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Notes -
Most artists I've encountered draw from reference photos or reality most of the time, not from memory or imagination, so visual memory doesn't come up all that much. But then I mostly follow more traditional naturalist artists, not sci-fi or fantasy ones.
Personally, my painting and drawing skills are alright, while my visual memory and imagination are quite weak. On the other hand, it actually is important in art to Notice, which is partially involuntary. I attended a cloud painting workshop a couple of months ago, my painting was decent, and to this day every time I see a cloud, I involuntarily evaluate the lighting conditions, shape, visual density, and warm and cool tones in the clouds in my field of vision. This is annoying! I don't like it! I tried teaching it, and 9/10 children just made up a cloud from imagination, despite having a window and a stack of reference photos, but I probably could have insisted we all start drawing the same one or something, and corrected them if it had been important.
Most people are able to learn to draw if they're motivated enough to be willing to stare at a bunch of different things until they see, not the thing, but the values of the thing, the negative spaces, the shapes, the light, and so on -- but plenty of people don't actually want to do that, it's kind of annoying to look at a flower and see a bunch of shapes and values. Most people resist staring at a single thing for three hours, and are therefore not much good at visual art; it's probably related to natural wiring. I'm curious to see whether I can teach my daughter to draw and paint, since she's way more hyper than me, but likes art and craft things. I'm thinking probably when she's 12, but have given up on the Polgar method of art teaching with her.
Artists working on things like games/comics/animation/etc will of course use as much reference as they can. But you can't expect to have a perfect reference for every conceivable thing you might need to draw. A strong ability to improvise is required too.
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