Salutations, Friends!

I have been experiencing an annoying problem.

I have an incredibly vivid imagination hyperphantasia is probably the term for it. It is so strong that it feels incredibly real. Not fun for someone with PTSD but works Great for storytelling and the concerts that play in my head when I listen to music. (So help me, the jukebox musicals I could put together. Y’all couldn’t handle it.)

But I think that’s created a very interesting problem for me as a visual artist.

One of the big tips to get better at art is to find something (typically a piece of media) and get obsessed with it. Draw scenes endlessly. Draw characters in all the fits, lighting situations, and expressions that you love.

My problem?

I don’t connect with visual media like that. Never really have.

At least not from what I have intentionally tried.

I can sit down and read a comic or manga, and it feels like my eyes skim over the images to get to the next bit of text.

And part of me’s like “well what if you somehow find an audio recording of the text so you can focus on the visuals?” But that’s just TV!

And, yes, when I’m not watching something with subtitles, I can focus on the visuals more. But nothing just Grabs me the way it seems to for others.

Even thinking of things that I did find incredibly visually impactful, like the death of The Lord Commander from Final Space, I just don’t feel compelled to draw those scenes.

I think the problem is my neurodiversity.

I am 1000% the kid to get up in the middle of class and do a full yoga routine because the class was boring. I Need to be engaged with the things I’m doing and my brain is very picky about what it feels that connection with. I don’t use social media, and I never really got addicted to tiktok or shorts because of that. I honestly don’t watch a lot of tv or media at all, probably for the same reason.

But that’s not the full issue, because Godzilla Minus One is a movie that engaged me more than literally anything I’ve seen in Years. I could watch just the trailer on loop for the rest of time and be happy.

But nothing has made that connection from seeing and adoring to drawing and recreating.

And I think the reason is that even a movie that has me fully engaged, is not as stimulating as my imagination where I am damn near disassociating into the scene. So my brain never latches onto visual media the same. I think this is why I lean toward novels over graphic stories, or when I do try them, a lot of the time my eyes are just pulled to the text. Even just reading the dialogue of a comic prompts my brain to develop voices, tones, ambiance which is more engaging for me than just the visuals a lot of the time.

And I get how this might not sound like a big deal. I could just draw the things I’m imagining. But the problem is that the process of imagining a scene/image to draw, finding references, and plotting it out is A Lot More Labor than having just having pictures to copy.

I can always just pick a Thing to draw a bunch of, and I certainly do, but that just means that instead of putting my energy towards the imagination aspect, I have to use that same amount of energy to create motivation to draw this thing.

But both ways I’m still lacking key parts of what this tip of “get obsessed with something” is going for. So, I am just inherently not getting as much practice as others and I worry about the rate I’ll burn out because the drawing that is fufilling is such a demanding process.

I guess it’s just something we’ll have to figure out as we go.

But until next time…

Valedictions, friends.