I'm absolutely curious, have you ever tried to draw something, in any way? When you were a kid or more recent? What did you/could you draw, and where does it seem like the image of the drawing came from?
I'm aphantastic and I'm very good at drawing. I come from a family of academically trained artists and almost ended up becoming one myself, actually.
Drawing from imagination is actually drawing from memory. In my case, even though I'm unable to visualize the object I'm about to draw, I can recall facts about its features, then rely on spatial and analytical thinking to "reason about" their forms, proportions, perspective, light, shade etc. From there, the visualization process happens and gets refined directly on the paper/canvas.
I'm aphantastic and have taught myself to draw fairly well over the past year. In fact, it was only in learning to draw that I learned what aphantasia was. Many lessons described "picturing" something in your mind's eye, and it slowly dawned on me that people actually "see" a picture in their mind -- I had assumed that was just an analogy.
I have tried some exercises that started helping me with mental visualizations. I've seen gotten quite busy with other stuff, but I think that if I had pursued those exercises, it had the potential to help. One exercise is called "image streaming", and although I'm skeptical it helps with general intelligence as some people claim, I have heard some fairly convincing stories of people with aphantasia learning to visualize: http://www.winwenger.com/ebooks/guaran4.htm
Edit: I'm now reading a lot of skeptical takes on the image streaming I describe above. So I'm no longer as optimistic that it would be helpful.
You saying that has flipped me over the edge, I think perhaps I'm somewhat aphantasic too.
I can picture things to some extent, like I can imagine the Mona Lisa, but not really the full image, just more like a sense of the painting, with a myriad of elements of the painting floating like words in a word cloud. I can't see it in the setting of the Louvre really, indeed it's struck me all my mental imagery is basically black, like an edge detect effect - I can imagine a bit of white wall if I try, so perhaps I just need to practice.
I've been painting for some time, but always use imagery to paint from - so many times I've said something like "when you try to think of a rabbit you just can't remember what one looks like" and no one has ever said "can't you just picture it?"; but it strikes me that I can't.
I do have a relatively good ability to make up stories, and have always loved fiction books. My memories aren't really pictorial though; so I guess I can fantasise about being in a situation in the same way as I can recall being in one.
Honestly, it feels like everyone here has aphantasia. Learning about aphantasia some weeks ago made me think I had it, but I honestly think it's just people overestimating how you visualise things in your mind.
People make it sound like they are able to see the same with their eyes closed as they can see with their eyes open. Like, I obviously can't see things as well in my mind as with my real eyes, it's very very "hazy" and I can't really imagine any colours. If I imagine a street right now, not a real one, just try to make up one in my mind, I can kind of feel/sense the outlines of the street and that there are houses around, but I don't actually see anything.
Compared to how some people describe them imagining things in their mind it sounds like I'm severely lacking. But the more I read about this, the more I think people are overestimating what other people see in their mind based on what they write. I think most people that claim to have aphantasia don't, while of course I believe some people really do.
I wasn't always aphantastic. I've already talked about it in another aphantasia thread here on HN, but when I was a child I was actually hyperphantastic: I would spend endless hours playing and directing vividly realistic (albeit silent) movies behind my closed eyelids. Sometimes (not always, but on a particularly good day), I was able to visualize things/creatures with my eyes open and have them interact with the real world.
If I wanted to see a rabbit, I didn't have to consciously recall facts about rabbit anatomy, behaviour and movement patterns like I would today (only to end up with most of them wrong); I just thought: "let there be rabbit" and with no effort at all there it was. Not a rabbit-like creature you would expect from a child's drawing, but an actual, realistic, anatomically correct rabbit hopping about the way rabbits do.
This ability started to gradually disappear around the time I went to school. I remember my frustration when I realized it was getting harder and harder to picture things and the quality of those pictures was getting lower and lower. Eventually I ended up not being able to visualize anything at all.
I've been wondering about this lost childhood superpower of mine for years, way before I even heard the term "aphantasia". When I say I'm aphantastic, I don't compare myself to some idea of how other people's minds work. I compare myself to what my own mind used to be capable of.
'People make it sound like they are able to see the same with their eyes closed as they can see with their eyes open.'
It's a spectrum of vividness. At one extreme, a few per cent of people are classified as aphantasics. At the other extreme, people have a photo realistic mind's eye. Most people sit somewhere inbetween.
I don't think people are necessarily overestimating. Some people just imagine the world very clearly.
I would say that I can see objects in my mind with something close to photo realism. The only time that things become hazy is if I imagine the entire city in which I live. I fly round imagining every street and I can see familiar areas very clearly, but if I stop and examine a street I don't know so well, I can't remember which exact shop is where. But that seems to be a problem of memory, not visualisation.
Yeah they do actually. So I can imagine colours, I was confusing this with memories. I can't really recall colours in memories, unless I specifically made note of it.
I have four coworkers sitting behind me, they've been working around me for the past 5 hours and I can remember roughly how they're clothed, but I can't recall any colours of their clothes.
Drawing from imagination is actually drawing from memory.
It can be, but it isn't really. Most folks can do a landscape or a general person from memories of what earth and people look like, in general. Few people can put their mother in a surrealist scene working from memory, though.
The imaginative part does depend on memory and experience and a good knowledge base. But once you have the idea, you might want to actually do research and work from reference photos.
But you might want to look up what a snake looks like if you want to make it look like a realistic snake. Same for other animals - there is a limit to the details humans tend to remember. You'll remember more if you specialise.
For example, these are mine. The first used numerous reference photos, the second many different koi photos, and the last, an onion.
By "drawing from imagination" I meant drawing without a reference (live or otherwise). You point seems to be: "drawing a very realistic rendition of an object/subject without looking at it is hard". Which is true, but completely orthogonal to my thesis that "drawing from imagination == drawing from memory".
On a tangential note: there's more to creating believable art than accurate re-creation of proportions and details (which is why sites like deviantart are full of completely lifeless art that immediately reads as copies of photos). I'm aphantastic and only a have a very general idea of what a bear looks like, but I'm pretty sure I could draw a move convincing one "from my head" than someone untrained spending all day at the zoo would, because I have a good knowledge (or memory, if you will) of dogs and cats musculoskeletal anatomy I can extrapolate from, and I understand how forms in space and light work.
i’m also (seem apparently to be) aphantastic and draw quite well. it’s just like you say - i “reason” about a remembered shape and light based on facts and physics, not “observation”. i reconstruct how the thing should look based on what i know of it’s geometry, not what it looks like.
interesting to hear someone else say this! i’ve never quite put it into words.
I can, and I draw with more mechanical precision from memory than from sight. I used to be quite good at drawing, but I'm out of practise.
However I know precisely where in relation to each other the window frames in my bedroom are, for example, and how they are shaped, and their colour, and how the panes are separated, and what colour the curtains are and how to reproduce the brushed appearance of the curtain rod, and so on.
I can't see it. But I know exactly where very small details are in relation to each other, so I can reconstruct it piece by piece mentally and put it to paper.
I've mentioned elsewhere that prior to realising most people are literal about seeing things in their mind, I saw myself as a very visual thinker because of that. My spatial recall is well above average.
Imagine a blind person knowing where everything around them in places they are familiar with, I guess, except I have the benefit of being able to learn the spatial relationships through sight, and can also recall e.g colours though I can't see them.
I'm now going through a process of realisation that is explaining my struggles with learning to draw! I sit down pencil ready, but no 'inspiration' comes and I can't think of what to draw.
I now realise I have not actually been able to visualise in my mind's eye (I can see vague shapes/colour but can't bring it into focus) and have to constantly measure or 'guess' at drawings. I've been wondering why many artists seems to be able to draw 'on the fly' or copy things so quickly where it takes me many checks and measures (which is improving in speed over time with practice).
It has left me feeling like I have no creativity or inspiration, but not being able to visualise explains a lot and gives me an avenue of focus to work on.
Can anyone provide good resources for developing visualisation capability? It appears from comments here it might be a condition that is treatable?
I can draw (from sight or imagination) things I can't "see in my mind's eye" just like I often compose music that doesn't play in my head. When drawing, my hands move to create the drawing on the paper that represents the concept I want to show, even though I am not seeing it; I "just know" how to move, even though I can't exactly visualize what to do, like you probably "just know" how to drive even though you couldn't make a full 3D model of your car and the surrounding space.
It actually gives me more reward from drawing than most people, because what I access when drawing (seeing what I imagine with my eye) most people can do without the hard part of learning how to draw. For me drawing is the only way, my sketches are the only existence of some of these things I've thought of.
Well I absolutely cannot draw, but one of the most interesting things about the recent talk about aphantasia is how many creative people are able to execute their craft with relative ease, even without seeing things. Some seem to fallback to tools like constant tracing and erasing to try and build the image in front of them rather than in their heads. That mental visualization does not seem to impede the visual arts is fascinating and inspiring to me.
But no, I can't draw or paint or sculpt anything, but that never bothered me, and has rarely impeded my career in computing.
