A new Koala Christmas Card

Hello everybody,

 

I just finished a new Koala Christmas Card. I make these cards to help the koalas, since they are threatened with extinction. You can buy my cards in sets around Christmas time, and then I will donate 25% of the profits to the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie, Australia.

 

 

 

A new online Portfolio

Hello everybody,

I have made a new online portfolio on Carbonmade. I didn't ad all my drawings yet, but I will at more soon. Take a look at it here: http://remrov.carbonmade.com/

Koala Art, a project to help koalas

Did you know that koalas are threatened with extinction?
If you look at those cute and fluffy faces you might agree with me that this is such a shame. Wehn I heard about this I decided that I wanted to do something to help. I found a website on the internet of the Koala Hospital in Port Macquarie Australia, and at this hospitla they do wonderful work to help koalas. There are many ways to help this wonderful Koala Hospital, just click here to go to their website and find out what you can do.

When I visited their website I found out that I could help them by adopting a koala. Of course you wont get this koala in your home, but it's more a symbolic way of adoption. But you do get a very nice certificate with your name on it and the name of your adopted koala. I have adotped a koala named Oxley Twinkles for two years in a row now.

But I wanted to do more. I decided to draw koala portraits and koala cards, and to sell these, and then I donate 25% of my profits to this wonderful koala hospital.

If you want to buy a photorealistic hand drawn koala portrait from me, or a nice koala Christmas card (other kinds of card will be coming soon too), then let me know.

You can find more information about my Koala Art on my website Remrov's Artwork.

One of my hand drawn koala portraits. Koala Oxley Twinkles

A poem about my autism

This is a poem I wrote years ago. I tried to express what it feels like to have autism.

My blanket

a safe warm blanket
growing around me
to keep me secure
a thick warm blanket
built with my mind

a safe warm blanket
growing around me
to protect me from the unknown
but to isolate me from what's familiar
drifting me further and further away

a thick dark blanket
growing thicker and getting darker
unable to see through
unable to get through
can you help me lose my fear
and make my blanket disappear

Autistic and perfectionistic

My whole life I've been an extreme perfectionist. This can be a good thing but it can also be very frustrating. When I was in school for example and we had to study for a test, I always made a review of the pages in the book we had to study. This is actually a really good thing to do before a test. An advice for other students, when you write a review of what the book says you will remember it a lot better and faster. But in my case, I was never satisfied with my review, and the way I wrote it down. I always wanted to do it shorter and cleaner and less 'chaotic'. So even before I wrote about 6 sentences I already crumbled up the piece of paper and started all over again. The whole floor was already covered in crumbled pieces of paper after half an hour. Of course this always took a lot of time. The same thing happened with my notebooks in school. We always had to keep a journal with biology, and I always kept it extremely clean and perfect, until somebody accidently threw water over it. I found this very difficult to cope with.

It always find it very difficult to start with something. For example, I always love to write and buy nice journals for my writings. But then my journal stays empty and I don't do anything with it because I'm too affraid to mess it up. I still have a chemistry set somehwere which I have never ever used because I wanted to keep it perfect. I knew that if I would use the chemicals in that set that I would run out of it, so I just didn't touch it.

Of course I'm trying to get better with all of this, and I think I am if you compare it with years ago. But when I do write in a nice journal I always do it with a pencil first and when I'm satisfied I use my pen. And then I'm not talking yet about how long it takes me to find the right pen for the kind of paper in this journal. But at least this is better than a totally empty journal isn't it?

A visual aid for my last Autistic Blurb

I was just thinking--in the past I have made a drawing that really visualizes what goes on in my autistic brain. It goes quite well with what I wrote in my last Autistic blurb. The title is in Dutch and it means: Information Processing Company Remrov. It shows a full blown sensory overload.

A new portrait

Down here you can see my latest portrait. I've made it for somebody who's father died a long time ago. His father was a fisherman and in the background you can see his ship. You can always contact me when you want a portrait of a loved one yourself.

Autistic Blurb

Most of the blurbs that I posted are about my artwork but since my blog is called. Remrov's Autistic Artblurbs I will also post blurbs about my autism every now and then. Autism is what I have been born with and even though I have learned a lot and things have become easier since when I was little, my autism will always be there and I’m quite aware of it also.

A few weeks ago I was at the jazz festival here in Montreal. I was looking forward to go there because it's cool. There's nice music, the weather is nice and people are in a good mood. Sometimes when I'm looking foreward to something I even forget my autism but it will always hit me right in the face when we arrive where we are going.

It was extremely crowdy which is always difficult for me. Some people think that autistics are shut off from everything but actually it's the exact opposite, everything comes in. For example when I'm sitting in a classroom I don't just hear the teacher talking but also students wispering in the back of the classroom, the teacher talking in the classroom next to ours, cars outside, student on the schoolyard, bikers, a dog barking, somebody sweeping his sidewalk. I hear everything, and everything comes in just as loud as everything else, and in this case it's extremely difficult to filter the teacher's voice out of all those other noises. So you might be able to imagine that a visit to the jazzfestival is not as fun and relaxing for an autistic person at all. Besides the extremely loud music which is even painful for my ears, I hear all the people talking. lauging, singing, I hear their footsteps, I hear the water splashing of the fountains, I hear kids laughing and shouting, I hear the wind, and these are just the sounds. There’s many other kind of information that comes in also, like the sight of all these people and the musicians. Every tiny detail comes in. All these impressions together make me so tired that I can’t stay there for a long time. And actually, that quite hurts. Everybody is having fun, and I’m just walking around so tensed that it’s extremely difficult to enjoy it. In situations like this I really notice that I’m different.

For more information about my autism, you can go to my website Remrov's Autism