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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by Henk ter Heide on Monday January 14, 2008
Experimenting with box perspective.
After doing my last study of perspective in a box I felt that something was wrong with the lid. But I couldn’t see what I was doing wrong.
I decided that if I really wanted to know in what direction I should draw the ribs of the lid of a box I should take a better look at a box.
After making a box with lid I found that none of my tables was high enough so I had to lay down on the floor to see the box from below.
But it was a fruitful experience. It turns out that I made a mistake in my last drawing.
After some experimenting with a tilted piece of paper I thought that the vanishing point of the ribs of the lid should be in the lower left corner. But that was wrong.
The vanishing point should be in the upper right corner far beyond the frame of the paper.
Practicing perspective box with lid 2
Obvious there are a few things wrong with this box.
For one thing I haven’t put the vanishing point high enough. The ribs of the lid should look as though they were almost parallel.
There’s also something wrong with the box it self. It’s strange the the right side of the box should look as though it has a different shape then the right side.
It took me a while to realize that this is the result of the strange view point.
My field of vision is much wider then that of most people, about 180 degrees instead of 45 or 90 degrees(?). (This is a symptom of autism.)
I never realized this until I did my drawing course early last year and the teacher told us that horizons are supposed to run horizontal. The horizon I see tends to curl upward at the left and right end.
For the pictures I see in my mind I’m finding that I often see them from strange view points which sometime causes strange perspective.
Practicing perspective box with lid 3
Here’s looking down on the box.
I changed the position of the vanishing point of the ribs of the lid. This time the vanishing point not only fell beyond the frame of the picture but even beyond my table. But it’s still to close.
I also realized that the line connecting the two ribs should have the right vanishing point.
The picture still looks a bit off but it’s better then the first one.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 22, 2007
Painting with toilet paper
A few months ago I made a beautiful drawing in which I used a blending technique that seemed almost like painting.
Usually you draw some color on your sheet and rub it either with a tortillon or a piece of toilet paper. This time however I drew the color on a seperate piece of paper and pulled onto my drawing.
Gray on gray
In an attempt to get the shapes I see in the clouds above my head I wanted to try this technique. But a few minutes after starting with the clouds I realized that it wouldn’t work.
With Nova I used a bright yellow color as foreground and the white of the paper as background. But here I wanted to use gray both as foreground and background. You just wouldn’t see it.
Argh! Those clouds are turning out to be a whole of a lot more difficult to draw then I thought.
Clouds 5th sketch
Featured on See me draw
Ian Francis does very expressive paintings of people.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday June 27, 2007
Thinking in pictures
One of the strange things of discovering that you have autism is that you get to meet a lot of experts who tell you that you have all kind of problems you never knew you had. Among other I’ve been told that I’ve problems concentrating. When I’m doing something it could very well happen that the softest of sounds would disturb me.
This is strange because it’s not really a problem I’ve been experiencing. On the contrary. People have been telling me for years that I should pay more attention to what happens around me. When I’m doing something I seem to shut out the rest of the world and a war could break out without me noticing it.
An other problem I’m supposed to have is a problem with seeing the generality. Apparently people with autism are very good at noticing details but they tend to miss the big picture.
This was also a problem were I at first thought that the experts were wrong. I’ve always had the feeling that I’m as good as seeing the big picture as anyone. But after trying to draw the picture in my mind I’ve found that my ideas about how I see the world were completely off.
I’m finding that I don’t see one world. I see something of a collection of little picture that are patched together to form a big picture of the world.
Only thing is that the collection isn’t complete. Of some parts of the world I’ve have hundreds of pictures in my mind and other parts are completely blank.
How to discribe this
I’ve actually read about this phenomenon before I knew that I had autism and I didn’t understand it. I couldn’t imagine the kind of vision of the world people who think in picture would have. Now I’ve found that I’m one of those people who think in pictures I’m starting to understand why description I’ve read where so incomprehensible. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time but I too have found that there is no good way to explain the way I see the world.
To really explain it you should make some kind of movie. But since nobody understands what it is we’re talking about nobody will ever make that movie.
Or will they…
It turns out that Microsoft has been working on a program, Photosynth, that is used to link large amounts of pictures. The program looks for details in the pictures. By linking pictures at overlapping details you get a kind of movie of a building or landscape.
My world
Microsoft has a working demo (IE only) were you can see a building composed of hundreds of pictures.
As you move around this building you’ll get to see the world as I see it.
- Lots of pictures.
- Perspective changes from picture to pictures.
- There are hardly any pictures that give you an over view.
- There are a lot of pictures with details of the building.
- You get a real live feeling of the geometry the building.
Color fountain
Color fountain 1st sketch
This is horrible.
I don’t understand why there is so much brown in this drawing. This was not what I had in mind.
I’ll have to try to make this drawing some other way.
Link
Do you like elephants? At this site you’ll find drawings of elephants and other zoo animals.
To my regular readers
I’m running into the problem that I can’t maintain a frequence of 5 drawings a week. I’m slowly getting to the point were I want to do more complicated projects and it is very hard to do those if you’re struggling to meet a deadline. To give myself a little breathing room I’ve build a little stock of drawings.
I can produce about three drawings in a week so I’ve dropped the posts frequence.
(I’ve just finished a very nice drawing called “Who’s afraid of yellow, red (and blue)” that you’ll get to see in one and a half week.)
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by Henk ter Heide on Saturday April 7, 2007
The last face had several things wrong. The eyes where to big. Nobody looks that way except when he’s surprised. The mouth was to big and there was something wrong with the nose. And last but not least it was just floating in the air.
After thinking some more about it I produced this face. This one is better, but I’m still not satisfied.
Crooked
You can’t see it in this scan but the skin color is off. The face is a soft pinkies color. There also seems to be something wrong with the nose and the chin.
I must think some more.
On the upsite I’m beginning to have a better understanding of my memory.
Turns out that I only have a vague impression of the shape of a face. By looking at the shades I get a better sence of the wrinkles around peoples eyes and nose. Very nice.
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by Henk ter Heide on Thursday April 5, 2007
One blue
When painting you can paint one color and place an other color on top. Since you can make your paint a bit thicker you never realy see the under color but it does change the feel.
But it’s clear that that technique doesn’t work when drawing with pencil. Even if I try to put more green on the paper you would always see that there is an other color beneath and it changes the green.
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