Where to Start When Exploring Art

by Jocelyn Long

Art can be intimidating. The art store itself is intimidating enough. There are countless materials you can choose from, some more complex than others. If your finished art piece doesn’t come out the way you want it to, it’s easy to feel defeated and insecure about your artistic abilities. This causes some people to become discouraged and sometimes uninspired to create any sort of art at all. 

However, there are some simpler and more welcoming places to start. The truth behind art is that anyone can do it. Finding your creative side can give you a sense of agency and help your mind find its place of peace. A simple yet powerful point of encouragement for those of you who feel this sense of intimidation is this:

Art is GOOD for you.

“Creativity in and of itself is important for remaining healthy — remaining connected to yourself and remaining connected to the world.” 

– Girija Kaimal, Making Art is Good for Your Health, Here’s How to Make it a Habit

Here are some ideas and activities on how you can ease into your personal creative journey…  

Doodle more

This can be as simple as squiggles and lines. Not only is doodling known to improve memory and help us concentrate, it can also provide relief of psychological distress! It’s a great first step into the world of art because you are engaging your creative flow with simple marks and movements. 

Keep an art journal

Having a journal and a writing utensil in your everyday bag or on your desk is another simple way to start art. 

Don’t know what to draw? Start with whatever’s in front of you. Sketching a simple object can foster the muscle for quiet observation, focus, and form-making, and boost one’s confidence.  You could also assign yourself art journaling prompts throughout the week to keep you motivated.

The more you add to your journal, the more you’ll be able to look back on and watch your skills develop!

Here are a few examples from my own journal…

           

Let go of expectations

It’s important to let yourself loose and have fun with whatever you’re making. Many people restrict themselves from letting go of expectations, which causes feelings of defeat if the outcome of the piece isn’t what the person wanted. The act of art making itself is what relieves stress and releases positive energy, not how or what you’re making!

Explore the internet

The internet has become a good friend of mine when I’m lacking inspiration. A reference photo is always helpful when you have no idea what to draw or if you can’t seem to picture what something looks like in your head. I have found Pinterest to be a great place to learn techniques for figure drawing, watercolor painting, and knitting.

When you’re feeling more confident with your artistic abilities, explore new mediums.

Art is more than just drawing! Art can be baking, interior design, fashion, makeup, print making, photography, etc. I started my journey as an artist with pencils and paper, eased into watercolor painting, and now work primarily with oil paint. The beauty of art is that you can always try something new. 

“[Art] develops the capacity for close observation, introspection, patience, and humility—vital attributes during a time when the chaos of politics and technology dominate our days. Drawing, sketching, doodling, diagraming, or whatever you call it, is also a useful problem-solving tool, because it helps one visualize ideas and hunches.”

– Anne Quito, How to Draw: Tips to Overcome the Fear of Drawing

A Day in the Virtual Life

This pandemic has hit us all with various challenges, whether it involves work, school, or relationships. We have had to adapt to a new normal, which consists of remembering to wear your mask, using plenty of hand sanitizer, distancing yourself from others, and trying to stay in good health. 

For those of you who live at home with parents, siblings, roommates, or needy pets, you know it’s not as easy to get work done. On top of your real-life responsibilities you have lingering thoughts on the challenges the world is facing. 

Believe it or not, there is a bright side to this quarantine. Not being able to go out as much as you used to may be making you feel irritable and restless. However, having more free time allows for new opportunities (like art!). I challenge you to reimagine this time and use it as a way to explore your inner self, and learn new ways to self-express. Artistic expression provides benefits for mental health such as personal development, increased confidence, emotional stability, and stress relief. Find some free time in your day or your week to engage in creative flow.

How to cope with a shared space while online learning and working

Firsthand experience has led me to know that it can feel impossible to focus and get work done with others sitting in the same space as you. Constant distraction can make you feel helpless and stress ultimately builds on top of itself. For many, this new environment has taken a toll on motivation, focus, grades, etc.

Here are some pointers that have worked for me on how to manage work and learning in a shared space:

1. Communicate with one another. Let your family members or roommates know your schedule for the day. If you have an important meeting, phone call, or class, address the people around you and respectfully ask that they are quiet during that time.
2. Clean up your workspace, Minimize distractions! Clutter only gives you more to focus on that is not your work. Keeping a clean and tidy space can help your mind stay on track. 
3. Personalize your workspace. Whether it’s on the sofa or in the corner of a room at a desk, personalizing your workspace to what is aesthetically pleasing to you can help keep your mind at ease. It can also be a fun free time activity! Try one or a few of the art activities that are listed below as a way to personalize your space.
4. Organize a schedule of your day. Try to write down from the beginning to the end of your day when you are going to be working and when you will be giving yourself breaks. This will keep you from falling behind or from overworking and burning yourself out. 
5. Prioritize your needs and engage in SELF CARE. This is crucial for everyone. Come up with at least one self-care activity to do each day (preferably something that doesn’t involve a screen). Eat right, drink water, prioritize sleep, and ask for help from others when needed. Reading, journaling, yoga or meditation, creating art, going for a walk, or playing with a pet are all some examples that I enjoy most. 

Art activities to try for YOU

These art activities are meant to give you freedom to find a creative flow and make something that makes you happy.

Mandala Art

Mandala means “sacred circle” in Sanskrit, which is a traditional concept employed in meditation and a ritual symbol that represents the universe in Hinduism and Buddhism. Mandala art is used as an art therapy technique for individuals to focus more on their inner state and creative flow, and less on the issues that swim in your head. As you create your mandala, which can be as simple or intricate as you like, try to focus on your breathing to help find a peaceful state of mind. 

Materials: 

• Paper
• Pen/pencils/markers

Steps: 

1. Start with a center point. 
2. Create shapes and lines around your center point in an organized manner until you are satisfied with your mandala. Use colors that are calming to you and find your flow!

Scrap paper collage

This activity is meant to give you full freedom of your creative expression. The outcome of the finished piece is supposed to appear when you feel most satisfied!

Materials:

• Colored paper OR printer paper
• Markers/pens/pencils
• Glue OR tape
• Scissors (optional)

Steps:

1. Create doodles, shapes, or patterns on paper.
2. Rip or cut up the paper into smaller pieces.
3. On a whole sheet of paper, place and glue/tape the scrapped pieces of paper as you wish to make a collage of your work! 🙂

Poem doodles

Materials:

• Pen
• Paper
• Markers/colored pencils

Steps:

1. Find a poem that you resonate with.
2. Print it out or rewrite it on a piece of paper.
3. Create a doodle to reflect on how you feel about the poem.

This craft idea was inspired by @sistercody, an artist that I follow on Instagram. He writes poems and creates drawings to go along with them. He focuses on mental health and promoting self-love. 

Here’s an example of his work:

Knitting 

Materials: 

• Knitting needles
• Yarn

Steps to start a knitting project depends on what you wish to create! Here is a helpful link to show you how to begin: How To Knit for Beginners – Sheep and Stitch

 With knitting, the repetitive hand motions create an “active reward activity” in which the mind and body work together to focus on a specific task. This can have a calming, meditative effect. 

Anxiety builds up. There are layers to it, such as apprehensions about in person and remote learning and working, the feeling that nothing, nowhere, and no one is completely safe, and the unknowns of this pandemic. I hope this gives you some ideas on how to cope during what feels like an endless quarantine and emphasizes the point that you are not alone in how you are feeling!

“The act of making art itself is tied to the ability to go into a mindful framework in the practice of self-care and self-compassion.”

Mallory Braus and Brenda Morton, Art Therapy in the Time of COVID-19

Creative Self Care

“Art has the possibility to uplift the spirit, incite revolution, provide a sense of agency and power, and be an important piece of the healing process.”  – Owen Paul Karcher, Sociopolitical Oppression, Trauma, and Healing: Moving Toward a Social Justice Art Therapy Framework

2020 has given us an endless list of issues to stress about. Social media, the news, and even the grocery store are all sources that feed into this stress. To counter the effects of this stress, I invite you to take some time out of your day or your week to gather some art materials and allow yourself to unwind. The activities listed below can be done on your own, with roommates, or with family members. Art has the power to shift one’s focus away from negative thoughts that may be causing stress or anxiety. It brings the mind into a world of relaxation and can lead to the discovery of thoughts and emotions one may not have been aware of.

Below is a list of project ideas that will allow you to slow down, breathe, and positively reflect on yourself. These activities could be done with a group or they can be solo projects.

Make a Vision Board

Materials:

Paper, glue, scissors, and clippings from newspapers, printouts, or magazines. You could even use a marker or pen to draw images or words!

Steps:

1. Pick out images and words that resonate with you and your interests. These should represent a goal that you want to reach or habits that you would like to develop in the future.
2. Glue these images and words onto your paper as you like.
3. Display your vision board in a place where you will always see it! 

Vision boards allow you to tangibly see what you would like to see happen in your life. The more you look at your vision board and think about the aspirations you included on it, the more likely they will happen! Your brain is a powerful tool. If you continuously visualize and remind yourself what you would like to see happen in your life, your thoughts, feelings, and actions will align subconsciously. While there may always be things in our life we don’t have control over and external barriers that can make it challenging to reach our ideals, visioning where we want to be instead focusing only on what prevents us from getting there can help motivate us to find and access the supports, resources and tools to overcome the challenges that may be out of our control.

Vision boards help give you clarity when you find yourself at a ‘stop’ in life. It can help remind you of your goals and what you’re working for. They can help you gain a spark of motivation and positive vitality whenever you look at the visions you’ve creatively expressed on your vision board.

Sunshine Gratitude

This is another simple activity that requires as many or as little materials as you wish.

Materials: Paper, pencil/pen/markers

Steps: 

1. On your sheet of paper, draw half of a sun coming from either side of the page (make sure you include the sun rays).
2. In the middle of the sun write “I am grateful for…”
3. On each sun ray, write a person, object, or life aspect that you are grateful for.

When you are finished with your gratitude sun, hang it up in a place where you will notice it every day. Like the vision board, this will help remind you of the important and positive things in your life. During these unprecedented times, it’s likely there will be days that you feel down in the dumps and anxious about life. The sun of gratitude will be a reminder of all of the bright things that you are grateful for even when things are hard. Learning how to hold both the light and the dark at the same time is a skill that can help you gain resilience in the face of hardship. The sun still shines on cloudy days. 

A Card from Your Future Self

Materials: Paper, pencils/pens, markers

Steps:

1. On the front of your card, create an image that portrays how you would like to see your life in the future.
2. On the inside of the card, write a note from your future self. This could include advice, ideas of where you are envisioning yourself, a list of what you are grateful for, etc. 

This activity is not only exciting for your future self to find later on, but it allows for you to instill some sort of hope for your future self. Times can be difficult around the holidays for some, especially in a pandemic. It can be hard to imagine your life in a better light when you’re surrounded by negative voices and events. A note to your future self can serve as a reminder that whatever current struggles you are facing will not last forever and things will change. 

Intention Word Art

Materials: Paper, markers/colored pencils

Steps:

1. Choose an intention word that you want to implement into your week, this month, or for the upcoming new year. 
2. Write the word as large as you can on your piece of paper.
3. Fill in the space with patterns, colors, and images that represent your feelings towards the word you chose.

This activity is simple yet effective. The process of doodling and coloring will bring you relaxation and the result will help remind yourself of whatever intention you choose. Holding onto an intention will give you something to commit to and work for. It helps you focus on what is truly important to you, which can help you through tough moments in life.

Art is a form of self-expression that can be explored in numerous ways. You don’t have to be artistically “talented” or “gifted” to pick up a brush or marker. These activities are meant for you to explore more of your creative mind and shift your focus to something that is less stressful than the news. Take a deep breath, find some markers, paper, a quiet spot in your house, and let your creativity flow.

Art for your kids!

It’s the weekend…do you have plans? How will your children be spending their time?  How about with an art activity that is simple, fun and educational…

This little video from YouTube is a cute demonstration of a super easy, SUPER affordable creative activity for your little ones. With just 3 simple ingredients you likely already have in your kitchen (milk, dish soap, food coloring) your kids will be entertained endlessly with the magic of mixing colors and creating marbleized shapes and designs.  Plus it’s educational and enriching for all ages. What will they learn? Relationships between cause and effect, colors, color mixing, sensory integration, just to name a few.

Put the screens away and try this out!

Try this variation too:

• food coloring and shaving cream (or whipped cream for an edible version): spread a layer of cream on a tray, drop some food coloring on top, swirl the colors with a toothpick, press some white paper down on the design. Remove the paper and wipe away the cream to see your designs on the page! Use the paper in crafts: make a book, make a collage, write a letter…the possibilities are endless.

click the photo for more great ideas from a Whirled Tree favorite resource.

Does making art make you happier?

“…When you engage yourself artistically and use your imagination you can help regulate your blood pressure and your heart rate.”

About a year ago I came across a video on YouTube while looking up art projects to use with a group of adolescent girls at an outpatient treatment center. It’s a video posted by Soul Pancake in a series they did on the science of happiness.  If you haven’t seen Soul Pancake’s videos yet, you are missing out.  They are the perfect balance of inspiration, humor and education and this little number on art therapy became one of my favorite go to demonstrations on what art therapy is, how it can be applied in practice and how a simple reflective art exercise can literally make you feel better. Instantly. No lie. I’ve seen it happen time and again and this video captures that magic perfectly.

Check out the video for yourself and if the spirit moves you, give the exercise a try! We’d love to hear how it went for you! Write to us here or send us a picture or video through our website, http://www.whirledtree.org/contact-us.html

Make art and be happy!

A Quote to Inspire the Artist in Each of Us

Many people we’ve run into seem to think they aren’t artists because they can’t draw or paint anything more than a stick figure (at best).

At Whirled Tree Arts, we like to believe that if you can make a mark on a page then you can make art.  Our art is about the process, not the product.  What’s good art or bad art? What’s pretty versus ugly? If you had fun doing it, does it matter what it looks like? If it expresses a thought, feeling or idea that has value to you, then shouldn’t the image and the experience of making the image have value too?

As this quote states, the desire to create is a natural part of being human.  Don’t deny the urge! We dare you to pick up a pencil or pen and make a little something today. Perhaps it will be the best, most liberating stick figure you’ve made since you were twelve…