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Creative Self-Care: Drawing as a Meditation

Hello, my name is Jennifer Patterson, and this path focuses on Creative Self-Care: Drawing as a Meditation. I am a psychotherapist and art therapist, and I believe that we can all benefit from adding a little creative self-care into our lives. It doesn’t matter if you already make art or haven’t picked up a crayon since you were a kid. We all have a little spark of creativity inside of each of us, sometimes we just need a little push in that direction. Art-making can sound intimidating, and I am here to help you start putting your pen to paper. Creative self-care is good for you because it can get you out of your head and into the present moment, helping to ground you so that you forget everything else for a few minutes. Playing with creativity can allow us the space to release the events of our day. Please join me in playing with three simple drawing exercises, and then feel free to create your own drawing combining all of the exercises.

Fixed Steps
step 1

There are a few simple rules for this path, and these are the good kind of rules. What is the good kind of rules? The kind that gives you permission to meet yourself where you are at and be out of your head and in the moment. Creative self-care is about process, not product... how does it make you feel, where do you feel it in your body is more important than what you make.

step 2

I draw on practically any surface available to me. Notepads, grocery lists, napkins, printer paper, sketchbooks. For this path, use whatever you have around the house or treat yourself to a new sketchbook, preferably one that you can carry around because once you get into this, you’ll want to doodle or draw instead of zone out on your phone.

step 3

Just a few tips and possibilities to get started... these are just suggestions and not have-tos.

step 4

Circles can be very meditative for some people. Circles also do a good job at holding space, holding thoughts, holding feelings. We might also call them mandalas and use them in purposeful ways. This is an opportunity to explore how circles feel to you.

step 5

Lines, lines, lines! Do lines feel calming or the opposite? Is the repetition soothing? Everyone experiences these things differently... give it a try and notice how it makes you feel.

step 6

Shapes! Which shapes feel familiar to you? Is a triangle more comfortable than a hexagon? Maybe you're more into an octagon or a rectangle. This is your opportunity to explore what shape makes sense to you.

step 7

So you’ve practiced drawing circles, hatch lines, and other geometric shapes. Now it is time to think about composition.

step 8

Now that you’ve done the three exercises, and are thinking about your project, I’m sure you want to know what’s the meditation part? Well, you already did it! Huh? What do you mean?

step 9

Sometimes it is also nice to add a bit of writing to the drawing/doodling process. And sometimes a drawing creates the writing which creates another drawing, and so on.

Repeat Steps
step 1

Okay, now you've done this little creative self-care exercise, so what's next?

Tags: self-care, self-love, compassion for self, compassion, creativity, drawing, meditation, wellness, feelings, grounding