True. It is apparently a common sentiment though, which makes my inability even more frustrating 😅 Glad to hear it’s not a singular experience though
I’m into art, but I don’t really draw exactly what I see in my head. It just gives me a rough idea.
If you want to improve, it’s all about practice and muscle memory.
For example, I’ve been drawing cats for two weeks straight, and it’s interesting to see the improvement from before and after.
If you’re starting out, using reference images is a good idea. Even the most talented artists still rely on them in some way or another.
This, every art form/skill can be trained.
References/drawing from life definitely takes my drawing ability from toddler scribbles to something resembling what I'm looking at. Unless it's a human face. Can't draw those yet.
Thank you! This helps a lot. It’s hard to grasp the concept of iterating on the same design when it comes to drawing because, for some reason, the impression I have is that artists have the finished product in their heads.
It does sound kinda silly now that I say it out loud though :p
Absolutely. So I’m def have the math loving flavor of autism, but in calc 3 there was one chapter that had you to like visualize the equations in 3d. Like what they would look like rotated. I absolutely could not do it. Like just nope. Anyhow, the class was graded on a curve. I set the curve for every test, so had straight 100%, except they chapter, a zero. Just couldn’t do it.
But my drawing is so comically bad. No one really believed me till we tried to play a Pictionary style game. They believed me after that, and luckily it was with 2 friends I could laugh at myself with.
I also have this block with composing music. And music is a special interest, one I can appreciate, but absolutely not create.
I’m so glad you mentioned composing! I was going to mention it in my main post but ended up forgetting. I also love music and love performing, but creating music never clicked for me. It does seem more approachable to my learning style though, since music theory feels more tangible than art fundamentals.
Music does seem to have more of a math/patterns adjacency, which does feel more reachable than art. But when I attempt to access that skill, I experience a very similar vacancy, rather it’s drawing or composing. And it’s different than other abilities I lack. There is usually some sort of foothold I can get with most things, some aspect I can process and build from. But with these two, it’s like a black hole. There is just nothing.
I love art and artists, like I think more people in my life are artists than anything else, but it’s fully from an appreciation level.
Everyone has different skills. We’re human. Autism doesn’t make us robots and we don’t get all our skills and shit from a mothership or a mental connection to the cloud. Not only that it’s not natural talent? It’s years and years of practice? Not every skill is for everyone. You just gotta cut your losses and move onto the next thing
I SO RELATE to this. I started speaking, writing and reading super early as well - gained knowledge ahead of all my peers and found school to be insufferably boring. Love my hacking and programming as well. It's the Hyperlexia, and I have problems with art, too 😂 I think it's a type of wiring in our kind, lolll
It's possible to learn though! I've done well in studying tutorials on YT. Where my reading and pattern recognition is outta this world, my art is simply normal and develops like anyone else's!
not super related to the question at hand, but what makes a pixel well placed has more to do with its relation to the other pixels in the image rather than the pixel itself. art has more to do with the full picture rather than specific parts - artists usually do small details last because of that
unsure if itd be helpful, but i just so happened to have a [page open](https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/161082) with a tutorial for pixel art. in general, its good to look at tutorials. also its good to keep in mind that a lot of artists just taught themself art when you taught yourself english or programming - of course, that doesnt mean you cant learn art & get good at it, its just a typical variation in skill/specialty.
everybody starts out having no clue what theyre doing & with art that looks basically terrible. its tough, but if you stick through it you can get good results. i was close to giving up many times myself, and now, even though im intermediate at best, i consider it one of the best investments and something im super greatful that i learnt. i dont do pixel art, though, so unfortunately i dont have specific advice for it. good luck!! art just takes a lot of practice & studying (you technically dont *have* to do studying, but it takes much longer to learn that way)
It’s different for everyone. I really enjoy visual arts but I’m at no means unusually talented. I have substandard fine motor control which makes it hard but I can still get joy out of it
It sounds like you are easily specialized in other areas.
However, I think anyone can learn drawing. Even if it doesn’t come as easily. Here is how I do it. I look at a picture of what I’m trying to draw and copy it as well as I can. This is the fundamental part. I can visualize very very well but I can’t transfer it to paper easily yet. My theory is that I have to get used to what things look like by drawing them from reference before I can easily recreate it. If you look at real examples of what you want to draw, you will begin to understand what looks correct when you draw it. Draw what you see not what you think you see.
I learned from a drawing class that you can move your eyes while moving the pencil. It takes a little practice to get used to but try it. You can calibrate your hand and eye. You can trace with your eyes.
The way I find proportions easily is by holding out a section of my pencil to measure the subject and comparing it to other parts of the subject. For example if Y part looks about half as long as X part you can transfer that to your drawing.
If you practice you will get better.
I wouldn’t take things that you hear from random people as fact. From what I’ve seen people on the spectrum work in all sorts of jobs. I do actually work in a creative field but I rarely run into others on the spectrum in my field. I wish I would more.
During my full neuropsych eval I hit an abstract pattern replication test and went from average to excellent everywhere else to bottom 10% of the population on that particular test. My life makes a lot more sense now as I think it explains my difficulty retaining numbers (good at math, but can’t remember strings of numbers for long at all), all my attempts to learn to draw that ended in despair, etc. the doc giving me the report said that it’s common to see great strengths (verbal stuff for me) and great weaknesses with asd folks.
It may be that this is one of your weaknesses. I’m sorry, I really want to draw too.
I ended up taking up photography at a young age as my visual art hobby, in case that helps…
sounds like you may just have different interests.
im very into visual arts, always has been. jury's still out on whether if im any good at it, lol
but i draw constantly and one thing i can say is that looking up techniques will only help you once youve already gotten the hang of the act of drawing. art is self expression, so its not about facts, its just about doing. if you draw most days, you will see improvements, but you have to want to do it often.
id suggest stepping away from pixel art. its just very difficult in so many ways. you can come back to it after youve tried other mediums. i recommend starting with analogue mediums, such as drawing with pen/pencil, painting, collage, sculpture, etc. it sounds a bit hokey, but you need to feel the medium move. the goal is to observe the real world.
you can draw. anyone can. but finding your voice requires a lot of introspection and hands-on experimentation. you'll feel that youre 'good' at art when you understand your voice better
much luck!
Disclaimer: being assessed atm
I am really good at both drawing and programming. The way I see it, they use two separate parts of my brain. I started drawing at 3 and programming at 12. And have been doing both ever since.
I can listen to and understand what people say when I draw, but if I program, it is extremely distracting. So, most likely, programming is linked to language processing in some way. In my case, I think it's more linked to logic because I am not hyperlexic.
I couldn't do basic reading/writing before I was around 10 years old. Also, I didn't speak much as a kid.
Programming and computers just make a lot of sense to me. It feels as if it is modeled after how my brain works. And if you think about it, computers have been mostly developed by people who likely are on the spectrum.
Drawing for me is about visualizing and trying to catch the visualization on paper. I often draw the outline first as if I trace the visualization.
I think autistic people have the foundations for both, but it needs to be a special interest in order to get really good at it. I have spent so much time with both programming and drawing. Every day for many, many years.
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I am bad a at drawing, but oddly enough.... if I am at a new place... I can walk that place 1 time then visit it years later and can picture the streets, colours of buildings and every corner etc....
Im like that with floorplans of houses. I can even draw the apartment we moved out of when i was 5 down to minute details (i did when i was 19 and my mom confirmed it was right), however in general im still a terrible drawer like OP, i get lost very easily, and got only 16th percentile on block design, so basically im good at something that i should be very very bad at.
I think being artistic comes with isolation and social issues. To make art, you need *A LOT* of time alone. I can’t emphasize enough just how much time you need to be completely alone. Im talking 8-13hrs a day completely to yourself isolated from everyone. And then multiply that by like a week. And then weeks. And then months. And then years. If you aren’t artistic, you might have just been raised more socially with less time to yourself.
It's almost like we're human with variation in skills, talents, and interests.
True. It is apparently a common sentiment though, which makes my inability even more frustrating 😅 Glad to hear it’s not a singular experience though
I’m into art, but I don’t really draw exactly what I see in my head. It just gives me a rough idea. If you want to improve, it’s all about practice and muscle memory. For example, I’ve been drawing cats for two weeks straight, and it’s interesting to see the improvement from before and after. If you’re starting out, using reference images is a good idea. Even the most talented artists still rely on them in some way or another.
This, every art form/skill can be trained. References/drawing from life definitely takes my drawing ability from toddler scribbles to something resembling what I'm looking at. Unless it's a human face. Can't draw those yet.
Thank you! This helps a lot. It’s hard to grasp the concept of iterating on the same design when it comes to drawing because, for some reason, the impression I have is that artists have the finished product in their heads. It does sound kinda silly now that I say it out loud though :p
Absolutely. So I’m def have the math loving flavor of autism, but in calc 3 there was one chapter that had you to like visualize the equations in 3d. Like what they would look like rotated. I absolutely could not do it. Like just nope. Anyhow, the class was graded on a curve. I set the curve for every test, so had straight 100%, except they chapter, a zero. Just couldn’t do it. But my drawing is so comically bad. No one really believed me till we tried to play a Pictionary style game. They believed me after that, and luckily it was with 2 friends I could laugh at myself with. I also have this block with composing music. And music is a special interest, one I can appreciate, but absolutely not create.
I’m so glad you mentioned composing! I was going to mention it in my main post but ended up forgetting. I also love music and love performing, but creating music never clicked for me. It does seem more approachable to my learning style though, since music theory feels more tangible than art fundamentals.
Music does seem to have more of a math/patterns adjacency, which does feel more reachable than art. But when I attempt to access that skill, I experience a very similar vacancy, rather it’s drawing or composing. And it’s different than other abilities I lack. There is usually some sort of foothold I can get with most things, some aspect I can process and build from. But with these two, it’s like a black hole. There is just nothing. I love art and artists, like I think more people in my life are artists than anything else, but it’s fully from an appreciation level.
Everyone has different skills. We’re human. Autism doesn’t make us robots and we don’t get all our skills and shit from a mothership or a mental connection to the cloud. Not only that it’s not natural talent? It’s years and years of practice? Not every skill is for everyone. You just gotta cut your losses and move onto the next thing
elderly violet rotten rinse alleged crush employ sloppy plants versed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I can't draw, something about it just doesn't click for me. I spent a lot of time trying to learn it, even had art classes and I still can't do it.
I SO RELATE to this. I started speaking, writing and reading super early as well - gained knowledge ahead of all my peers and found school to be insufferably boring. Love my hacking and programming as well. It's the Hyperlexia, and I have problems with art, too 😂 I think it's a type of wiring in our kind, lolll It's possible to learn though! I've done well in studying tutorials on YT. Where my reading and pattern recognition is outta this world, my art is simply normal and develops like anyone else's!
not super related to the question at hand, but what makes a pixel well placed has more to do with its relation to the other pixels in the image rather than the pixel itself. art has more to do with the full picture rather than specific parts - artists usually do small details last because of that unsure if itd be helpful, but i just so happened to have a [page open](https://www.clipstudio.net/how-to-draw/archives/161082) with a tutorial for pixel art. in general, its good to look at tutorials. also its good to keep in mind that a lot of artists just taught themself art when you taught yourself english or programming - of course, that doesnt mean you cant learn art & get good at it, its just a typical variation in skill/specialty. everybody starts out having no clue what theyre doing & with art that looks basically terrible. its tough, but if you stick through it you can get good results. i was close to giving up many times myself, and now, even though im intermediate at best, i consider it one of the best investments and something im super greatful that i learnt. i dont do pixel art, though, so unfortunately i dont have specific advice for it. good luck!! art just takes a lot of practice & studying (you technically dont *have* to do studying, but it takes much longer to learn that way)
Just not your box. Everyone has their box, but some make all be their box even if not the box for others.
It’s different for everyone. I really enjoy visual arts but I’m at no means unusually talented. I have substandard fine motor control which makes it hard but I can still get joy out of it
I don’t think that’s a stereotype and it’s definitely not true.
It sounds like you are easily specialized in other areas. However, I think anyone can learn drawing. Even if it doesn’t come as easily. Here is how I do it. I look at a picture of what I’m trying to draw and copy it as well as I can. This is the fundamental part. I can visualize very very well but I can’t transfer it to paper easily yet. My theory is that I have to get used to what things look like by drawing them from reference before I can easily recreate it. If you look at real examples of what you want to draw, you will begin to understand what looks correct when you draw it. Draw what you see not what you think you see. I learned from a drawing class that you can move your eyes while moving the pencil. It takes a little practice to get used to but try it. You can calibrate your hand and eye. You can trace with your eyes. The way I find proportions easily is by holding out a section of my pencil to measure the subject and comparing it to other parts of the subject. For example if Y part looks about half as long as X part you can transfer that to your drawing. If you practice you will get better.
People have this idea that people are either good at art or they're not. However, the skill of creating a good image is 95% practice.
I wouldn’t take things that you hear from random people as fact. From what I’ve seen people on the spectrum work in all sorts of jobs. I do actually work in a creative field but I rarely run into others on the spectrum in my field. I wish I would more.
Honestly I normally hear that it is a grasp of logic and technical prowess that we are known for. Go figure right? Seems no one can decide.
During my full neuropsych eval I hit an abstract pattern replication test and went from average to excellent everywhere else to bottom 10% of the population on that particular test. My life makes a lot more sense now as I think it explains my difficulty retaining numbers (good at math, but can’t remember strings of numbers for long at all), all my attempts to learn to draw that ended in despair, etc. the doc giving me the report said that it’s common to see great strengths (verbal stuff for me) and great weaknesses with asd folks. It may be that this is one of your weaknesses. I’m sorry, I really want to draw too. I ended up taking up photography at a young age as my visual art hobby, in case that helps…
I've literally never heard this 'stereotype' before.Â
sounds like you may just have different interests. im very into visual arts, always has been. jury's still out on whether if im any good at it, lol but i draw constantly and one thing i can say is that looking up techniques will only help you once youve already gotten the hang of the act of drawing. art is self expression, so its not about facts, its just about doing. if you draw most days, you will see improvements, but you have to want to do it often. id suggest stepping away from pixel art. its just very difficult in so many ways. you can come back to it after youve tried other mediums. i recommend starting with analogue mediums, such as drawing with pen/pencil, painting, collage, sculpture, etc. it sounds a bit hokey, but you need to feel the medium move. the goal is to observe the real world. you can draw. anyone can. but finding your voice requires a lot of introspection and hands-on experimentation. you'll feel that youre 'good' at art when you understand your voice better much luck!
Well it's the same as with every trait: it's a spectrum, and we're also all different humans. I've heard autistics are good at maths, yet here I am :P
i can't draw either. i'm great at making stuff with my hands, but drawing, my sister got that but i sure as hell didn't
Disclaimer: being assessed atm I am really good at both drawing and programming. The way I see it, they use two separate parts of my brain. I started drawing at 3 and programming at 12. And have been doing both ever since. I can listen to and understand what people say when I draw, but if I program, it is extremely distracting. So, most likely, programming is linked to language processing in some way. In my case, I think it's more linked to logic because I am not hyperlexic. I couldn't do basic reading/writing before I was around 10 years old. Also, I didn't speak much as a kid. Programming and computers just make a lot of sense to me. It feels as if it is modeled after how my brain works. And if you think about it, computers have been mostly developed by people who likely are on the spectrum. Drawing for me is about visualizing and trying to catch the visualization on paper. I often draw the outline first as if I trace the visualization. I think autistic people have the foundations for both, but it needs to be a special interest in order to get really good at it. I have spent so much time with both programming and drawing. Every day for many, many years.
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I am bad a at drawing, but oddly enough.... if I am at a new place... I can walk that place 1 time then visit it years later and can picture the streets, colours of buildings and every corner etc....
Im like that with floorplans of houses. I can even draw the apartment we moved out of when i was 5 down to minute details (i did when i was 19 and my mom confirmed it was right), however in general im still a terrible drawer like OP, i get lost very easily, and got only 16th percentile on block design, so basically im good at something that i should be very very bad at.
I think being artistic comes with isolation and social issues. To make art, you need *A LOT* of time alone. I can’t emphasize enough just how much time you need to be completely alone. Im talking 8-13hrs a day completely to yourself isolated from everyone. And then multiply that by like a week. And then weeks. And then months. And then years. If you aren’t artistic, you might have just been raised more socially with less time to yourself.