This week we roll headfirst into the interestin' world of aphantasia.

It all started with conversations inside Find Your Creative Voice and The Picture Book Course - when Good Shippers were telling us, “I can’t see ANYTHING in my head.” Which sent us down a rabbit hole of aphantasia, imagination. And does everyone experience it the same way?

Nope.

In this episode, we chat about:

• What aphantasia is
• The “apple test” 🍎
• Emotional memory vs visual memory
• Why some creatives need reference and others work 100% from imagination
• Whether Google has made our “mind palace” lazy
• Not being able to picture things can be a creative advantage. We promise.
• Smells, textures, music and sensory imagination
• Synesthesia (colours for days of the week?)
• Why your wobbly memory-bike drawing might be better than a perfect diagram
• How imagination changes from childhood to adulthood
• Blind drawing experiments we neeeeed to try at Art Club

Timestamps for our timestamp fans

00:00 – Elephantasia? Aphantasia? However you say it…
02:00 – The apple spectrum and vivid vs blank imagery
03:00 – Reading fiction without mental pictures
05:00 – Emotional memory and creepy seaside steps
07:00 – Mental collage vs drawing from scratch
10:00 – Drawing bikes from memory
11:00 – Why aphantasia might make you a better designer
14:00 – Idioms, haystacks and giant bears
16:00 – Smells, lemons and sensory imagination
17:30 – Synesthesia and coloured weekdays
20:00 – Wolves, dreams and Google as reference
23:00 – Teenage bedrooms and peak memory moments
25:00 – Is creativity in your head or your hands?
28:00 – Blind Art Club challenge incoming 👀

What about you?

Can you see the shiny apple? Or is it more of a murky apple-shaped idea?

We’d genuinely love to know. Come over to Instagram and tell us how your brain works. We're nosy.

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙