> How can you draw a thing without visualizing it? This is a great question. I have an inability to draw things from memory (despite being able to recognize th

> How can you draw a thing without visualizing it? This is a great question. I have an inability to draw things from memory (despite being able to recognize them immediately and form strong narrative memories of them). This realization is what lead to me to think I have aphantasia. A few years ago, I decided to draw a face everyday from memory (of someone I knew well visually) to see if I could train myself to get better. After 6 months of daily practice, my faces still looked like cartoons. My technique got better from rote memorization, but importantly I never got to the point where I could recognize my subject from my own drawing. They all just looked like random people poorly drawn. I can recognize the mistakes as soon as they're on paper but during the initial creation I feel like I'm guessing where the lines go based on some verbal/narrative structure ("I know she has long hair, how about this..."), then saying "hmm that's not right". I have no reference image in my mind to work off of. But I can immediately pattern match against my drawing to see how far off I am, which means the visual information is encoded in my brain somewhere. Still no clue on how to voluntarily access that memory - it's as if my visual systems only fire when photons hit my eyeballs. Which only helps after I've made my shitty drawing, not while I'm drawing.