Zoe Aguirre

How do you become an original artist if you can't envision what you’re trying to create? Aphantasic artist, Zoe Aguirre shares tips on creating with aphantasia

On “How did you first discover aphantasia?”

I'va always had trouble drawing, improvising, and quite frankly just truning off at the end of the day. I use to draw a lot as a kid using references but I could never draw anything original. So, because of this, I quit drawing for years out of sheer frustration that whatever I wanted to draw just wouldn't go onto the page. After a few years i decided to start drawing again to help cope with my depression and my anxiety. I knew I wasn't able to do original work so I started drawing other works to build up some muscle memory to do my own things. A few months pass and I finally feel like I am ready to try something original. I had the idea of what I wanted to draw and I knew some characteristics that it would have so i started to draw. I spent about 2 hours attempting to draw this idea and nothing was coming from it. I spent 2 hours drawing and erasing and nothing was comingout right. I was visibly frustrated so my boyfriend asked to visualize what I was trying to draw and I thought I had been I mean I knew what I wanted to draw thats all I need right? It was only then when I tried to explain to him that I couldn't actually see what I wanted to draw that he looked at me strange. He said that he watched an artist on youtube that has something called aphantasia and that I might have the same problem. At first I dismissed it because I didn't think it would be possible. So, reluctantly I watched the video with him and she asked us to close our eyes and picture an apple in our minds and describe what we see. For me i saw abslutely nothing which was normal for me, but then my boyfriend starts describing what he saw which was extremely detailed. So, that's when I discovered aphantasia and it made a lot of sense why I don't daydream or have a difficult time drawing original works.