Uncomfortable

2022-12-28 17:18

So I've got good news, bad news, bad news again, and finally some good news to round it off.

First, the initial good news: this is not a problem that is unique to you, and you are not in any way uniquely flawed (at least not in a manner that is holding you back from drawing from your imagination). That is to say, when you worry that "this isn't for me", that isn't the case.

Second, the bad news: The way in which you've practiced thus far has been tailored specifically towards reproducing things (I'm guessing photos) from observation. While a lot of those skills are universal - you've no doubt developed strong observational skills, which are extremely important no matter what it is you're drawing - one major skill that plays an incredibly important role in drawing from one's imagination is spatial reasoning. Specifically, the ability to take a complex object, whether from life or from a reference photo, break it down into simpler forms, and then build up those simple forms on the page with a focus on how they all relate to one another in 3D space. This allows us to take our first step towards drawing from our imagination - making adjustments to what our reference actually gives us, as we translate it into our own drawing. Whether it's a matter of rotating a given form a little bit to expose one side more than the other, or to change how a hand is gripping an object, etc.

In effect, there's this whole area of study that you appear not to have had a chance to explore yet. As it stands, what you've practiced thus far is as you described it - to be a human printer. But you can certainly be more than that.

Third, another bit of bad news, although this is somewhat milder. What you described here:

I see everything almost perfectly instructed to me in my head, but when it comes to drawing it out, I genuinely have the capabilities of a beginner artist.

suggests to me that you have extremely strong visualization skills. At least, going forward that's the assumption I'm going to make, so I apologize if that's incorrect. There's a broad spectrum when it comes to the ability to visualize, spanning from hyperphantasia (the ability to visualize things very strongly to the point of giving way to maladaptive daydreaming - this is something from which my girlfriend suffers, and it can be quite distracting) to aphantasia (the inability to visualize anything, effectively having no "mind's eye" - this is closer to the end of the spectrum on which I fall). Weirdly enough, my case is particularly interesting, as when I was a child I had extremely strong visualization skills, but when I was a preteen, it all faded away. It could be related to a blow to the head I received around that time, or it could just be related to puberty, who knows.

It's actually super common for people with aphantasia to, upon learning that it's a thing (given that most of us assume everyone visualizes and experiences their imagination in the same way, having only a single point of reference in our own experience), immediately get dejected and assume that drawing isn't for us. While that is certainly not the case, I strongly believe that it is those more like you - those with strong visualization skills - who end up suffering the most from these kinds of inaccurately preconceived notions. Where someone with aphantasia will assume "oh I guess art isn't for me, I can't see things in my head," a person like you is more likely to think, "I see all these amazing things in my head, why is it that when I go to draw them, everything falls apart?" This leads to immense frustration, purely due to those unfounded expectations, and in your case can be made that much harder to bear given that you've learned to see what is actually there, through your countless reference studies and reproductions.

Here's the thing - you know how when you first started practicing, you'd glance at a reference image once in a while, but mostly worked from memory resulting in a drawing that didn't match your reference all that much? That's what you're doing right now, when trying to draw from the information in your head. You're drawing from memory. You're drawing from information that is sufficient for identifying a thing, but lacks any of the specifics required to actually capture it in a way that can be experienced as intended by another.

In effect, that image in your mind is enough to trick your brain into feeling that it's experiencing all this crazy stuff, but it's not actually enough to replace a solid reference image. But that's not to say one can't draw purely from their imagination, it just relies on exactly what you've been talking about: a visual library.

Here's the thing - what you describe as a visual library may not be entirely accurate. You may have studied many pieces of reference, and may have a ton of mileage and experience with that, but if your focus has been on reproducing them to a photo-real level, then it's unlikely that you have as much experience in building a hierarchy of what is and isn't core to a given object. That comes back to the importance of breaking those references down into simple forms, and building them back up so we can distil the structure into what is most important, and then build on top of it working from simple to complex.

That in itself helps us reduce the sheer volume of information that needs to be recalled - effectively, it retrains our understanding of how to remember things by allowing us to focus on what's important. This also allows us to commit the spatial information relating to those simple forms and structures to our memory, giving us not just an understanding of how a given object exists from one point of view, but rather something that can be rotated and moved around.

While you appear to be towards the opposite end of the spectrum on this, this video I made for the Proko Youtube channel may still shed some light on how this works.

Now, for the last bit of good news. While AutoModerator explained why this question isn't really suited for this community due to the subreddit's very specific, narrow focus on the free lessons available on drawabox.com, you will find that the concepts I teach there are specifically designed to tackle this particular problem. At its core, the course (which I won't lie, is very rigorous, and will have you doing things that you may feel you've moved beyond, and will take many months to complete) has one central focus: to develop students' spatial reasoning skills, specifically because this is the core fundamental that I feel most drawing resources available on the internet (at least the cheap/free ones) tend to depend upon, without getting into it themselves. Why? Because it's boring and repetitive to learn, and those resources make most of their money by being interesting and fun.

In effect, I'm telling you to go back to your core basics, and I know how frustrating that must be. I ended up doing something similar myself - I started drawing at around the age of 12, and it wasn't until I was 22 (after a decade of drawing whatever I wanted with no structure, no studies, no purpose-driven learning) that I looked back on my progress and realized why it had been so slow. I had improved (and by virtue of constantly drawing from my imagination, I took a different path from you), but I was still deeply unsatisfied with my work. It was around that time that I learned about aphantasia, and like most with that condition, I decided I wasn't suited to be an artist.

But I still wanted to draw, and I wanted to give it a shot, so I took my savings, quit my job, and spent six months studying the bare basic fundamentals, going back to the beginning, with instructors I felt I could trust. It cost me an arm and a leg, but it helped immensely. While what I'd learned wasn't particularly framed as "spatial reasoning" and didn't seek to target it specifically, that was essentially what I learned there, and what catapulted my work forward by leaps and bounds. It wasn't really until I started trying to share what I'd learned with others, explaining the concepts as best I understood them over and over, and reflecting upon what it was that I was doing more instinctually, but not consciously, that I started developing a strong understanding of what this core missing element - this spatial reasoning - really was. If you're curious about my progress over the years, and how 10 years of practicing inefficiently panned out, compared to a much shorter period of more directed, purpose-driven training, you can check out this large album I've got here documenting my progress over the years.

That said, I will say one last thing - looking back on all of it now, I realize that it was not a matter of "during that first decade I wasted my time and I should have worked harder/smarter". I don't believe that to be the case. I don't think it was until I was 22 that I was ready to tackle this different kind of path, and I think all that I learned prior to that helped speed up my overall progress in the later years by a considerable degree. In effect, over that first decade I'd built up fundamentals with a lot of holes in them - and so going back to the basics with a blank slate wasn't really that at all. It was filling in gaps and holes, and further strengthening what was already there. It's just that you don't know what you're missing until you've filled in that hole, so doing it with a blank slate is important. It sounds to me like you're ready for that.

Well, I've rambled enough. I hope that helps!