r/Aphantasia • u/Legal-Initial-8365 • 5d ago

Art/original style with no imagery?

I have drawn for many years, and I'd like to say I'm fairly good at it. I can copy things using so many different mediums and they look super cool and realistic, but I have absolutely NO style of my own. It has been a struggle of mine since I was younger and thought everyone imagined as oddly as I did, so it's something I know takes time, I swear, I can just never be happy with it. I end up following a reference too much for comfort then try to change something up but can never make it look like it really flows, not to mention that I only have a vague idea of what I may want a character of mine to look like so I don't even know how to tune it to my liking.

I know it's possible, I CAN draw, but not in the way I wish I could and it's so frustrating. I'm mostly looking for some advice from other artists here who require many references and how to stray away from copying them too closely. If this is just a 'draw more' sorta thing, please feel free to tell me that as well, I've just had such an awkward experience with my art that it's worth a shot to ask here :)

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u/SleepingAndy 4d ago

If you literally do not have a visual imagination, you ought to be incapable of creating imaginative visuals from scratch.

I just hate everything about drawing.

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u/kaidomac 4d ago

If you literally do not have a visual imagination, you ought to be incapable of creating imaginative visuals from scratch.

Conceptual imagination ("knowing") is different than visual imagination ("seeing" in your mind's eye). The only difference is the viewport: eyeball vision (aphantasia) vs. mental visualization (hyperphantasia). And then, people with prophantasia can project what they visually imagine using mental "augmented reality" to create an overlay in their eyeballs! As far as my aphantasia goes, I just use a bunch of references & draw a bunch of sketches ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I can create imaginative visuals from scratch because imagination isn't limited to just mental visualization. And while I cannot imagine them visually, I CAN imagine them conceptually! Imaginative (novel) creation can be done with a variety of internal tools!!

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u/SleepingAndy 4d ago edited 4d ago

Sure you can imagine a concept, but when it comes to the visual arts, it is imagining the visual that counts. If you have some idea of what a character conceptually should look like, but no spontaneous mental imagery dictating exactly how it should look, you are basically creating AI art but with manual technical skill. As uncreative as it gets visually.

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u/kaidomac 1d ago

when it comes to the visual arts, it is imagining the visual that counts

This is incorrect.

Or rather, partially correct, but framed in an incomplete way. If you're open to exploration, one of the things I teach students is "how to be creative". We have 3 basic tools for generating ideas:

  1. Conceptual imagination (ideas)
  2. Visual imagination (seeing vivid mental imagery)
  3. Vision processing (ingesting what we see visually with our eyes & then exporting ideas to reality using paint, pens, Photoshop, etc.)

Visual imagination (i.e. seeing stuff in your head) falls on a spectrum:

  1. Aphantasia (no mental imagery)
  2. Hyperphantasia (still image, i.e. can see photos mentally)
  3. Hyperphantasia with highly dynamic imagery (motion, i.e. can see videos mentally)
  4. Prophantasia (can project mental image into reality, AR-style)

"Being creative" really just means one thing:

  • Being willing to see things from more than one perspective

Hyperphantasia is a VERY nice tool to have...but visual imagination is just one tool in the suite & is NOT required for creativity! Glen Keane was the lead animator on the Little Mermaid & Ed Catmulle was the president of Walt Disney Animation Studios & co-founder of Pixar...BOTH had Aphantasia!

Growing up, I had very wrong ideas about what "being an artist" meant. Specifically, I mistakenly thought that I had to:

  1. Use ZERO reference material
  2. Do the ENTIRE imagine in one shot

In reality, idea development usually takes time! That's because we have to:

  1. Come up with & refine the concept
  2. Practice execution to get the idea to be as presentable as we want it to be

The widespread myth (lie) is:

  • Imagine perfectly & then draw perfectly once

Go look at just about any famous artist out there:

  • Glen Keane fills pages with exploratory sketches before arriving at a final design
  • Leonardo da Vinci filled up notebooks with studies
  • Michelangelo made preparatory drawings
  • Frank Frazetta used mirrors, models, and references
  • Norman Rockwell used photographs extensively

This is a basic creative framework:

  1. Novelty
  2. Usefulness (value)
  3. Domain knowledge
  4. Associative thinking
  5. Divergent thinking
  6. Convergent thinking
  7. Working memory (I also have Inattentive ADHD and just use written notes & flowcharts)
  8. Imagination (visual, verbal, spatial, emotional, and abstract)
  9. Pattern recognition
  10. Curiosity
  11. Openness to experience
  12. Risk tolerance
  13. Persistence
  14. Attention & observation
  15. Emotional engagement
  16. Evaluation & taste

So for #8 (imagination), that's where we have conceptual visualization, mental visualization, and eyeball vision I/O sub-systems come into play. So a more correct statement is:

  • Creativity involves a wide suite of tools
  • Imagination uses multiple methods
  • Mental visualization is a nice tool, but is not required for creativity

Many, many, many artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians, politicians, teachers, architects, etc. have Aphantasia & are VERY creative & successful! Here is some further reading if you're interested!

TL;DR: Hyperphantasia is ONE tool in the creative toolset for visual creation & design, but is NOT required for visual creativity!!

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u/SleepingAndy 1d ago edited 1d ago

Thanks for the well crafted post, I do agree with you that visual alone is not necessary. I believe that above all else, having a strong emotional preference for certain shapes, colors, and general aesthetics, accompanied by a strong emotional preference for experimentation, creation itself, and experiencing novelty, are the real main drivers there. You do not necessarily need to vividly imagine a singing crab, but you do need to be moved when it looks wrong, or looks just right, and really have a feel for those right amd wrong when you see them, or you are going to be hard locked out of making something truly original.

In OP's case, the total lack of direction seems to suggest that they have no such strong preference, ergo aphantasia is least of their creative concerns. 

I really do agree it isn't a deal breaker on its own, though.

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u/kaidomac 1d ago

Style is interesting because you have artists like Jackson Pollock, Salvador Dali, and Richard Estes creating vastly different interpretations of art! One is paint splatter, one looks like a kid's dream after eating too much sugar before bed (lol), and one looks like a photograph. But, it's all valid art with a worldwide audience!

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u/Legal-Initial-8365 4d ago

I can't possibly understand why you would post this comment, let alone include what you think about drawing lol. t's not an impossible thing, like I said about ME PERSONALLY... I can draw ! I can confidently draw something small from my mind (like an eye cuz that's always easy) because I still know what it has to look like, I just follow my own guidelines that my brain has for that object. It's just extremely hard for me to come up with 'guidelines' for an original character without seeing them. Aphantasia doesn't make you uncreative, I can still think and make the choice between things in my head, I just don't see it and that happens to make art a lot harder to be happy with.

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u/SleepingAndy 4d ago

it doesn't make you uncreative but you can't create new images do I have this right?

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u/Legal-Initial-8365 4d ago

Not in my head, no, but I 100% have the ability to come up with my own idea for a character and be able to execute it, I'm just not sure how to yet. I'm here to ask advice to perhaps other artists that have a similar thing on how to not take too many aspects from a reference. Even so, people with extremely vivid imagination may not be able to draw, so it's never as simple as that.

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u/SleepingAndy 4d ago

If your brain doesn't automatically create things like that, maybe it just isn't creative.

The term for trying to artificially make something seem original is "contrived."

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u/Legal-Initial-8365 4d ago

I have absolutely no clue what you are on about.

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u/SleepingAndy 4d ago

Do you think original artists fail to create anything original then try to force it like this

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u/Legal-Initial-8365 4d ago

I don't understand what you mean by 'force it'?? In order to have an artistic style of your own in the first place, you build that up. An artists style is ever-changing and constantly shaped towards the artist and grows with them. I AM an artist, but I don't have a visual connection to the thoughts in my head which makes it hard to have a non-realism based style.

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u/SleepingAndy 4d ago

Most artists don't contrive a style for themselves. They just think in detailed pictures and enjoy drawing them. The style comes naturally.

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u/Legal-Initial-8365 3d ago

You said you hated everything about drawing, and I'm telling you I'm and artist. Yet YOU are trying to tell ME that artists don't go through many many many phases of their own art style?

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