Can you draw from your imagination? how?

I've always drawn from my imagination. I actually have trouble using references!
It takes a lot of practice and research. You need to know how something works and why it looks the way it does.

Say, If you're drawing a living thing (a horse, for example) you need to understand how their limbs move, and how their muscles stretch and move with them.

I can draw from my imagination and a lot of my drawings are of things I have seen in dreams. I also recreate music from dreams and write stories from dreams. I am very dream inspired.

I am also able to create original stuff from imagination, which I would explain as a similar process. I have excellent auditory and visual imagination which allows me to picture things in my mind.

My biggest trouble is I am not too spontaneous with my imagination. I have trouble being creative when I try and everything I do randomly comes to me naturally. My mind works on its own.

I think everybodys creative process is different.

Its actually impossible because your mind won't actual make up a realistic depiction of anything. It will create the concept and you'll know the details of it, but in reality they won't line up v.v

I don't know if this will work for you but when ever I draw from imagination(which I pretty much do every time I draw) I always draw a sketch of it as a reference before actually presuming on actually drawing it.

Dreams and such appear detailed because during a dream you don't really 'see' the picture as a whole similarly to how when you try and think of somebody's face, you don't really see the entire face, you remember the different components seperately such as the person's eye shape or hair colour or face shape. Thus, when you try to draw something you're imagaining, you'll try to draw the eye shape or hair colour or the components seperately, and often the whole shapes and essential features are warped, and so the shadows and details look warped.

For me, it's a process. As the object comes to form on my paper it becomes easier to lay in detail and shadow. You don't have to keep the perfect copy of the image in your mind. And anyway, that's the good thing about drawing from ur mind, no one can tell you that you messed up lol.

I'm more of an ideologist, therefore I concentrate more on the story told on the paper or canvas, than on actual anatomy and so on. The proportions, of course, I make as accurately as possible (mostly because if I stare at it for too long, it starts to bother me), but I do not concentrate on the details. I include shadows and very alive eyes- the eyes are somewhat my love and speciality.

I just recently took drawing more seriously than just some scribbles and since then, I made two drawings, one of them original. I spent about 2 hours on each, colouring them in with simple colouring pencils.

I'm mostly a writer, I have one big project, a smaller work in progress and one idea yet to be scribbled down. I hate writing under the euphoria of wonderful imagination and inspiration. It is absolutely exhilarating, almost like a drug, but I HATE reading it when the moment is done.
(If you cannot relate, then think about finding Facebook pictures of last night when you were drunk. That was a fun time, but when you look at it, you go OH GOD WHAT AN IDIOT!)

I definitely have to be in a relaxed state of mind so that the images in my head become less "shifty". It's like trying to focus on something under water when there are waves and ripples in the way. If you're focussed too much, you just get frustrated. You almost have to let your subconscious mind guide your hand, and although I know it's the most popular piece of advice given to anyone who wants to learn new skills, practice really does make perfect. The more you draw something, the easier it becomes and the better you get.

Everytime you draw, you learn a new technique just by the fact that you've tried to create something different than anything you've done in the past. All of these little tricks you learn develop your total skills. This applies to any art or any skill-set really.

I almost exclusively draw people, and lately, exclusively from my imagination. It's just where my passion lies. I like being able to create a person/character in my head, and not just in appearance, in personality as well, and bring them to life on paper.

When I was a little kid, I drew in a cartoony kind of style that worked for me at the time. Then I moved on to sort of a manga style as an older kid. By the time I was 12/13 I was ready to start taking on realistic drawing. At first, my drawings were sort of fantasy-real, with exaggerated proportions and facial features. I started really studying people's faces, hair, and bodies. It helped drawing from images at first, and it was definitely satisfying coming up with something recognizable as the subject and working on all of those minute details. Some artists stop there, but my passion was always in making my imagination come to life.

So now, when I feel like drawing. I think up the character in my head, I think specifically about each feature and detail, and then I concentrate on the proportions I want and set down the initial lines.

As for horses, I've drawn them from my head for example, but they're pretty amateurish and wonky, as I've never really spent any time really looking at a horse. You have to make a concerted effort to really focus on what you're seeing. The images in your dreams, I think, only come off as "perfect" because your mind has its own "perfect" image of a horse, for example, that includes every detail it needs to recognize the horse, and that's it. If you saw the dream image in real life, probably everything you didn't focus on would be blurry or indistinct.

The narrative of your dreams takes you away from spending a lot of time examining specific images. Often times when you do examine things in dreams, they become lucid, and usually you wake up soon after. It's all the power of suggestion. And even if your subconscious has a near perfect image of a horse, accessing this in your waking hours without a reference can be nearly impossible unless you're in an almost hypnotized state.

So, don't worry if you find that drawing realistically from imagination is a struggle at first, as the more you really look at real life subjects, the more detailed tools and variety your imagation will have at its disposal to create and invent from. There is so much variation in the world, but also so many constants that are needed to get just right for the subject/object to be believably realistic. So notice those constants and all of that variation and you'll have everything you need for your imagination to work solo.

Yes. I was gonna draw and put it as my profile pic... The ones I put on right now aren't that good. I'm better with paper and pencils.

I guess people could visualize things differently. Also, we all have different drawing or art styles.

You have to keep it very simple. It's all about practice and drawing what is there and not what you think is there. Try practicing drawing things that are around you, even try drawing your hands. After you observe the way things appear enough, you will start to be able to draw from imagination much better.

I've been working on it. I don't know how to explain, but if someone were to ask me to draw a certain character, i can imagine the character in my mind, but all the details don't seem to translate to lines on paper. the mental image is different from the physical because some of the lines are not lines but just thoughts. i wonder how to make the thoughts into lines- i guess that is the challenge...

Sounds really interesting. Do you have any of your art online?