learn to deal with those feelings.
And I’m hoping that my computer problems will allow me the time to write about this.

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Working holiday

by Henk ter Heide on Monday June 9, 2008

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Thinking about subject matter, life goals and time management.

A few weeks ago I read a horror story about what can happen to your domain if you announce that you’re going to be off line for a few weeks. So I felt it better to schedule a few articles and leave.
Last week I was in the neighborhood of a small Dutch village called Haarle. With 19 other people from the Rotterdam Autie Club(Dutch) we spent a week in 4 little cottages.
It was a nice change to spent time with (from my perspective) normal people and to get away from my usual routines. A change to think about stuff I usually don’t get around to.

The cottage had a bath tub. Since I don’t have one at home I decide to try if bathing is as boring as I remember from my childhood. (It wasn’t.)
While soaking in my bath I started thinking about the subjects I choose to draw. Although I have drawn a lot of trees over the last year I find that I’m drawn to the more abstract subjects. I was wandering why that would be. Having a photographic memory and having given myself the assignment to draw the pictures in my mind I always thought that I would like real subjects in stead of abstract.

Thinking about it I realized that having a photographic memory is part of the reason why I don’t like real subject.
I’ve already seen it.
I don’t have pictures on my walls because repeatedly seeing the same pictures feels like reading a book for the ten thousands time. Drawing something I’ve seen feels like writing a book that already has been written a thousand times. A waste of time.
But thinking a little more I realized that this isn’t the only reason. It isn’t even the main reason.

I never realized it but I use my photographic memory in much the same way as other people use the snapshots of their holiday. I have this vast archive of every kind of picture you can imagine in my head but I hardly ever look at them.
These few day, just after getting back from holiday, I tend to remember odds and ends from my holiday. Sometimes in at work when I’m really bored I will try to remember nice pictures of beaches and orange skies.
But most of the time I’m busy thinking about the world around me: The relationship between people, objects and people and object. Those pictures tend to be fairly abstract.
Which means that drawing the pictures in my mind should mean drawing a lot of abstract pictures.

By nature autistics are interested in science, politics and religion.
Being on holiday with these people gave me a relieve from the daily discussions about “Goede tijden, slechte tijden” (the Dutch “As the world turns”). Stretching my brain to think about peoples opinions and thinking of arguments to support mine. After years of being bored to death I really felt my juices starting to flow again.
So much so that I re-thought my plans for the coming few years.

A year ago I had the idea that I should be possible to get a better job then the unskilled labour I’ve been doing the last few years. I found a psychologist that could help me figure out what my skills are and what kind of traits I bring to the table. But it has been slow going.
Turns out that it is almost impossible for a 46 year old gifted autistic to find an interesting job.
If I only were 20 years younger…
Until two weeks ago I thought that the only thing I had to expect from life was doing unskilled labour, drawing and writing art reviews. A rather depressing out look.

But after having a few interesting discussions during my holiday I realized that there is an other way to broaden my horizon. I could go back to school.
Not as a means to get a job but as a means to meet interesting people and to get infected with new and provoking ideas.

A bit to my disappointment the cottages where equipped with a television set. I wouldn’t have thought it necessary. Being on holiday with a group of interesting people I would have been content with filling my days with interesting conversations and doing games. But a few of my mates couldn’t go a day without their daily share of political news.
A habit of one of my mates got me thinking about time management.
This guy had to put the television set of (using the button on the set) before he went to bed. I don’t know why. Probably just because it was his habit. Autistics are funny that way.
It meant that every time somebody wanted to watch some show he first had to go the set and turn it on before using the remote to change the channel. Having to turn the television on by hand was so much of obstacle that people watch much less television then I had feared.

Back home I realized that watching television is the most important reason why I don’t get around to drawing and writing as much as I want.
When I eat my lunch, or any other meal, I’m tempted to turn on the television and sit there for 30 to 60 minutes watching something totally unimportant and uninteresting. I could have eaten my lunch in 5 minutes and then done something I really enjoy.
Even worse. When I’m bored I turn the television on.
In stead of looking 5 minutes out of a window and thinking of something enjoyable or useful I could do, I spend an evening watching time slip through my fingers.

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Study: Sea 3

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday October 11, 2007

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Starting a drawing with a sketch.

I was actually thinking of doing this sea sketch in red. It’s much easier to start at something knowing that you’ll probably fail if you set out to fail.
But on second thought the point is doing it as good as I can and taking the risk of failing.

Any way. Last night in the shower I thought of something that is very obvious but for some reason I hadn’t thought about it: I could make a sketch in the colors I’m going to use.
The special part of that is that you usually do a sketch in graphite pencil and then color it in. Often you’ll only decide which colors you’ll use after you’ve made the sketch. The problem with this approach is that the black graphite is always visible and I don’t like that.

With this drawing I have to color round a white open space where the foam is supposed to be. So starting with a sketch isn’t a bad idea.
The difficult bit for me is that this reminds me of the tracing of photographic memories that I haven’t been able to do until now. What I did this time wasn’t really tracing but I’m getting there.

Sea 3

Looking around the internet for guidance I came across a drawing that is much better then anything I can make right now. But it does give me the feeling that I’m on the right track.

Shower of stars3
This drawing is by Shere Chamness

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