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Knowledge versus skills (Sketch: Tree)

by Henk ter Heide on Monday September 24, 2007

Or why having a photographic memory seems to be a disadvantage when you’re learning how to draw.

Over the last two years I’ve learned how to play poker. I won’t say that I’m the worlds best poker player but I can hold my own in free games.

Two years ago I saw something about poker sites on the telly. I’ve always been very bad in card game. But I was curious as to how poker would be played on line. I went to have a look and it turned out to be very easy… to join the game.

At first I had no idea of what I was doing. But I only had to push a few buttons and the software took care of the rest.
After a few days I found that I actually won some times. Most of the time I lost but sometimes I won.

My interest was peeked and I used the information on the poker site to find out what the rules of the game where. What card combinations would give me a fair change of winning and which card combinations always lost. After that I won some more. Or maybe I should say I lost less.

Over the last year my skills improved and my winnings improved until they topped off a few months ago.
I could go on improving my skills. But I would have to study and play a lot. I’m choosing to spend more time drawing and blogging.

The point is that I started with no expectations. When I found that this was something that I could do I improved my knowledge.
From having more knowledge and spending a lot of time at it, I gained skills and my game improved.

With drawing it’s a completely different story. Because of my photographic memory I know everything there is to know about drawing. For every picture I want to draw ten or twenty paintings, photographs and drawings pop into my mind before I’ve even sat down.
And since I can see these pictures in my mind I expected that it would be very easy to draw them. It isn’t. I don’t have the skills.

I’m finding that getting skills doesn’t work the same for me as what I see in other people (children).
Children usually start out with a very simple picture and add stuff until it looks like something. Since they don’t have any expectations of the end result anything goes.

I’ve tried that but for some reason it doesn’t work.
Could be because of all the pictures in my mind. Could be that there is some other reason. I’ll just have to figure it out.

For now. Here are the trees I’ve been promising.
They don’t look like the picture in my mind. Which means that I’m not sure whether I should be proud that I’ve put something on paper. Or that I should be disappointed because of the lack of quality of the drawing.

Tree 7

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Cousin Eddy visits the Netherlands (drawing: Neighbors tree)

by Henk ter Heide on Wednesday June 6, 2007

When I was five my cousin Eddy emigrated to Canada.

Twenty five years ago he came back for a visit. I don’t remember very much of that.

Last Saturday my father called to tell me that Eddy would be visiting his sister Ina on Sunday. My father would go there and he asked me whether I liked to join him. I did.

Ina had invited several of her brother friends from the old days and her neighbours. The weather was beautiful so we sat in the garden. She makes a living of being a garden artist so she has a nice, all be it small, garden.

Neighbors tree

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I took the opitionity to observe these neuro typicals. One of my bigger problems in dealing with people is that I never knew what to say to them. So while everyone around me was busy having a conversation, I was watching in silence. But now I know that I have a problem with talking I don’t consider it a problem anymore.

But there is something more going on. It’s not only that I have a problem with talking. It’s also that I wouldn’t know what to say to these people.

My father asked Eddy for how long he would be staying in the Netherlands and when he arrived. Which is a strange question because just last week he talked about that with Ina. So Why would he ask Eddy the same question.

Ina’s neighbor had a few stories about things I don’t remember. Couldn’t be very important.

With some surprise she pointed us to a strange tree in a neighbors garden she thought to be dying. From her kitchen she only could see the leave less top.

Although I liked the visit I concluded that what neuro typicals tell each other, about liking to hear each others voice, is true. Most of the things they talked about weren’t that important. It seemed as though they were just making noise.

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Being autistic (drawing: Looking out of my kitchen window)

by Henk ter Heide on Tuesday June 5, 2007

Bart Westgeest suggested that I should use three colors green for a tree instead of two, four or five as I’ve been trying up till now. He suggest that especially the middle color is important. I’ve used three greens for this pictures although probably not in the way he meant.

It’s now a little over six months ago that I discovered that I’m autistic and I must say that although it took some getting used to it has made my live a lot easier.

Last Wednesday I had a … attack. I don’t know what to call the feeling but it isn’t a nice feeling. Somewhere between feeling trapped and being restless.

Looking out of my kitchen window

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I have had it before. Lots of times. Up till now when I got this feeling I asked my manager for the rest of the day off and usually got it. But since it was a feeling I had lots of times it meant that I never took vacation because I needed my days for the … attack.

This time was different in that I knew that it had something to do with autism. I even had some idea as to what caused the attack: The work I’ve been doing was a little bit to chaotic for me. I liked it and I’ll probably do it again but I must make it clear to my manager that I decide when it is time to quit. This time he forced me to go on when I wanted to stop.

It has been like this for the last few months. Slowly all sorts of strange problems I’ve been having for most of my live are making more sense. For instance I never understood why people didn’t take me serious when I said that I didn’t like some kind of work. Now I know that was because I didn’t formulated it the right way.

For me “I don’t like” means every thing varying from I don’t like being tickled to I don’t like being killed. But Neuro Typical don’t see it like that. They use words that not only tell you what feeling they have but also to what degree they have that feeling. So they will tell you they don’t like some kind of work but do it if they must or they’ll tell you that they hate some kind of work and they won’t do it what ever the consequence.

Off course I always told people that I didn’t like something and that I wouldn’t do it what ever the consequence and people told me that I was being stubborn. I never understood why I was being stubborn while the next person was allow not to do the work.

Always being tench was also one of the strange things. Especially always talking to myself. I always had the feeling that talking to myself had something to do with tension but I never was sure. Nor did I understand what caused the tension.

Now I know. There are several causes but the most important has to do with the way I feel temperature. When I put on a sweater I feel cold shivers going down my back. Literally. My back doesn’t feel warmth. Or rather my back does feel warmth but everything is a little bit colder. Sweaters, showers even a sauna bath feels a little colder on my back.

When I first discovered this, it frightened me. It took a lot of getting used to.

When I go outside in the winter and I feel cold that doesn’t mean that my coat is to thin. It means that my coat is to thick.

But after a few months I’ve gotten used to it. I learning how to interpret the strange feelings I have. I’m learning how to understand them. I’m learning how to deal with them.

Hopefully in a few weeks I will get a large examination and find out what kind of autism I have and learn more about my feelings.

The only problem is the waiting list. I was registered in September 2006 and was told that the waiting period would be about six months. ByOctober I got a letter informing me that the waiting period had gone up to seven months. At the beginning of April I contacted them and was told that my examination would start within six weeks. In May they told me that it would be within three weeks.

I will be calling them again next monday.

But still. Although it’s sometime a frightening experience I am learning about myself.

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Blending colors (Sketch: Sunset 1th sketch)

by Henk ter Heide on Friday May 18, 2007

This was supposed to be “Color tree 5th sketch” because it’s a follow up on something I tried yesterday.

Holding the pencil the way I described yesterday gives much more color but you lose control. Which is fine because it gives the drawing a feel like anything can happen. But it also means that the color doesn’t cover to whole sheet. There is a lot of white visible within the tree. So this time I thought I’d combine the regular way of drawing to cover the sheet with the new way to get the new feel.

Then I came to the background. Yesterday I used one color green for the grass and one color blue for the sky. Which isn’t very interesting to watch.

Today I thought I’d add molehill (which didn’t work very well) and I’d add some more colors and since it’s only the background I didn’t bother with keeping the colors separate.

In doing so I discovered something new. You don’t need a tortillon or a piece of paper to blend colors. It’s also possible to use a pencil in a different color. Although you can’t see it very well in this scan the light green pencil drags the darker green over the paper. It didn’t work as well with the sky. Maybe I didn’t use the right colors.

Sunset 1th sketch

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Which means that my next drawing will be of a sunset with a green field to see how it works out.

(PS A few days ago someone send me a trackback. But being new to WordPress I only recognized it when I saw the email WordPress had send me. Sadly by that time I had deleted the trackback.)

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Different hold (Sketch: Color tree 4th sketch)

by Henk ter Heide on Thursday May 17, 2007

Usually I hold my pencil in the same way as I hold a pen. Between thumb and index finger and resting on my middle finger. That’s the way I’m used to. It’s also a nice way to sketch a picture when you’re not sure what you’re going to draw.

This time I tried something else. With the palm of my hand down I used all my fingers to hold the pencil and my index finger to push the point against the paper. That way you get much thicker lines. Much more color.

Color tree 4th sketch

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In the last picture I used two greens and one brown. In this one I used 9 greens and two browns. Which gives the picture a much nicer spectrum of colors. But I still don’t like the shape. Trees aren’t round.

Instead of using a tortillon to blend the color of the sky and of the ground I used a piece of kitchen paper. The paper picks up a part of the color and then spreads it over the paper. A bit like painting.

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Tree study (Sketch: Color tree 3th sketch)

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

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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.

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Framing (Drawing: Looking down on a river)

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday May 13, 2007

Now I understand how my memory works it is a lot easier to draw plants from memory. I saw these plant driving to my work last week. A dike sloped down to the river “ijsel” and there grew some plants.

Looking down on a river

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Looking at this picture it’s obvious that I have to spent some time thinking about framing. This is a mistake people usually make while there taking there holiday snapshots. Looking down from a hill they see a nice landscape and photograph it. Only to find that the photograph looks like it was taken of a flat field.

Here I make the same mistake. You can’t see that the plants are growing at an angle. It looks like the water is the sky. A bit strange sky but sky non the less.

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Biothoop (Sketch: What can I see)

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday April 15, 2007

A few years back I had a funny idea. I thought that if it’s possible for people with a lot of money to make a closed sphere were people, plants and animals can live for a long periodes of time, it should be possible for me to do that on a much smaller scale. Just a closed pot with a few plants in in.

So I asked a friend for some plant cuttings and put them in a “weckfles“. Gave it some water and put in some plant food and closed the lit.

What can I see

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It worked perfectly. For four years I watched how the plants grew and filled the pots until you could see nothing but stems and leaves. It looked like a kind of wildernis. If there were people living in this pots they would hate there god because they couldn’t get out of there house without bumping in to a plant.

A few weeks back I decided that it was no longer fun to watch since the pots were so filled with plant that you couldn’t see them grow anymore. So I threw them out. Or actually I threw the plants and the ground out. I kept the pots.

This time I’m going to try to do something bolder. I’m going to plant my own seeds. That’s bold because I don’t have green thumbs. Plants tend to die when they are placed in my care. Usually I forget to give them water. (Which is why I liked the idea of a biotope.)

But I think I’ve got it covered. I think I know why it is so difficult for me to start things and how to deal with that.

This morning I filled the pots with new ground. I’ve bought some seeds in a plant store and I’m also using some seeds I found in a orange. I don’t know whether it will work but I’ll keep you posted.

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Drawings versus pictures (Drawing: Three tree drawings)

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday February 25, 2007

This week there was no course since the teacher had some other engagement. So I made some drawings on my own.

There is something wrong with the first drawing but it took me forever to figure it out.

Christmas tree with lighting mistake

The light is supposed to come from above the tree. So if each branch cast a shade on lower branch the dark shade should be above the lighter shade and not below.

The second drawing is save. I know it doesn’t look like a tree but it isn’t supposed to look like a tree.

Is it a tree

By the time I came around to drawing the real tree it hit me. It’s a drawing not a picture. It’s supposed to look like a drawing not like a picture. I have to start out with imagining how the picture will look as a drawing.

Tree grows

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Dare to draw (Drawing: Two cactus drawings)

by Henk ter Heide on Sunday February 11, 2007

We had to bring a picture of some landscape. I found one on somewhere on internet.

I had a hard time drawing it. I just didn’t dare to start. So I began with a scetch of the layout of the plants and rocks and by the time the two hours where gone I had hardly drawn anything.

Back at home I started with the drawing of the solitary cactus with shade. That looked nice. Not perfect but…

Cactus with shade

After that I tried copying the picture. It was painful and frightning but according to the teacher and the other students it’s quit a good resemblance.

Only problem with it is that the background isn’t dark enough so the scan didn’t work real good. I have to work on that one.

Cactus with rock

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