Aphantasia - Tumblr Posts
Idk who needs to hear it but if you have Aphantasia you can absolutely do character art. Don't let it discourage you. Especially since a good portion of art advice won't fit you and will leave you feeling like its your fault.
I have Aphantasia, its super hard to put characters in poses from my mind. I cannot draw cartoons or exaggeration well, its very hard because I do not see the drawing until it is on the page. I use so many construction lines and blocks of color and always need a reference to base my character poses on. I cannot imagine things artistically before they're on the page and it is super frustrating.
You can still do it with Aphantasia though, it just takes practice. So many of your sketches without references are going to look awful despite you knowing the proper proportions of the human body, it doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing.
It just means you need to give yourself extra help. You're not lesser or bad for not being able to draw on a whim or not having these intricate details. Trust me, I've struggled with thinking that.
The best thing you can do to work with it is collect so many references, use a pose software (like magic poser), and absolutely screenshot and collect art that has a creative element you struggle with. (For me its color, backgrounds, and splash text.) Also, maybe practice abstract art. You have a brain unhindered by a visual expectation, I recommend it. For me I like to do surrealist/abstract pictures of water and space. It takes technical skill but everyday is a good day to start practicing.
Having Aphantasia is a neutral thing. It's not bad or good, it's just there. That bad part is not acknowledging that you work differently so you need to adapt differently.
just curious : )
pls reply how much you feel your visualization impacts you, i am very interested to hear from 4s and 5s
(im a 2 or 3 btw not sure)
aphantasia - the inability to form mental images of objects that are not present. the inability to 'picture' something in your mind's eye.
feel free to elaborate in the tags too btw! anyways, time to ramble
earlier this year i found out that other people weren't just speaking "metaphorically" when they say they can imagine/visualize something when they close their eyes. they can actually 'see' what they're thinking of!
you know that apple thing? they can actually see the apple and i can't, it's just black in my noggin, and that rocked my world! whenever i closed my eyes and imagined something, there's no image forming, i just know that i'm thinking of something.
and i think it's kind of interesting esp since i'm a visual artist, i draw and all that. and i can't see what i want to draw, i just know where i want to put the lines, what the colors i want are, and all that stuff. so i wondered how other artists tackled having aphantasia and drawing if they have it
Mom appreciation post
So my mother has recently (these past few years) started reading after learning that
apparently people are out here making up their own images in their brains and it’s not just some cartoon bs
she can sort of recall images so she uses that info to assign actors and whonot to characters in her books
And it’s just so funny to me that my mom went from “I don’t understand how you read so much” to “omg I can’t find any books I like” and “I’ve read three 200+ page books in the last 24 hours and just found out there’s a 4th book in the series and I’m pissed”
I honestly love it, it’s so adorable to watch my mom be able to appreciate books in a way she couldn’t growing up. Now I get to just walk outside and go “hey mom did you finish that book you were mad at?” And the I get her cliff notes ADD version of the book and have a conversation with her about it and I love it.
What would a telepath get when trying to read the mind of someone who has 0 internal dialogue.
Like, head full of thoughts, but no voice?
Or images??? What about those people with no internal dialogue AND aphantasia?
it’s just me and my secret, carefully organized pinterest board of my hyper-fixations from over the years, against the world.
”Why are your descriptions so vivid?” Because I have aphantasia. No seriously, up until I was 20, I didn’t know that it isn’t normal to not be able to visualise things in your mind. The reason I go out of my way to make my descriptions as vivid as possible is because I can’t see shit in my mind, and I always assumed that other people couldn’t either
Imagine having a pretty decent story idea but not having the actual creativity to write it.
Ha ha, couldn’t be me.
Okay so wait a minute, with this aphantasia thing. I don’t think I have aphantasia because I process audio fine, in fact I prefer not to have any visual, but apparently there is some relationship between it and ADHD. I’m not trying to be confrontational in any of this but I’m bewildered by the idea of mentally picturing things you listen to or read about. It’s bothered me since I posted the ask.
I can picture things in my head, if I stop and make a conscious decision to build them, but if I’m doing that I can’t do anything else – I can’t listen to a podcast and picture it in my head and also do something with my hands. Come to think of it I probably couldn’t even keep up with the podcast if I was trying to picture it in my head, I’d struggle to choose which things to imagine and by the time I got them built they’d have moved on. It never feels like a very useful thing to do, because I’ve already got the words, that’s the important part, and I’d rather be doing stuff. I just assumed that most of the time when people talk about picturing stuff they’re either doing it very deliberately, like a guided meditation, or they’re being poetic, like people don’t actually do that, we just say we do as a way of describing someone thinking about something.
So, I’m listening to a podcast in which the host reads a letter from Napoleon Bonaparte to his brother, discussing his brother’s relationship with his wife (“she’s still young, let her dance if she wants, don’t lock her up with the kids all day.”) If you see images in your head when you hear audio, are you seeing the host reading off a sheet of paper, or Napoleon writing the letter, or Napoleon talking to his brother, or are you seeing Napoleon’s brother being mean to his wife? If you don’t know what any of these people look like, do you just make something up?
Jesus Christ, when people read erotica do they picture the sex happening? What’s that like? You just get porn in your head involuntarily? I mean, not involuntarily, you’re choosing to read the text, but it just shows up when you do?
Writers, when you write do you get mental images as you go? I often will pause in writing to build a mental image in my head and then describe it but as soon as I do it disappears, and it’s mostly a waste of time so I really only do that when I need to describe a space that people are moving around in (like the fishing lodge with the kitchen bar dividing the living room and kitchen, I do have several mental “camera snaps” of that setup, but I don’t picture it when I’m writing about it).
This might explain why I always get yelled at for not describing people in my books. It’s simply unimportant to me 99% of the time and awkward to try and insert it the other 1%. I don’t picture people in my head when I read – they’re a personality, a collection of characteristics. My characters don’t have faces to me, like how people in dreams don’t have faces, you just know who they are. I describe them but that’s just words I really like, or I pick out people who already exist and just say “oh they look like that”. Obviously when someone wants a description I do my best to supply it, but in prose it’s just not important.
This is genuinely blowing my mind. This is why people always want descriptions of things! They get to see the descriptions! Reading a book must be like going to an art gallery anytime you want without moving. Is that what it’s like? Is this super common, like am I the weird one, or is this just like for people with super vivid imaginations?
Quick thought: Can Anya only read inner monologues? Cause if so she's gonna have a real hard time with the non monologue having population
New Podcast Intro: I like to ask something of you: I like you to close your eyes.
Intro: Close your eyes and picture a pirate.
Me, with aphantasia: Sure.
Intro: What is it that you see?
Me: What do you think.
Intro: Now, I can make some assumptions-
Me: NOTHING! I SEE NOTHING.
I have aphantasia, so this has kinda accidently ended up my headcannon for most whumpees because I forget other people can actually picture stuff!
Whumpee with aphantasia.
A whumpee who want to just keep going for their loved ones, but can’t see them even in their minds.
They only have their memories, and have to hope that it’s enough
(Aphantasia is a condition where one cannot picture things with their mind’s eye)
Ooo, that’s a good concept!
My Teacher: Close your eyes and just imagine a beautiful landscape
Me with aphantasia: 👁👄👁
You guys are seeing pictures in your head???
Why does my brain have to wake me up longing for a world of considerably more interesting heft and structure than any video game ever, but I can’t even “imagine” a sunrise in my head at will?
I don’t particularly like being skill issued every single day.
Fuck aphantasia 0/10 would definitely not recommend
au where jon is still serving the eye, but he has aphantasia, and is unable to visualize things at all.
imagine an apple? yeah the word apple sure is spinning around in there!!!