Hey, ho! Any other grumps out there? Scaredy-cats? Cry babies? Yep, I’m raising my hand to all three. Because, through years of depression, therapy, reading, and studying, I’ve finally accepted the idea that the only way to deal with our emotions is to allow ourselves to feel them. And as an artist, I’ve found that drawing is the most powerful way for me to feel and experience my emotions. Some people recommend therapy, exercise, or meditation, and that’s all well and good.
But the amazing thing about drawing is that it allows me to literally SEE my emotions. After drawing, I can see this abstract, ambiguous feeling in a concrete, tangible way. Seeing the emotion right there in front of my eyes allows me to move from a state of unconscious feeling into a conscious state of understanding. Once we can understand our emotions, we can then begin to really unpack them and choose how we want to respond to them.
In this class, I’m going to take you through four emotions, Anger, Fear, and Sadness, Hopelessness, and show you my own personal drawing method that I use to experience and process that emotion.
I’ve distilled each method down into concrete steps and even given them their own fancy names: Angry Animal Robots, Scaredy-Cat Rugs, Me and My Blobbies, and Wonky Spirals.
For each emotion I’ll walk you 4 sections:
- How We Feel It – with some brief research on the emotion and my own experiences with it
- How to Draw It – with insights I’ve learned about drawing while in the midst of that emotion
- The Drawing Method – with a step by step video walkthrough showing a recent real-life example
- The Aftermath – What happens during and after the drawing and why it works
