In this forum there are various threads discussing these issues, and I was not sure if I had to write there or open a new one.
I have always been interested in drawing and painting, and in particular, for some years I focused on the the field of animation. Some years ago I read a story about a particular animator, I think he worked for Warner Bros in the 1960s. Yesterday I was not able to find his name.
Most animators (pencil and ink, not 3D), need to draw a rough sketch, and then work on it to clean the lines. This particular animator had the ability to draw directly the finished drawing. (I add a random image of a sketch for reference. The blue lines are the sketch, the black lines the more polished drawing.)
I supposed he had the ability to imagine perfectly what he had to draw, and then to easily render it into paper. This is, it had to do more imagination that anything else. I think people in this forum would call it “Hyperphantasia.”
At that time, since I lacked that ability, I began to train myself, doing some exercises. For instance:
- Draw in my imagination, trying to achieve “clean lines” and details as much as possible, and adding colour.
- Copy a drawing, but passing through imagination. This is, I look at the drawing, then, I close my eyes and draw it in my head. I have to repeat these steps until I have a clear image in my mind. Then, without looking at the original drawing, I reproduce it in paper. I think this is a very good exercise to train “phantasia”, imagination.
- While studying Chinese I would do the same things but with the characters. I would move and rotate the characters in my imagination trying not lose the definition and sharpness of the characters.
After reading the comments in this forum I realized that, while not achieving “hyperphantasia”, my capacity to imagine things is better than average.
As I mentioned in another place here, some years ago I taught technical drawing and AutoCAD. Also I taught some courses on Mathematics. I don’t have the experience of teaching artistic drawing.
If I have to teach again these subjects, I would focus intensely in training the imagination, not on the “result” on paper.
Both in Mathematics and in drawing or painting, I would have classes without paper or pen, at least for a while. I would ask the students to work in their mental canvas, doing, for instance, the exercises I described above, or other exercises designed with that purpose.
One “collateral damage” of this, I suppose, is that it would be easier to use mnemonics.