re: How many of you have aphantasia, sometimes called "mind blindness"?

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I can do all of that but I don’t see a picture. I have excellent detail memory but I cannot see an image in my mind.

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hmmmm.. curious, lets shift from memories to imagination.

if someone gave you prompts (like AI imagery) that were just completely silly, abstract and unlike anything you'd ever seen. then asked you to create a painting of said prompts - how would yiu begin, without first "seeing" it in your mind?

for example say.. create an image of two different alien species playing a sport similar to tennis, but using stars for volleys, while a crowd of heavenly beings watch & cheer..

how would you even begin, without first visualizing an image in your mind of what you hope to draw, paint or create?

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if someone gave you prompts (like AI imagery) that were just completely silly, abstract and unlike anything you'd ever seen. then asked you to create a painting of said prompts - how would yiu begin, without first "seeing" it in your mind?

for example say.. create an image of two different alien species playing a sport similar to tennis, but using stars for volleys, while a crowd of heavenly beings watch & cheer..

how would you even begin, without first visualizing an image in your mind of what you hope to draw, paint or create?

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Like the OP said, I can come up with the idea of what an alien playing tennis looks like.

But an image that I literally see in my mind, nope, I do not see that, and I was today year's old when I learned that some folks can.

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Wait. Do people actually visualize images in their mind? If so, I have no idea what’s that like.

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I just assumed everyone else could build houses and shite in their minds. I used to do long division in my head by visualizing a chalk board and manually calculating it.

It's not like I shut my eyes and just see shite, it's almost like a mental echo and it's represented if that makes sense.

I dream insanely vividly and can remember the colors from items in my dreams. Usually I can tell if I'm in a dream and act accordingly.

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what happens when you read a book & create the characters, places, etc. in your mind?

and then see a movie based on said book that completely ruins the visual images you had created of the characters, places, etc.?

not trying to put anyone on the spot, but it seems so strange to me that some people can't "see" things in their mind? fascinating stuff really..

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Being able to imagine what something looks like and actually seeing an image are two very different things. I read a ton of fiction and have an idea of what a character looks like - so much so that I’m kind of turned off when a book cover shows a totally different visual than described in the book and, therefore “visualized” by me - but I cannot close my eyes and see any image.

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with the alien tennis example, before ever picking up a brush, I would already have a set mage in my mind of how i wanted the final product to look.. that image i would of "seen" in my mind...

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Probably why I’m a horrible artist and, more practically, have a really hard time committing to paint colors, hanging pictures, etc. My fear of it not looking like I thought it might keeps me tangled up for extreme periods of time.

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Probably why I’m a horrible artist

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That's actually a great point.

I'm the least creative person I know ins tuff like that, and probably also the worst artist I know. My wife and kids always make fun of me the times we've played pictionary.


Bute the flip side of that, I took Art in high school and as long as li'm just looking at a picture I'm drawing, I can recreate it really well with that drawing I make.

Probably pre dementia sign