For me it’s time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don’t understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That’s it. I don’t understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn’t give you anything.
My wife will hear a song and go “Oh neat, it’s in 5/8.” And I’m like “How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?”
For me it is drawing. I think it is because I don’t really picture things. My mind is full of descriptions mostly, not visualization, but I don’t know.
I’ve put a ton of time over the years into trying to cultivate the skill, but 3 dimensions complete escapes me. I cannot picture a 3d object, then draw it. I can get away with some geometries with vanishing line references, but that’s it.
If it makes you feel better, I don’t think being able to visualize helps as much as it would seem. Drawing is just hard. I say this as someone who has a very active mental imager and has been drawing (poorly) my whole life. The technical aspects of drawing/painting etc., is really just about understanding the theory, application, and practice.
Does it help? Sure, a little but nothing I’ve ever drawn has come out looking like the mental picture with any satisfaction and I could probably do just as well with a verbal or written description to go off of. And references, of course. Several famous modern artists have aphantasia.
I’ve seen the books ‘Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain’ by Betty Edwards and ‘The Creative License: Giving Yourself Permission to Be The Artist You Truly Are’ by Danny Gregory being recommended to those who have a hard time learning to draw. The commenter also provided examples of their own drawings before and after, and it was night and day.
However, I looked through the examples a bit, and am wary of reading the books myself, because the drawings there are very representative, while I’m aiming for a more wacky style. It could also be that the books are mainly about drawing from references, not sure yet.
Yeah this it it for me except I’m decent at drawing, I just can’t get how to make shadows or highlights. Drawing a 3D sphere for example with shadow is so hard for me. Granted I don’t practice, but still.
As the saying goes, “Draw with your eyes, not your brain.” Drawing is just a loop of asking yourself whether it looks right or not. Nobody is timing you, if you have to check a reference a million times to draw a single line and then erase it angway then so be it, because the next line will maybe only take half as much, and then half of that…
Theres this wrongfull elitism that an artist has to be able to draw perfectly from memory. They don’t. Fuck it. Print out an image and trace it, that practices line commitment, line width control and scale. Then you can use the traced image to practice shading and coloring. You don’t put a kid on a bicycle without training wheels first, why would you do the same thing as an artist?