An Artist with Aphantasia

 

Have you ever heard of aphantasia? I only recently discovered what aphantasia is and that I have it. It blew my mind!

Let me rewind…

As an artist, I always struggled with drawing what I imagined or thought I pictured in my mind. I would read a book, fall in love with the story and get inspired to draw, but when I got my art supplies, I found it difficult to translate it to paper. I would erase and erase and then look in books and on the internet to figure out how a body sits or how fabric drapes. I decided this inability to capture my imagination was due to my lack of skill.

So I practiced and practiced some more and I improved. After all, drawing and painting, like anything else in life, are skills that can grow the more study and energy we devote to them. However, I still rely very much so on reference images. I figured this is totally normal because how can we memorize everything in perfect detail?

Then my friend walked me through an exercise:

Close your eyes. Imagine an apple. A red apple, shiny and delicious. Imagine it has a stem, maybe even a leaf? Can you rotate the apple? Is it floating in space? Can you place it on a table? Can you move the apple? Now change its colour. It’s a green apple…

Guess what? I couldn’t see the apple. Nothing. Just black space; the back of my eyelids…

My mind’s eye is blind.

And that’s when I discovered that I have aphantasia, a condition where one does not have a functioning mind’s eye and is unable to call up mental images.

Till now I just assumed everyone was the same and that phrases like, “fading memories” or “let me paint you a picture” are just expressions. I realize that my imagination is good but I can’t turn my thoughts into actual mental images. Going to my “happy place” in my mind doesn’t conjure up pictures in my head but rather a narration. When I read books and the scenery is described, I can imagine what it looks like by recalling experiences or photos, but I can’t actually “see” these images.

What does that mean as an artist? I don’t think it has held me back but perhaps now, I understand why maybe I’ve had to work harder and practice a lot. I need to scribble out ideas and rely on reference images and really tease out the drawing. I rely a lot on muscle memory and connections I’ve made through learning. Perhaps when I was younger it was a lack of skill but maybe, it was a little bit of this too.

I take comfort knowing that one of the most renowned animators, Glen Keane (he created Ariel from The Little Mermaid - can you see her in your mind??), also has aphantasia. It most certainly has not held him back!

Guess I’ll just keep on taking lots of pictures and continue to scribble ideas!

Here are some super interesting articles about it:

 
Thoughts, Creative FuelInes de Sequeraaphantasia, meditate on this, mindset