Previous Lessons

Lesson 1 - https://steemit.com/art/@stephanus/illustration-101-lesson-1
Lesson 2 - https://steemit.com/art/@stephanus/illustration-101-lesson-2
Lesson 3 - https://steemit.com/art/@stephanus/illustration-101-lesson-3
Lesson 4 - https://steemit.com/art/@stephanus/illustration-101-lesson-4-introduction

Visual Thinking

The process of visual thinking is the easiest one to master. Simply do it. Visual Thinking requires you to think in pictures. When you read a book, imagine all the characters as images. When you remember numbers, assign pictures to them. When you dream, dream in pictures.

The most important tool to use for this, is the visual diary. An illustrator uses this to record daily events, or simply to doodle. I use mine for various things. Mostly to jot down ideas. Sometimes to test certain styles. Sometimes to study anatomy. Sometimes just to draw an interesting object or landscape. My visual diary is sometimes very private, as it contains my deepest secrets or most obscene thoughts. Many of these things aren't meant for public consumption. Your visual diary should be kept private, simply because you don't want to be restricted in any way. You don't want to constantly worry about things, like who's gonna see this? What will people think about this? Etc.

Implementing Visual Thinking

Once you have started to keep a visual diary, you will find that many problems take on visual aspects. And you can start to solve these problems using various techniques. One such a technique involves you to write down a list of words pertaining to the problem. Once this is done, simply draw a picture of every word. And then let your brain do the rest.

You will quickly notice that you start coming up with strange and very creative thoughts. Draw these thoughts out. Let your mind create links between these images. Let your clients be part of the process. They will automatically come up with new ideas simply by seeing you draw. Write down all their ideas and draw all the words. You will end up with so much information, that the final solution seems obvious. And even when it's not obvious, you have gained enough knowledge and reference material to further pursue the solution.

This technique relies on the fact that your right-brain handles non-verbal and imagery-based thinking. Which allows you to come up with creative ideas that you will not come up with when using your, rational and numerical, left-brain. It is a good approach to visual thinking and should be employed a lot.

I will be posting more techniques, so remember to FOLLOW me. And please UPVOTE my lessons.