Daily Art Practice: Meditation + Painting (Part 1)
Since September, I’ve been focused on stacking my habits to weave meditation with daily doodlings. It’s been one of the most fulfilling, meaningful exercises I’ve done for myself.
Who woulda thunk it?
Quieting the mind and painting every day is good for busybee artists?
What?!?
The first one was so silly and self-congratulatory - it still makes me chuckle!
I spent about 15-20mins on each of these. I would meditate, calm the voices in my head, breathe, and see what images came up most prominently for me as it related to my emotional and mental state.
The first few were very clunky as I didn’t have a flow yet. I just stuck with numbers to see where that would take me. And eventually that wasn’t interesting to me anymore, so I changed it up.
I gave myself permission to paint anything that came to mind - to try - to experiment - to simply externalize.
The process of creation at these points really helped my inner child selves step out and feel safe to express themselves. Day 11 was young-teenage Estella, for instance, who created her artwork with her Prismacolor pencils. I still have the same exact color pencils as her!
Day 12: the inner critic voices can be so loud. What matters is there’s a part of me that still said “NO.”
Day 15: from my CPTSD healing, I’ve learned to allow myself to feel thru the pain. It can’t be shut out. Healing requires the courage to feel thru.
The latter few, I started playing more with masking tape and exploring what I could do with flowy paints and creating literal boundaries.