Sharpieãâ® Art Workshop Techniques Ideas for Transforming Your World Pdf

The holidays are finally here, bringing an onslaught of family unit, food and, for many of the states, stress on stress. Whether you lot're dreading endless conversations with your smashing aunt Judith or getting anxious over the prospect of impending New Year's resolutions, may we humbly suggest y'all let your creative side serve every bit a sort of internal massage.

Art therapy is a form of therapy predicated on the belief that creative expression has the power to help us in healing, in self-esteem or simply in chilling out. It'south unique in that most other forms of therapy rely on language as the foremost mode of communication, whereas fine art requires something different, something harder to define.

We're not art therapists, and the techniques below are only suggestions based on practices familiar to the art therapy community. But for those hungry for a artistic outlet to salve the tension that tends to build up this time of yr, the practices beneath may help. They require few materials and no artistic background -- in fact, the less art y'all make, the amend. The following suggestions are less about the final product, and more virtually the transformation that occurs forth the way.

Behold, 37 art therapy techniques to assist you lot relax this season.

1. Design a postcard you lot don't intend to send

Whether it's a dearest annotation to someone yous're not set to confess your feelings to, or an aroused rant yous know is meliorate left implied, sometimes enumerating all the details helps deflate the outcome at mitt. While writing the text tin be therapeutic in its own right, designing the postcard gives even more value to the object. It also allows you to actuate different portions of your brain while relaxing in a way similar to coloring in a coloring book. Once you toss that signed and sealed letter in the trash (or tuck it away in a drawer), y'all'll notice its message has lost some of its power.

2. Cut and paste a painting to create a collage

Create a painting on a textile like paper or cardboard. When you're finished, cut or tear it up. Then apply the pieces as building blocks for a new artwork -- a collage. See how your original artwork transforms into something new and exciting, something unpredictable. This exercise illuminates the close proximity between creation and destruction, encouraging us to take risks to push ourselves creatively and in other aspects of life.

3. Build an altar to a loved one

Take inspiration from folk art and create an altar honoring a unique relationship between you and some other person, living or not. Decorate the shrine with photographs, letters and relics of memorable times spent together, as well as new fine art objects you've created in their award. Annihilation can become artistic material, from gifts you lot've exchanged to a processed wrapper you know your subject would dear. Building a totem to some other person awakens memories and creates a physical manifestation of a relationship that can provide comfort in tough times.

4. Draw in full darkness

So much of the stress nosotros experience when making art comes from the judgments and criticism that seem unavoidable every step of the way. Effort creating artwork in total darkness to make art free from that fine art critic within your caput. Think of it as a form of blind profile drawing. You're suddenly freed up to create lines, shapes and patterns merely because yous feel like y'all should. When y'all turn back on the lights, we suspect yous'll be surprised by what y'all find.

5. Watercolor your bodily country

Prevarication down and close your optics. Visualize your body as you breathe in and out. Endeavor to imagine your breath as a particular color as it enters your trunk, another color every bit it exits. What practice you lot run into? Draw an outline of a body on a big canvas of paper, and inside, create a watercolor based on your actual country. Think about what these colors mean to you, where they are densest, where they are most opaque. Remember of this as the most relaxing self-portrait you'll ever create.

6. Create a Zentangle-inspired cosmos

Zentangle is a drawing method invented by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas, designed to brand cartoon meditative and accessible to all. To learn the official method you must be taught by a Zentangle Instructor, but yous tin can recreate the basic idea on your ain. Use a piece of newspaper, cut into a 3.5-inch foursquare piece, and draw a freehand edge around the edge in light pencil. Then use your pencil to depict a curved line or squiggle inside the border, called a "string."

Now switch to a pen and brainstorm drawing a "tangle," a serial of patterns and shapes around your "string" and voila! Y'all got yourself a Zentangle. The process is designed to encourage deliberate, ritual creation and allow room for human error -- no erasing, that'due south confronting the rules. Traditional Zentangles are always black and white but we fully back up experimenting with color. The entire process shouldn't take more 15 minutes, and can be repeated whenever you feel the urge. Keep some squares handy and then you tin always create when inspiration strikes.

7. Produce a permission slip

Think of the societal and self-imposed pressures you experience on a twenty-four hour period-to-day basis, the personal traits y'all see equally faults, the natural slips you see as errors. Choose one of these things and requite yourself, in ornamental detail, permission to do just that. Turning 1 simple defeat into an accomplishment tin minimize feelings of self-hatred, allowing y'all to attain more of your important goals. Think, it's an art project, and then brand information technology pretty.

viii. Write a found poem

Don't consider yourself a poet? Let someone else do the hard part of coming up with the words by grabbing your fabric from old books, magazines, newspapers or even letters. Cut out words that jump out at or inspire you. Collage your institute materials just as yous would a visual collage. You can accept a topic or story in listen at the beginning, or just get started and encounter where your word collaging takes you.

9. Arts and crafts a mark-making tool unique to y'all

Instead of spending the majority of your time on an actual painting, why non focus a little of that attending on crafting an alternative paintbrush all your own? You tin make a marker-making tool out of about anything, whether information technology's a row of toothpicks glued to a cardboard base and dipped in paint, or a DIY paintbrush made from pom-poms and yarn. When you finally get around to really making a piece with your new tool, you will have relinquished some of your artistic control to your distinct artistic medium, which, of class, is a work of art in itself.

10. Make a forgiveness box

If there is a sure person -- including yourself -- you lot don't want to harbor negative emotions toward whatever longer, try making him or her a forgiveness box. Decorate a small-scale box with soothing images and words that can be either specific to an individual or catered to your desired inner state. You lot can write the person'southward name on a slip of paper and include it in the box if preferred, and the name tin be removed and exchanged if needed. The deed of making the box volition bring upwards happy memories of whomever the box is for, every bit well equally help you physically piece of work toward a place of forgiveness.

eleven. Create a colour collage

Color has the ability to touch our moods. Sometimes, however, instead of using colour to transform our current state of mind, it'due south helpful to accept a moment to delve deep into the color you're currently experiencing. Feeling hot-tempered and uninhibited? Cutting and paste orange images that fit your mood. Working inside your current emotional country can help you make sense of why y'all're feeling the way y'all're feeling and realize that, peradventure, it's not such a bad identify to be.

12. Brand a ability mask

Most often we think of wearing a mask every bit a way to hide something about ourselves, but sometimes this layer of protection and anonymity makes u.s. feel liberated and actually aids in expressing something true, hard and existent. Create a power mask, filled with symbols that make you feel strong (think of an actor's costume or athlete's helmet). You tin can put information technology on when preparing for a rough state of affairs -- whether it'south dinner with the extended family or giving a speech at work -- and show to yourself you can achieve the task at manus with or without the mask.

13. Construct a holiday "anti-calendar"

All besides often calendars are jam-packed with chores, obligations and responsibilities, making the coming days a point of stress more than than solace. Try making a DIY advent calendar, which we've dubbed an anti-calendar. Instead of giving yourself a chocolate each solar day, treat yourself to a compliment, a doodle, an inspiring quote or an encouraging mandate such as "eat breakfast in bed today." If all goes according to plan, you could find yourself bouncing out of bed each morning like a kid on Christmas.

14. Start a putter concatenation

Fact: Information technology's impossible for a doodle to await bad. In one case yous give in to the endless possibilities that occur when wiggly line meets unidentified shape, you'll find it dangerously hard to end drawing. Get-go a putter-axial have on exquisite corpse with a friend or loved i to loosen your attachment to your creation. It's pretty magical to watch your lone squiggle blossom into a spindly beast before your optics. You tin also try this with a pen-pal for a more productive spin on chain mail.

15. Typhoon a portrait of a by self

We're not talking about past lives here, but versions of yourself you experience like y'all've either lost touch on with or outgrown. Whether you're revisiting a stage of innocence, ignorance or just plain difference, using the space betwixt memory and imagination every bit your bailiwick helps illuminate how malleable your self really is. It feels about like reading your old diary for the first fourth dimension in years.

16. Build a wishing tree

Accept a cue from her majesty Yoko Ono and build a physical object to hold your wildest dreams. Use either a existent plant or a tree-similar object you lot create yourself, write your wishes down on paper and hang them, one past one. You tin can invite others to do the same. Writing your hopes and dreams on paper brings you lot a small stride closer to making them real. Not to mention, the little papers resemble blossoming flowers from far away.

17. Paint your ain personal set of Russian dolls

Though we're congenital a little differently -- mainly, not out of wood -- we also have dissimilar layers nestled inside us at all times. What is the self you portray to others? What about to your most trusted loved ones? What remains subconscious underneath? You can either purchase a set of dolls and paint over them or pigment atop a set of cardboard gift boxes or other stackable objects. Experience free to apply images and words to recreate the layers you envision when you remember of yourself.

18. Add on to a masterpiece

Intimidated by a glaring sheet of blank paper? Yep, us also. Instead of starting from scratch, attempt adding onto a canvas you already know and love to boost your confidence and lower the risk. Whether you're applying makeup to the Mona Lisa or filling in the blanks of a Paul Klee paintings with your ain brand of alien creatures, we're sure the original artists would exist honored by your tribute. Who knows? You could become a famed appropriation creative person in the process.

19. Assemble a safe space

This is for the architects amidst us. Remember building a pillow fort as a child? That cozy, secret space for you and only you lot? Take inspiration from the v-year-old inside and build yourself a grown-up fort -- ahem, an art installation. You can create a full-blown tent if you wish or just arrange meaningful items in a cupboard or nether the bed. Contain cornball objects, sometime toys or blankets, twinkly lights -- annihilation that makes you feel removed from the world around you. Put on a soothing song and let the good feelings wash over you.

20. Use crayons

Yup, information technology's that simple. There's something about the crayon's blunt tip and uneven method of coloring that is at once frustrating and liberating. Aye, it'southward difficult to draw a direct line. Yeah, it'south nearly impossible to color in a space without it looking patchy. But that's exactly the point. Allow your artistic imperfections to float to the surface and learn to cherish every homo mistake in your creation. Whatever work you lot create will be distinctly yours, even if it'south not quite museum-worthy.

21. Make an invisible New Yr's resolution visible (and beautiful)

New year's day's resolutions. How did something so seemingly restorative turn into something so incredibly stressful? Instead of promising yourself to floss more than or eat less, focus some attention on an invisible accomplishment, something that'southward either too large or too pocket-size to run into with your eyes. Instead of writing it in the notebook with the residuum of your resolutions, devote some time to making your personal goal into a beautiful object, a visual mantra that inspires you just upon seeing information technology.

22. Create a memory jug

Retentiveness jugs originated with members of Africa's Bakongo communities, who believed the physical world was continued to the spiritual world by water. They frequently decorated graves with water-centric items similar jugs to connect deceased spirits to the waterways that would lead them to the afterlife. The ritual was revived recently as a class of institute art sculpture, or 3D scrapbooking. Use lacquer to adhere found objects to a vase, jug or pot -- whether they remind yous of a specific person, recall a certain time in your life, or just brand you lot smile.

23. Do a doodle a twenty-four hour period

You know what's difficult? Taking time out of a hectic schedule to create a piece of work of fine art when you have absolutely no idea where to kickoff. You know what'due south easy? Taking a few minutes to break from your mean solar day and scribble out a little weirdness, just for the sake of keeping that hand moving. Divide each folio of a sketchbook into fourths and create one simple drawing every day -- actually, if you draw a happy face as your falling asleep it's okay. But getting into the creative rhythm will get your imagination churning. Soon you'll experience more than comfortable with your artistic style and exist struck by inspiration during your daily routine. Yous may even want to spend more than five minutes on a cartoon someday. But worry non, doodles ever look good.

24. Shed your old skin into a sculpture

Okay, this is far less creepy than it sounds. This suggestion is for those doing some early spring cleaning or getting rid of old property -- be they dress, papers, spectacles, buttons, defunct technologies. Instead of tossing away your quondam junk, utilize the materials to create a sculpture of a sometime self, immortalizing the (insert appropriate describing word here) year that was 2014. The sculpture does not have to (and probably won't) look similar you; it can be abstract, geometric, organic or all of the above. Even if the materials seem meaningless at present, they'll become treasures with the passing of fourth dimension, and the ceremony of creating the sculpture provides bully closure in moving on to the new year.

25. Use your non-dominant paw to create

You lot know that Pablo Picasso quote, "All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist in one case he grows upwardly"? Firstly, brand that "he" a "he or she." At present, channel this Picasso-ian sentiment past unlearning anything you've ever learned nigh style, control and subject area by passing your pencil to the other hand. Earlier yous know it, you'll take the uncertain, wiggly, unfettered stroke of a child -- and thus, by the transitive Picasso principle, of a bona fide artist.

26. Craft an intention stick

Whether you call them intention sticks, prayer sticks, wish sticks or talismans, their purpose is the same: to provide a physical object for you to wrap your hands effectually and bring you forcefulness every bit well every bit peace of mind. Intention sticks, which have roots in Hopi and Tibetan traditions, gain their power from the positive energy posited in the stick during its creation -- so basically, make certain y'all're in a adept mood when you make it! Detect a stick that fits perfectly in your hands, retrieve of it similar a magic wand, pigment it and decorate it with mantras or intentions close to your centre. Add string, feathers, glitter, beads and whatever else yous wish and keep the stick in a secret place for when you need information technology virtually.

27. Make your own stencil

If you're having trouble embarking on an artwork itself, how about starting with the artistic medium instead? Yous can make a DIY stencil from a cardboard box, playing card, cereal box -- the list continues. Use scissors to cut out a shape all your own and you tin can make your imprint, quite literally, on whatsoever future artworks or random pieces of paper you happen to encounter. Don't worry about directly lines and perfect proportions; with a handmade stencil, the more rugged the ameliorate.

28. Turn your fears into a (literal) monster

Sometimes the only way to lessen your fears is to face up them head on. Recall virtually something that frightens you, whether information technology's "spiders," "being a bad creative person," "going bankrupt" or "losing my way." Give this fear a shape, a colour and a texture; it tin can be as abstract or symbolic as you lot wish. Creating the beast exterior of you lot will strip your fear of some of its power, specially when comparing it to the (at present often silly) fears we all had as a kid.

29. Craft your own dream guardian

You've heard of a dreamcatcher. We're tweaking the tradition a little fleck, thus freeing upwardly the possibilities of what shapes your new dream guardian tin have. Create a dangling sculpture to hang in a higher place your bed that will watch over you while you sleep. Feel free to utilise the traditional willow hoop with feathers and chaplet, or veer off track and become experimental with cloth, bells, photos, or whatever brings yous peace of mind. Soon you'll have a new friend to keep an heart on yous as your dreams sweep yous off into another globe.

30. Make a painting with no tools merely your trunk

Don't have the fourth dimension (or the funds) to invest in a new batch of art tools? No worries, all you lot need to become creative is your own beautiful torso. Explore the possibilities of your own anatomy -- the plush curves of your fingertip, the sharp edge of your nail, the capabilities of hand and foot and fifty-fifty pilus, if you're feeling assuming. Not only will your canvas end up looking unexpectedly magnificent, simply you'll probably resemble a piece of work of fine art yourself.

31. Revamp a stuffed animal

We've been dying to requite this one a get since nosotros caught a glimpse of Jenny Ottinger's latest exhibition, in which she conducts slightly botched surgeries on stuffed teddy bears, producing jumbled creatures at in one case adorable and creepy. We'd recommend a less frightening version for a therapeutic event. Have a dearest babyhood toy and transform information technology into a work of art, either by patching its holes, replacing its ragged parts or going a more avant-garde route. You'll finally be able to return your beloved teddy to its rightful spot on your bed, while proudly displaying an original objet d'art.

32. Craft a memory rock

Side by side time you have a special day, take a home a gratuitous gift in the form of a rock -- or a receipt, or a brochure, or a leaf; annihilation will practice the trick really. Phone call it your new canvass. Decorate your new keepsake with memories from throughout the day -- however abstract or concrete your creative cocky desires. If you're feeling painter's block, utilize the natural creases and edges of the rock to guide your artful decisions. A few memory rocks downward the route, you'll take a rock garden that instantly conjures recollections of your about joyous days, to help with the glum ones.

33. Channel Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Cursory art history primer: Giuseppe Arcimboldo was a 16th century Italian painter primarily known for his surreal self-portraits made from painted objects like fruit, veggies, books and fish. Channel skillful ole Giuseppe with objects that mean something to you. Whether yous draw, pigment or collage, create a version of that precious punam of yours made from the objects that aid define yous or make your heart flutter -- whether it's your dog, sunflowers or the In-N-Out logo.

34. Make an imperceptible artwork

Practice the art of letting get by creating a work of fine art with an expiration engagement. Work with a fabric that erodes with time -- whether it's a sand castle that washes away in the sea, a chalk mural that fades in the sun, or a drawing attached to a balloon and set into flight. Y'all know what they say, f you lot love something, set up it gratuitous!

35. Paint a mirror or window

Overhaul the concept of a blank canvas by selecting a surface that already tells a vivid story. Utilise pigment to a mirror or window, and permit your brushstrokes mingle with whatever'southward already gracing your uncanny canvass -- be information technology a snowy day or your ain reflection. Just recall of it as makeup's way artsier second cousin.

36. Plough a journal entry into a work of fine art

Whether you lot're cartoon inspiration from last calendar week's misadventure or your third grade trials and tribulations, why not creative a visual adaptation of your own first-person narration? Have an old journal entry -- 1 that was especially poignant, difficult, joyous, or totally arbitrary -- and recreate the text as imagery. Feel free to draw, paint, collage, whatever tin best limited the atmosphere of that one day.

37. Pattern your (artsy) spirit animal

Do you lot have a spirit animate being? Take you never been quite satisfied with the classic genus and species currently available to you? Hither's your chance to craft the imaginary hybrid creature of your wildest fantasies. From a liger to a jellyfish-dragon to a pegasus-zebra, the only limit to the wild animals available to y'all are the zoological limits of your mind.

This postal service is based on a serial of art therapy roundups nosotros've published throughout the past year.

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