structure

This was a very nice drawing to do.

Although I like to draw, it always took a large amount of effort to get myself to sit down and work on a drawing.
I always suspected that it had something to do with the autistic need for structure. But I couldn’t find a way.
On week days I could draw in the evening. But if I have a holiday I would like to draw in the morning. In the weekend I do my shopping in the morning so then I would like to draw in the afternoon.
So no structure what so ever.

After I had figured out what it is that I like about drawing I was planning to take some time out to find the best way to get some structure to drawing. But it wasn’t necessary.
Turns out that not knowing what I felt was the reason why drawing took so much effort.

This drawing almost drew it self.
Which is one reason why this was a very nice drawing to do.

Gaining heart

The other reason is a small victory.

When I first started drawing I thought that having a photographic memory would mean that I would be able to project an image on the paper (so to speak) and then trace it.
But I couldn’t.
I found I couldn’t keep up my concentration long enough. The image would get vague and disappear long before I finished drawing.

But while drawing circles in my last drawing I discovered that I could imagine how a circle looked and then almost draw it.

With this drawing I explored the technique.
I can put a dot on the paper for the center. Then I can draw a line to use as the radius. Then I can imagine that the line is a kind of cord that is attached to the point of the pencil. And draw the circle.

I checked these circles using coins and found that they are five of the best freehand circles I’ve ever done.
With the sixth I lost my concentration.
But it’s a start. A promising start.

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Fearing colors

Who is afraid of yellow red and blue (picture) is a famous painting by Barnett Newman I never quit understood. How could anybody be afraid of colors?

After drawing Tentacles I wanted to draw some more pictures were I could play with colors. A drawing of a fire seemed the logical next step.

But instead of starting with a drawing I started pacing my room. For some reason I couldn’t sit down and make this drawing.

Had this been a few months ago I’d probably would have stopped drawing all together. I would have concluded that some unknown force didn’t want me to draw. So why try.
But in the last few months I’ve learned that people with autism have feelings to. They just have great difficulty in recognizing them. I tend to have very strong physical reactions to feelings but it can take a few hours to a week before I recognize the feeling.

So instead of stopping all together I decided that there probably was something very frightening about this picture, that I couldn’t draw it. But it should be possible to draw something that resembled a fire but wouldn’t be frightening to me.
I started out with this sketch:

Who’s afraid of yellow, orange (and blue) 1st sketch

This picture looks nothing like a fire it just uses the colors.
But after drawing this much I found that it still was to frightening. So thinking that my fear might be caused by the colors I tried this drawing:

Who’s afraid of yellow, orange (and blue) 2th sketch

But again it got very frightening and I tried something else:

Who’s afraid of yellow, orange (and blue) 3th sketch

Here I’m almost drawing plants. What wasn’t what I had in mind.

Who’s afraid of yellow, orange (and blue) 5th sketch

With the 4th and 5th sketch I tried to get away from the plant shapes and back to the yellow and orange colors but I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with this drawing and why it coursed such violent emotions in me.
After using a whole day to draw five sketches I went to sleep.

Problems at work

The next day my employer, the sheltered workplace Promen (Dutch), tried to blindside me to force me to accept a move to one of their least structured departments.
For some reason I can’t phantom Promen seems to think that doing stupid mind numbing work makes a department structured when in actual fact it’s the manager that structures a department.
“Structured” means either that it’s very easy to predict how a day will run or that you have a great deal of control over the way your day plays out.
The problems with this manager is that he has a low self esteem which results in his ongoing attempts to prove who’s boss. He also has much trouble admitting mistakes.
I’ve known him to order people to preform tasks they weren’t qualified to do and then getting angry when they protested. (“WHEN I TELL YOU TO DO SOMETHING I EXPECT YOU TO DO IT!!!!”). I get very strong, unrecognized, feelings when I’m placed in that kind of a situation.
I’ve also known him to punish people for doing what he told them to do instead of what he meant.
If this wasn’t enough he also has a great mistrust of people. In his mind there’re always out to fool him. Once I witnessed how he refused a mentally impaired colleague sick leave stating that since he didn’t experience monthly pains she couldn’t either.
There’s no way I’m ever going to work at his department.
Luckily I recognized in time what was going on and I could get some help, but still I was very frightened for several days and couldn’t work on this drawing.

Where is the structure

About a week after I started I felt that I should give this drawing another try.
Almost at ones I realized that it wasn’t the colors that frightened me. It was the fact that I wanted to make a drawing that wouldn’t have any structure what so ever. Just putting some yellow and orange colors on the paper and see where it leads.
After I realized that it still took me several hours to finish this drawing.
I do like the result.

Who’s afraid of yellow, red (and blue)

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Link

I still don’t know why Barnett Newman was afraid of yellow, red and blue. If you want to know more about this abstract painter this Wikipadia article is a nice place to start. I couldn’t find a site where you can see his work but by using this Google page you’ll find pictures of a lot of his paintings.