This has been discussed at least a couple of times before but maybe I have a new angle:
Somewhere during the last three years or so I realized I'm one of those people who can hardly see mental images. Even my dreams seems to often be just feelings og having been somewhere and done something.
However I can draw bikes my house and everything else that I know well (and I often have too draw things since I cannot keep mental models in my head.)
Why is this, how can I draw something I cannot project in my head? Is it just because I understand it so well that if I try to draw it wrong my mind hurts?
PS: My drawings are not nice, but they are somewhat correct, the frame makes sense, the chain is in the correct place etc etc.
PPS: I keep wondering if I always was like this or if I lost it at some time (if I lost it my best guess is there's a mild form of something like PTSD because of a bunch of stuff that happened from I was 15 to 25).
Maybe I'm stating the obvious, but a bicycle has a more complicated (or specific) structure than most people realize that they find hard to reproduce when sketching it.
I think "mental modeling" is actually the problem in that case. Our mental model of a bicycle is "wheels; pedals; handlebar; (sometimes) chain". To a casual observer, "fork" and "frame" is background information that they don't think about or notice but those are obviously pretty fundamental.
So when you sit down to sketch it from memory you suddenly realize that you're not exactly sure how those parts fit together. Think about how often people attach the pedals directly to a wheel in a sketch, for example. That's 100% reflecting our mental model ("to turn the wheel I turn the pedals").
"Sketch a bike" is almost like a test of "can you invent the diamond-shaped frame off the top your head?" Because of our mental model we don't even notice that part.
> "Sketch a bike" is almost like a test of "can you invent the diamond-shaped frame off the top your head?" Because of our mental model we don't even notice that part.
Distracting from your point, but there some awesome reconstructed diamonds floating around today. The two below are the first examples that sprang to mind because of how they invert the "missing" structure.
Oof. The cantilevered rear wheel in the first link in particular makes me really uncomfortable for some reason.
I don't mind the "n-shaped" frame overall but something about the chunky frame combined with the rear wheel sticking off the back makes me think it's going to snap off - painfully for the rider - on the first pothole or hop.
I didn't realize that that the upper bar between the rear wheel and the saddle was so important to my psychological comfort, but I now I know. Even one of those skinny bars like the ones on old-school Schwinn road bikes would make me feel so much better about that bike.
Wait. Is there a bar between the bottom-bracket and the rear wheel on the non-drive-train side of the bike, or is it actually cantilevered in two dimensions?
> Is there a bar between the bottom-bracket and the rear wheel on the non-drive-train side of the bike, or is it actually cantilevered in two dimensions?
There is no seatstay on the unseen side, but the Ventum is at least symmetrical. My boss' TT bike is similar in design to Cervelo in the second link, but with an oversized chainstay on the non-drive side for claimed aerodynamic effect. It looks fine with a disc in, however with a 5-spoke it looks dangerously pre-broken to my eyes.
I understand feeling uncomfortable with the design, single-sided front "forks" are my personal cut-off for that queasy feeling.
Plus, if you've not seen TT bikes in person before, be prepared for weird buffeting sounds from the disc wheels the first time you do. They definitely won't make you feel more comfortable about them ;)
Read up materials for beginner artists. The thing they emphasis is that people by default dont know how things look like and dont remember that. When you are drawing from observation, you are supposed to look a lot and draw a little, because it is normal that your brain will throw away that information. The set of things you actually know how it looks like is called visual library and you are supposed to consciously working on that and making it larger. The general assumption seems to be that beginner has small to empty visual library.
The "seeing through artist eye" is basically about that - training to see things and tricks to remember how things look like. It can get better with practice.
By default, untrained people tend to draw symbols of things they see - how the thing is "supposed" to look like.
Quite likely, there is absolutely nothing wrong with you, you just don't have the particular training, just like most people, which is actually perfectly fine for most of us.
I only recently (last few years) discovered that aphantasia is a thing. Before that I thought that when people were talking about "mind's eye" they were using a figure of speech that was totally unrelated to being able to create images in your head. I am a decent artist. I can sketch out the layout of a building after having been in it a short time, including identifying exits, etc. (maybe I should thank my CIA dad for that one) But I still can't recall images on demand. It's very strange. I always wondered if it was related to whatever brain malformation that caused my epilepsy. I also wondered if the genetics that caused my (admittedly self diagnosed) aphantasia was related to my brother's ability synesthesia. The brain is remarkable.
This is very interesting, but I do think that there's a big distinction between drawing and imagining, so I don't think it's too surprising that a person may be better at one than the other.
Indeed, I suspect I am like you and am better at drawing a bicycle than imagining one. With drawing it, I simply know how to do it. There's a sequence of steps (draw a diamond shape, add the seat post, add the wheels and the front fork). I don't even need to keep the whole thing in my head while I'm drawing it -- the paper acts as the repository.
On the flip side, though, there are plenty of things I can imagine that I cannot for the life of me draw. Faces of family members. Animals.
But again, I think that artists who can draw life-like representations are ones who do not use their imagination, and, in fact, learning to draw from life is a process of learning not to use your imagination. When we draw from our imagination, we tend to use our mental models, which are abstract and functional. We put eyes at the top of the heads, because that's how we imagine them, because we focus on the face and all that wide-open forehead space is useless. It's a skill to not use those models when trying to draw accurately.
> On the flip side, though, there are plenty of things I can imagine that I cannot for the life of me draw. Faces of family members. Animals.
Lucky you :-)
Seems I can only recall photographs of my mom and dad when I try now (passport style photo og my mom and a photo of my dad making a funny face while carrying an oversize chocolate).
Same kind of goes for my wife: I immediately recognize her now but the first few months I was dating her I was afraid I would not recognize her :-D
Edit: and when I try to view my wife in my head I only see a 15 year old passport style photo :-D
> However I can draw bikes my house and everything else that I know well (and I often have too draw things since I cannot keep mental models in my head.)
This is quite similar to watching a movie and how you can instantly tell a CG human is fake. Because you know how humans look, walk, move, etc. Whereas if it's a CG plant or animal most of us might not notice it's fake because we don't live our whole lives observing them. An expert at elephants can probably see a CG elephant and notice the wrong things much faster because they know it well.
For myself, I can draw from my imagination but it's not that I see the image in my head. It's quite often being a little less present or concerned with the actual drawing while still having the muscle memory of drawing the common shapes that make up mass and form.
I would recommend starting off making marks on paper and seeing what comes out of it. A lot of cartoonists practice drawing an odd-shaped oval and then using that as the basis for the shape of the head.
I always wondered whether a good way to describe Aphantasia to people who don't have it is to ask them to "imagine" an odor. Most people can recognize specific oders effortlessly and remember them for decades (example: you smell some brand of aftershave, and you immediately know that this is how your great-grandfather always smelled, who has been dead for 20 years), but you cannot "think" of an odor and actually smell it the same way you can think of an apple and see and inspect its image inside your head. Yet you "know" what gasoline smells like, or fresh bread.
This leads to another interesting question: are there people who cannot imagine music and other sounds, like speech? Is this related to Aphantasia?
A question even more interesting: are there people who can imagine odors, or combinations of them? I would expect this to be very handy if you are designing perfume, for example.
Wow, I never thought about that, didn't realise that was a thing. I can only so very vaguely imagine what things would smell like that I wonder if I really am at all.
Music, sounds and voices have always been the most clear for me (I can think through some of my favourite orchestral pieces with multiple instruments at once), but I've never been as good at visual.
I can imagine odors decently. I didn't know this until I just tried it after reading your comment. But yeah, I just imagined what a jasmine bush smells like, my dog's poop, strawberry scent car freshener, baby powder, and distant brush fire.
My best guess is that I'm imagining them at something like 30% fidelity, and some are harder than others to synthesize in "my mind's nose"
It's not nearly as good as what I can visualize in my mind's eye, so your analogy is still helpful.
Yeah, I think I have a relatively poor visual imagination, but when I try to picture a specific object it's probably ~10% as vivid as actually glancing at it. When I try to recall a smell, it's probably more like 20% as vivid as smelling it.
I can definitely think of odors and smell them, certainly more vividly than I can see mental images.
Thinking of fresh bread nearly makes me wonder whether someone is baking it nearby. Sounds are similar for me. I can play most songs in my head with full orchestration, and pick out different instruments. After hearing my alarm and turning it off, I will sometimes think of it later and have to check to make sure it isn't playing again.
Images though, require sustained effort for me to maintain. I would never ever mistake a mental image for a real image - they are completely on completely different "screens" if you will.
Yes, I think so, it is so strong the first time I tried to take the test I was somewhat surprised that you were supposed to be able to do all these things.
I'll add the article to my reading list immediately :-)
Edit: yep, read a few lines, very similar and interesting. Haven't seen this article before, thanks.
There's a youtube channel called Psych of Play (by Daryl Talks Games) which has a video[0] about an ad for a Tetris game released in 2017, and the video goes on to explain some hypotheses about the ability to have stored knowledge being separate from the ability to recall it. Some links are made with sleep, too. There's also an example of a person with both retrograde and anterograde amnesia who has no idea who you are after a few seconds, and no idea how he knows the piano, but can play it anytime he wants.
There's a lot about how memories are formed and recalled that is still the subject of much research.
Somewhere during the last three years or so I realized I'm one of those people who can hardly see mental images. Even my dreams seems to often be just feelings og having been somewhere and done something.
However I can draw bikes my house and everything else that I know well (and I often have too draw things since I cannot keep mental models in my head.)
Why is this, how can I draw something I cannot project in my head? Is it just because I understand it so well that if I try to draw it wrong my mind hurts?
PS: My drawings are not nice, but they are somewhat correct, the frame makes sense, the chain is in the correct place etc etc.
PPS: I keep wondering if I always was like this or if I lost it at some time (if I lost it my best guess is there's a mild form of something like PTSD because of a bunch of stuff that happened from I was 15 to 25).