this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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Have you considered www.OpenClipArt.org ?
XOR, you can simply learn actual-drawing, which isn't difficult, it does require a kind of honesty/patience & the actually right instruction...
The book you'd need is "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, the 4th Definitive Edition", by Betty Edwards.
These drawing-pairs are from her 5-DAYS killer-class.
https://www.drawright.com/before-after
Unless you're autistic, like me, 5 days is possible.
_ /\ _
Can you help me understand what you mean by β Unless you're autistic, like me, 5 days is possibleβ? Are you saying you think you canβt learn to draw in that time frame because of your autism?
not the OP you replied to, but someone else who loves the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain book.
I think 5 days is ambitious. but a lot of what the exercises are doing is training you to see a different way. so it's not impossible.
someone neurodivergent may struggle to get what the exercises are trying to teach or to reach the point they're aiming for, so it might take them longer. those more inclined to pick it up faster probably aren't going to need the exercises in the book; it's already natural to them.
as we grow up, we learn "this is what a tree looks like, this is a dog looks like, this is what a car looks like", etc etc. the way we see a new car then goes through that filter of "this is what a car looks like". those filters are great for quickly identifying things and generally being a human in the world, so you don't get hit by a car while you're still figuring out if it is a car.
but those filters get in the way of drawing accurately. your eyes aren't literally filtering anything; that's all in your brain. so you need to learn to stop that part of your brain when you draw. that's the biggest part of being able to draw decently. the rest is technical skill you get with practice.
I'd still recommend the original OP look for an artist collaborator, since children's books need the illustrations to be as strong as the writing. there's no way to get there in just 5 days.
Someone neurodivergent might also see those things faster.
One possible interpretation is that autistic individuals can sometimes tend to go a bit overboard when finding a new hobby. We will sometimes find a new topic so engaging that we develop a "special interest" in it and spend days/weeks delving into every possible piece of information and niche knowledge available about that topic, considering all the implications and what-ifs and following all the informational leads.
Spending merely the minimum time required (which in this example is apparently 5 days) to get proficient is harder to estimate because an autist may instead need to spend weeks learning everything. Or, they might not.
For me it's the opposite - I want to learn the minimum needed to accomplish something, and being forced to study is very difficult. At least, that's how my brain sees it.
I want to learn, and would be happy to focus on a drawing class, but the neurodivergent part of my brain sees that as torturous. Being forced to do something that I don't want to do, even if it leads to me doing something that I do want to do, is like nails down a blackboard.
Your description of "being forced to do something" sounds like a distinct situation from a special interest. Special interests are driven by the individual themselves, not forced upon them. I wonder if what you're thinking of might be the phenomenon called PDA ("pathological demand avoidance", or more recently rephrased - more accurately IMO - as "persistent demand for autonomy").
Yes, that's why I said it's the opposite ;)
I don't know what it's called, but I know that I really struggle with doing things that I don't want to do.