A unifying theory of visual and listening art/execution
Feb 9, 2026
As I’m learning Adobe Illustrator I am confident asserting a theory of the underlying “skill set being exercised” in both visual “art” and being good at playing music
I’ve understood for years (via jazz training) that really what you’re good at when you’re actually good at music is your ear aka listening. Playing an instrument is secondary/flows from that. And voila I in fact can play multiple instruments in a cool way because my ear is strong
So really the music you make/the playing you do is an expression of what your ear is capable of/thinks is cool. And you’re constantly improvising against that ear. Again this is taught/well-understood in jazz training
Ok so I’ll assert that it’s the same with visual arts. But with your eye instead of your ear. So presumably then (symmetrically) it’s not really about the mechanics of drawing/etc, it’s about having a visually stylish eye. I’ve noticed/believed for years that people who are visually artistic tend to have good eyesight and perhaps correspondingly cool-looking eyes
Ya no sh** they probably live in a world of visual gag. And so then “the ideas in their head” (aka their “eye”) are cooler than yours visually. And more “precise”/”high-fidelity”
So ya they probably don’t sit there violently tearing the paper attempting to somehow all of a sudden be good at drawing when they make art. They probably see what they’re going for clearly in their head/”eye” and then get good-enough at expressing what they visually “see”/”judge” in whatever visual-art medium
Also if you don’t know visually artistic people tend to be good at all visual-art media