I've often felt disadvantaged as an artist, frequently needing reference material when working. It takes a great deal of practice to make some things stick well enough to just conjure it up in my imagination and draw it. Images are at best vague when I conjure them up in my mind's eye. I ultimately need to put line to paper in order to see how accurately I recall the proportions of things.
It had often impressed me that people can do these things without reference. But trying that for myself just doesn't work and I didn't understand why for a very long time. I didn't know people could actually see it so vividly before drawing and I felt bad for not being able to do that. I've been learning to be more patient with my aphantasia though once I realized that's what I had. And I wasn't the only artist with it. Now I take more time to thoroughly study in addition to using plenty of reference while working, which I highly recommend people do if they have difficulty drawing.
I am still skeptical when somebody says they only draw from their mind though. That feels like a rare thing to me, even amongst artists. Perhaps horses come from experience but what about bicycles? They're common, they're familiar, can you draw that without study or reference?
Despite that, I can still smell the rubber of the tires, see the sunlight casting shadows from the spokes, feel the weird foam handlebars absorbing sweat from the exhilaration of learning how to not fall over, hear the gears turning and the wind rushing, remember the sensation of the pedals bruising my shins and my knees when my feet fell off while the wheels were spinning and the triumph of when the bike was finally centered over its center of balance.
I have the opposite of aphantasia, which is called hyperphantasia. For the majority of my life, I thought that everyone could mentally "see" the same way I could. My mind's eye is not just images, it's a full simulation of my senses and more, that I can manipulate at will. I always felt alienated when I was a child because I'd try communicating on the premise that other people could "see" the way I could, and it seemed like people (both other kids and adults alike) would seemingly give me the cold shoulder or dismiss me. I understand now that they weren't trying to, they simply just did not understand the way I was trying to communicate with them because it's drastically different from the way most people experience the world.
You'd think having a powerful mind's eye would help with art, but actually, I've met way more successful artists who have aphantasia than hyperphantasia. In a certain sense, it's more satisfying for a person with hyperphantasia to just be in their head all the time than it is to put things onto the paper because they simply can't ever compare to what we see. I only know one other artist with hyperphantasia, and they struggle with this like I do.
I do draw a lot to build my muscle memory and expand my visual library, but it's less because I find it fulfilling and more because it lets me draw out of my head better. Any time I need to draw something I've drawn before I can just conjure up all the memories of the times I've drawn that thing and reference them. But in terms of actually creating art, it's seldom that I come up with an idea that I think is worth communicating and sharing with others rather than just exploring it in my head, and it was only within the past few years that I started to feel like my art compared at all to what I see in my head.
If anyone is curious, someone on Reddit wrote this test which I'll put below (source) to check if you might have hyperphantasia. I've asked friends and family to try it, and was very surprised to learn none of them had the ability to do everything on the list, because I've always just done them effortlessly for fun ever since I was a little kid. Brains are strange!
Hyperphantasia Test
Visual - Picture an apple on a plate.
- What color is the apple?
- What variety is the apple? (Red Delicious, Granny Smith, Macintosh...)
- Which direction is the light coming from?
- Is there a specular reflection - ie, a shiny spot, as if light is being accurately reflected by the skin of the apple?
- Are there imperfections in the surface? Roughness, subtle variations in the color of the apple?
- Is there reflected illumination from the plate onto the apple?
- Can you easily zoom in on the apple, rotate it, etc? How faithful to an actual 3-D physical object is this in your mind's eye?
Audio - Imagine a song, one with vocals and instruments. Pick one you're familiar with.
- Does it have all the instruments?
- Are the vocals changing pitch, tone, etc?
- Are the vocals actual words, or just sort of gibberish fitting the role? (Try singing along to whatever is going through your head out loud if you're not sure)
- How sharp are the drums?
- Can you change the tempo?
- Can you make the singer sound like they huffed helium?
- Can you swap out instruments? Swap out lyrics wholesale?
- Can you change the key or mode of the song?
Touch/Proprioception - Imagine your hand and an object, any object, in front of you.
- Can you mentally reach out and touch it?
- Does the object feel like it should? Hard/soft, hot/cold, smooth/rough, etc...
- Could you feel your own imagined hand and arm? Were you aware of the physical movements in the same way that you know where your physical arm/hand/fingers are without looking?
- How heavy is the object you imagined? The right weight?
- Can you change that weight?
- Close your eyes (mentally or physically, whatever works) and concentrate on that imagined hand. Start with the thumb. Tap it to your palm. Do the same with your index finger, then your middle, ring, little finger. Any problems?
- Can you keep going? In other words, can you continue to 'tap fingers' with fingers you don't have - imagine that you had extra fingers - despite not having a real-life analogue to compare to?
- Can you go a step further, and imagine the feel of wholly alien things (bird wings, say) that will require entirely fictitious input?
Smell - Imagine a flower, preferably one with a strong smell
- Can you smell it at all?
- Does it smell strong enough, or just a faint whiff?
- Is the smell accurate - a rose smelling like a rose?
- Can you make it smell like something else - fresh cookies, say?
- Multiple smells at once? Rose, cookies, old stinky socks?
Taste - Seems to be pretty rare, but... imagine a few foods.
- Can you taste them?
- If you imagine something salty - like a pickle or potato chips - and add imaginary salt to it, does it taste saltier?
- Can you distinctly tell apart the taste of distinct items, like, say, two flavors of chips, or two kinds of candy bar, or two different wines?
- Kind of the acid test: if you imagine a few foods and what they would taste like together, can you go in your kitchen, get those foods, eat them together, and have them taste the same? That is, are your imagined tastes demonstrably the same as the real thing to a degree that it would be useful cooking?
I'm very curious to know how other artists experience their "mind's eye", and how it affects your work. And I don't just mean a visual mind's eye, I've heard of people with aphantasia describe a "sensing" mind's eye where they can "feel" but not "see" an object in their mind and I think that's so interesting!
P.S. The bike I drew is based on my memory of the one I learned how to ride on. I can even remember why I learned - it was for a commercial where I'd be an actor riding a bike, but not only did I not know how to ride one, I'd have to be pushed off the bike by another kid and I didn't want to do that. I never ended up going into acting but I did learn how to ride a bike!
(a follow-up post on the power of practice with references and an exercise you can do!)
2022-11-11
having aphantasia myself i feel pretty strongly connected to the idea of drawing being an iterative solution. i'm not very good mind you but my general process when it comes to sketching involves a lot of trying to put down some strokes and build from there. this mind horse started with an oval for the face and the ears and only then did i somewhat start continuing with the angle of the face. the neck followed that, and the body (cropped by the canvas and i didn't want to deal with more leg) required the most messing around to try to find something that i thought worked
i cannot picture anything in my mind, but similarly i can tell if something looks bad so each bit of scribbling or erasing is about making something look less bad. most artists i know have the ability to visualize, some very strongly, so it's often felt like i'm working with a handicap compared to them.
similar to @blep i'm pretty bad at choosing to use references when drawing freely, typically the only reference i'll have up is when drawing friends and i want to see what their character looks like. however, i spend a lot of time doing drawovers or draw-alikes of memes, which i feel helps me build up some understanding of how to draw common elements in them
i've also known some who do not make art who have hyperphantasia who've expressed that they don't want to start making art because their early attempts will fall so far short of what they can see in their minds, and on the whole i think that regardless of ability to visualize there are challenges all across the board, just different ones for different people
nevertheless it's always interesting to learn where other artists fit, what they "see" or what they don't, and to see what works they make because of or in spite of or just along side of that
i may have to try a horse again with reference, or maybe even a bike...
