by Henk ter Heide on Friday November 11, 2011
I never really considered it a problem, but I have been
wondering the last couple of years. Why is it that I
always have so many problems. And why is it that almost
everybody I know has a lot of problems.
.
..
…
….
…..
Bored….
Bored….?
Bored….!
Bored!
It always takes me a few weeks to figure out what it is
that I’m feeling.
A month ago I realized that I was feeling bored.
I had nothing left to think about.
So my first reaction was to go out and find me some kind
of problem to solve.
But after a few days it dawned on me that this is why I
always have so many problems. I search them out.
I love solving problems. Whether they are personal
problems, work related problems, problems of other
people or just problems I’ve read about.
People who worked at boarding houses group homes
where trained in recognizing problems by the way
people behaved. So it actually happens that I know
what is wrong with people with whom I’ve never talked.
I love figuring out what is wrong and finding a
way to solve the problem.
But there is a down side.
When problems get solved people run of in search
for a more happy life and I go out and find the next
problem. Which leads to a somewhat depressing life style.
On further thought I concluded that it isn’t the finding
of the solution that I love. It’s the thinking process
that precedes it. But this thinking process isn’t exclusive
to solving problems.
So I’m done with solving (other people’s) problems.
Now I’m going to work on my own future.
Let’s see how much fun I can get out of writing
stories for this blog.
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by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday July 6, 2010
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 Tuesday December 9, 2008
Two weeks ago I almost stopped drawing.
After trying to draw trees, landscapes, faces abstracts and using the teachings from two book it was more then clear that I don’t have any drawing talent what so ever.
It was also clear that I had to go through far more trouble then I planned when I started this blog. I just wanted a place were I could show the pictures in my mind in the same way as that other people show there holiday snapshots. They don’t have to take a course to learn to use there camera so why would I get so much trouble trying to do the same.
That was the point I reached two weeks ago when my involuntary holiday started.
Almost at ones I started noticing a few things. The talking in my head stopped without there being a clear reason why. I found that the more I thought in pictures the less the pain bothered me. (Which was a good thing because the pain medication didn’t work very good.) And I noticed that the moment I started thinking in pictures, I again felt the need to draw them.
At this moment I actually feel the need to spent far more time drawing then I’ve ever done.
It took me a while to figure out why.
A few weeks ago I came across an article about a book in which Malcolm Gladwell argues that there isn’t such a thing as talent.
From extensive testing scientists have found that there is a correlation between the number of hours that people have practiced a skill and there level of expertise. Or more specific that anyone can get to be an expert in any skill if he is willing to practice for 10,000 hours.
But that’s also the catch. 10,000 hours is a very large amount of time. To reach it you’d have to practice 7 hours a week for the next 10 years. Or 14 hours a week for the next 5 years.
For me it answers an other question that I’ve been asking myself for years: Why is it that experts always love what they do? Is that because they are very good in what they are doing?
No it isn’t. They are experts because they love what they do.
Start playing the piano when you’re ten. Practice two or three hours a week and by the time you’re 30 you will be very good. But nobody will think of you as talented because you’ve been doing it for 20 years.
But if you’re the kind of guy for whom drawing is the reason to get out of bed in the morning. The kind of guy who fails his tests because he was busy drawing and didn’t pay attention. It could very well be that by the time you drop out of school at your 15th or 16th you are considered a talented painter (or tattoo artist).
But why is it important for me to know this? Well I have two kinds of pictures in my mind.
A large part of the pictures in my mind are based on what I see of the part of the world in which I travel on a daily bases. Those pictures feel like snap shots and I need an easy way to show them.
Although it took a while I have found an easy way to show them by showing work by other artist. The world in which they live doesn’t differ that much from mine that I can’t use them to show my world. (Or actually if they do I don’t show them.)
Then there are the pictures of my own thoughts. Those pictures are far more complicated and I never expected to just show those pictures. It’s clear that showing my thought would be far more complicated.
The more complicated pictures take far more time to draw.
Until now I hardly ever drew them because I felt that they would come in the way of learning the easy tricks needed to show my snap shots. But now I know that isn’t true.
By taking more time to draw more complicated drawing I’m learning far more. Which means that I can draw ever more complicated thought.
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by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday August 13, 2008
Thinking about drawing in my future.
A few weeks ago Steve Pavlina wrote something that was both very obvious and very true, but I had never thought about it.
In essences he wrote that time passes. In ten years, ten years will have passed. Which is obvious.
He continued to say that in ten years you will have gathered ten years of experience. Which is also obvious but I never realized that.
In ten years time I will have gathered ten years of experience in what ever it is that I’m doing.
If I spent the next ten years watching TV and doing video games I will have gathered experience in watching TV and gaming. Which is not something I aspire to.
But if I spend only 15 minutes a day drawing. In ten years I will have done thousands of drawings and gained a lot of experience.
Of course when I read this I was in the middle of my blind spot (maybe if I name it I’ll recognize it next time) and I didn’t know what to draw.
But I figured that even if I where to draw gibberish (521-1) I still would be gaining drawing experience. Or at least I would get into the habit of drawing daily.
Having thought some more about it I now feel that it would be nice to spent somewhere between 15 minutes and one hour a day working either on drawings or writing reviews. Because it usually takes more then one day to finish a drawing and I do like to show what I’m working on I’ll be scanning half drawings.
This also led me to a problem I have been running into before. What to name drawings?
I imagine that famous painters like our Rembrandt didn’t name every sketch and experiment he drew. It is getting rather trying to find an original title for every drawing I do especially if some of my drawings will only be gibberish.
The easiest way around this is to number them. And so I don’t get confused I’ll just use the number WordPress gives an article if you don’t name it.
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