When art and anxiety hug…
When the pandemic really hit our area of the world we truly thought it would be 2-4 weeks long. Never did we imagine the magnitude and the impact it would have on everyone in so many ways. Being a stay at home mom of two young boys, I was honestly a little excited to get to have us all home. My husband began working from home full-time and it was kind of special. Until it wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE my family, of course, but I’m also one of those people that NEEDS time to reset, with quiet.
Most days I was touched out by 9AM and was running on fumes both with my sleep (it’s never been great) and my patience. Something had to give. I had to find something to help me be a better person for my family. I didn’t get there quickly (truthfully I’m still working on it). Along the way I had many days where I beat myself up over loosing my cool, getting frustrated at yet another full sink of dirty dishes, another boo boo, more laundry and “starving” kids. I would put the boys to bed, have a couple of glasses of wine and go to sleep so mad at myself, promising myself that I would be better the next day.
This cycle went on for months and months.
I began to become dependent on my glasses of wine each day and depending on how difficult the day was, mentally, I’d indulge in more wine.
I would wake up with increased anxiety and I’d be so hard on myself. While trying to disguise as a happy mom with patience on social media and with my friends I began to slowly crumble. I was trying to run a successful art business and I could feel the self loathing becoming so incredibly dense that my brain was getting more and more dark. I was trying to find light, any light. Often it would be the sweet giggling sounds from a tickling with the boys, a favorite song would come on, or I would see an art sale from my website.
Ultimately I put two and two together to try and figure out how I can really fix this and not just put a bandaid on it.
I decreased my alcohol intake by about 90% for starters. This ALONE enabled me to wake up not hating myself with writhing anxiety. I didn’t really believe that this would help me so much or honestly, I would have done it sooner.
This relief in crippling anxiety gave me the headspace to try to create, even if only for 10 min. I began thinking of what I could do in just 10 min that was creative.
I found contour drawing.
This practice only takes a few minutes of my time, allows for me to concentrate on something and form a deep connection between my brain and my hand with no expectations. This was truly eye-opening and freeing.
The primary goal of blind contour drawing is to focus your attention on what you’re actually looking at in front of you, rather than what you think your brain is seeing.
Th way you’d approach a typical drawing is mostly done from your short-term memory. You look at your subject and then look down to draw it—not from what you see in front of you in that exact moment but from the memory of having just looked at it. Contour drawing is one exercise that you can use to see all of the details and really look at your subject rather than drawing from memory.
Now, I prefer flowers, as they are forgiving with their organic shapes and how each ones differs from the next.
Above is a contour drawing I did of a flower bud.
I just followed the lines around the bud without lifting my pen once and when I was done I released my pen to look down at my creation for the first time and was in awe. Not only had I tried something new, but I was proud of what I saw.
In less than 60 seconds I was able to accomplish creating and making myself proud. That alone is priceless. I knew that this was my art giving my anxiety a hug and saying, “I’ll take it from here.”
Click HERE to check out my favorite contour flower I’ve done. And click HERE to see it tattooed on me :)
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