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5 meditative art exercises as prompts to kickstart your creativity

Do you ever feel that like getting out your art materials but get stuck when you stare at the blank page? Here are 5 prompts to get you going. Treat them as meditations, quietening your inner critic and allowing yourself to be playful.

  1. Go outside and collect some interesting shaped leaves/stones/bark. Trace the shapes over and over on a page until they overlap and create new organic shapes. Use color (watercolor, pastels, colored pencils, whatever you have) to explore new shapes that the overlapping creates.

  2. Sit in a chair with a sketchbook in front of you. Close your eyes and gently find the breath in your body. Feel the breath entering and leaving the body, cool on the way in and warm on the way out. Accompany your breath as you would a dear friend on a walk. Sit for about 10 breaths or however many you feel that you need. Open your eyes and imagine what your breath came upon on its journey through your body: a thought, a feeling, an obstacle...Make a map of this journey in your sketchbook marking in your way either through words or shapes it’s visual representation.

  3. Sit in a quiet place. Write down the first word that pops into your brain in the middle of the page. Take a pencil and/or colored pencils and doodle around or on top of the word. Think about the colors that you associate with this word. Have fun!!

  4. Get a brush and black ink or paint and your paper or sketchbook. Put on some music (jazz, classical, rock whatever you’re in the mood for) and allow your brush to meander across the page in time to the music. If you like you can change the music and see how your marks change. Try to hold the brush in different ways so that the marks become varied, alternating with light and heavy brushstrokes.

  5. Take the drawing that you did in #3 and turn it over. Cut the page into around 8 pieces. Then rearrange them by putting them together in new ways. Try a few different options and when you have something that feels satisfying, glue them together on a new sheet of paper.

    ENJOY the healing power of art making!
    THIS IS THE TONE OF MANY OF MY CLASSES/WORKSHOPS/RETREATS. If you want to learn more

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