Art THerpay

Hi @Pulch

Welcome to the forums, hope you find lots of support and friends here. I have struggled with ED for over 25 years so I can relate to how difficult that is; it has been pretty much under control for the last 10 or so, so long as I dont trigger it off again by doing something like diet or weigh myself - those ar no-nos for me.

For me NLP and Hypnosis were the most helpful things.

It is great that you found Art Therapy useful - I have been itching to try out Art Therapy for a while. I have Brene Brown's book, but I haven't read it all the way through - were the art therapy techniques written about in the book or was this therapy based on the book by yurself or someone else?

@grubbytoes I love your name! And it nice to hear that someone enjoys smooshing around colour to Pink Floyd!

@grubbytoes, I second @chookmojo, love your name and profile pic.

@Pulch and @grubbytoes @chookmojo Can I ask what you do with your art afterwards. Do you keep it, to look at and reflect on later?

I'm a writer, and when I write for therapeutic purposes very rarely do I go back and look at it. Just wondering what others do...

At the moment I'm on the move, travelling a lot so I keep everything in sketchbooks. When I have too many sketchbooks I mail them back home to Australia but sometimes it hurts a little having to do this because they tend to be a reference for my thinking, and also a collection of visual ideas that I like to come back to when I create new pieces.

When I was back in Aus, I used to draw and paint on very large (A1 or A0) pages or canvases and sometimes I got into the habit of grouping things into 3 categories: Like, Don't like, and Maybe. It was always fun to flick back through the piles and often I liked a lot of what was in the 'don't like' pile, or I got new ideas just by looking at something I had forgotten about.

Most of my art is not finished pieces, but rather a visual experiment or exploration, or visual notes I have collected about how other artists represent things. The pieces I tend to like the most are the self-therapy kind of stuff I do when I am on a low day with my Bipolar and I feel like my body is being flooed with all sorts of mood chemicals. Rather than being analytical visual experiments, the art I create on these days is much MUCH more intuitive, there's no real thinking or judgment or generating ideas in that process, it's more like a dream-ish kind of state where I just doodle aimlessly and let the lines and colours find their own way across the page. Because I'm not painting to create a picture, just to sooth myself with a kind of meditative activity, I think it generates a lot of diverse visual ideas that I would notmally squash with my more analytical side, if that makes any sense?

Oh! and my name, grubbytoes, I'm glad you like it. I chose it because it kind of connects with things I love about the beauty of imperfection and messiness, having my feet on the earth, travel, childlike curiosity, and I kind of have a passionate love affair with my feet!

@Pulch and anyone else who's keen to share, I'd love to hear more about your art process, what you do with your art, what you get out of it, or anything else you can share.

I used to think my feet were the best part of me too @grubbytoes and I indulged a little wonderlust a long time ago ...

@CherryBomb Much of my writing has not been re-read ... maybe I will get time to craft it a bit ... one day.

Tomorrow my writing group is launching an anthology ... we are going to have workshops and a dinner to celebrate ... and a friend invited me to a lunch before ...

Have you ever published in Blue Dog?

With art I keep anything that I like even ONE line of... though I seldom go back through things. With writing I usually skim over it everynow and again and mostly turf it out, I have only kept a very little bit.

oh oh!!! pick me pick me!

i have studied and practiced and worked art therapy in my early working years and loved it.

Theres soooooooo many different things you can try.

One of my favs were to chose 5 emotions you have: 3 positive and 2 not so much the best.

Then make up a random story about them- the emotions are the characters of the story.....

or if your not much of a writer you can draw out each character as a cartoon- i use to draw mine out as monsters ( only because i love them).

Example:

Bubbly

Determined

Creative

Critical

Fear

One day Bubbly thought it was a nice day to go to the beach- every one agreed, Determined thought best if she packed every thing for every one. Creative wanted to take ALL of her art supplies But Critical didnt like any of her clothes for the season. Fear was worried she might see an ex boyfriend while they were there and was second guessing the whole trip.....

I love that idea @Baboo, so here goes...

5 emotions (3 positive, 2 not so positive)

compassion
irritation
boredom
fun
peace

Compassion and Irritation went to the beach. They walked peacefully along the sand without talking at all. Then Peace joined them. And Boredom was drawn out of interest to the seaside to join them. Fun danced along towards them, irresistibly attracted to the alchemy of the foursome. Now to become five happy, irritated, bored, compassionate and peaceful people walking together along the shore.