Drawing helps

Drawing can help you in your life in different ways. Do you feel depressed, are you upset, do you have your period or are you just feeling restless, drawing helps. And I don't mean drawing from an artistic assignment. I mean drawing to give your feelings a place, even if you don't want to talk about it.

We agreed that talking is the best way to communicate for the narrator to the receiver. But no matter how extensive our language is, not everything can be captured in words.

For example, think of a tree. You probably think of a different tree than me. And yet we both use the word 'tree' for that image.

Tree is a good word, but if I put a picture with the word 'tree' then you know better which tree I am talking about. And talking about feelings is sometimes even harder.

Drawing is a way to support your thinking in pictures. This is useful for various reasons.

Connecting words to feelings is sometimes difficult. But your feeling can also have a color or it is the way you draw that ventilates the feeling.

You can also better organize your thoughts if you think in pictures. By drawing lines, repeating patterns or focusing on the line that your pencil makes, you make what you do mindful and soften the thoughts and feelings. They are still there, and they may be there, they are part of life, but they are less sharp. By repeating the same form over and over again, certain thoughts get no attention and disappear. This way you make room in your head for peace.

You practice drawing to make your focus mindful. It does not matter what shape you draw. Zentangle is therefore very popular.

If you do this regularly, for example every day, there will be room for more intuition. You may also be drawing other things, or you would like to draw other things.

Maybe time for the next step? We tend to draw what we already know and not what we see. Here is a little trick from Ralph Ammer, how you can switch of what you know. Instead of drawing an object, focus on the spaces between the object and draw those.

This may be strange to read, but it helps you to come up with new forms and new ideas.

Take a daily item and look at it for a while. Put your pencil on paper and draw the lines that you see around the object that you want to draw. These are new shapes and you will find that you have drawn the item you chose! Two birds with one stone.

I recently found my drawing diary from 2013. I made a chalk drawing every day. Daily drawings, abstract drawings, "ugly" drawings and "beautiful" drawings. Once such a book is completely full and you have a document full of drawings, you can start organizing them again. By sorting them in different ways, you discover new connections that inspire new ideas.

Looking at these steps, I feel an enormous urge to let go of my morning pages and start to draw again. These steps feel like steps to create from the heart. And so I did this week. Every night before going to sleep, I grabbed my crayons and draw. No specific things, just random. Sometimes I took small notes on the back or on the edge. A great way to create from the heart again. I know that if I put my inspiration on paper from there, the most beautiful things will happen.