15-Minutes Of Art Therapy - Play With Your Inner Child

1. Introduction: Hey, do you remember this carving out drawing technique from your childhood? And do you know what an inner child is? Now, today we are going to connect with our inner child and have some fun with this retro drawing technique on our iPad, so without making any mess. I'm dedicated to personal development and mental health. So I thought that I will bring you 15 minutes of art therapy with some fun exercises that will bring you to the present moment will not have any pressure on you to be perfect or create something beautiful. It is to have some fun and some meditation through creativity and art. Yeah. Basically, that's the point. If you don't know me, I'm the art mother. If you need more info about me, check out my page. But now I'll just get started. 2. Blobs Of Color: Alright, so welcome to today's art therapy session. And I'm sure that you know or remember this drawing technique that we had in our childhood. You know, where we had to, you know, carve shapes into a page that was filled with this black top layer, and there was a colorful paper behind it. And now we are going to try to replicate it in procreate, and it is going to be really fun. And we are going to connect with our inner child. So before we start even the activity, I would love to talk to you about your inner child. If you haven't heard about that, the topic of the inner child can be a really deep topic, and I don't want to go that deep into it. How I love to define the inner child is that it is your most authentic self. When you were a child, and you could, you know, enjoy the moment, be present. Get lost in activities. There was so much more flow. We didn't have the responsibilities. We didn't have the labels. We didn't have the stress and the roles that grew upon us while we were, you know, growing up. So today, I really want you to remember the child version of you. What did you like? What colors did you like? I bet you like drawing if you are watching this. And, well, let's just get started. So the first thing we are going to do is to go to the gallery, create a screen size canvas. First thing I want from you is to go to the color palette, create a new palette. And choose four colors. And I love this orange, this green, this blue, and this pink. You will find this in the resources as well. And the first thing that we are going to do is to fill it with color blobs. I will choose the syrup brush, but you can choose whatever brush you like. And again, I want you to fill the page with colored circles. So fill every area, and while you are doing so, put on some nice music and, you know, just remember some childhood memories, try to go deep into remembering your child version. What kind of a child you were. What did you like to do? I loved to climb trees and buildings. My mother didn't know about that. I was so fun. When she learned about these things when I was an adult and I was not afraid anymore to tell her, I will choose the green, and these shapes can overlap and that don't need to be, like, perfect, okay? This is, again, not about perfection. So just spend some time, listen to music and think about some memories. And really fill all of the white spaces. It doesn't matter if the colors, you know, are overlapping. Okay. So what I have at the end of this part is a page filled with blobs of color. We see you in the next video where we are going to let our inner child out and we are going to play a little bit with these colors. 3. Twirls & Swirls : Okay, so let's just have some fun. Have you ever tried the liquefy tool in Procreate? I think it is incredible. Like, I'm not really using it in my professional work, but when I was thinking about this exercise and played with it, it was super fun. So go to the adjustments and to the liquefied tool. Now you can choose different ways how these colors will be pushed around. You can change the size, you can change the pressure, the distortion, the momentum, and let's just play at first with the push. If you are using the push, you can see your Oh, this is big. I will make it a bit smaller. I will just push colors around. I will increase the distortion. Wow. It is distorting these shapes a bit more. I will increase the momentum. Wow. This is so fun. Can you see this? Wow. This is super fun. Twirl right. If I hold down my Apple pencil, I was going to create some spirals in it. Wow. And now, what I realize if I increase the distortion, I will have more little spirals. Can you see them here forming. I will increase. Oh, they are even more. Wow. It reminds me of those psychedelic posters we had at the 70s. So now your job is to just play around with these colors and try I don't know, this pinch. Wow. Oh, my God, this looks so good. And create some effect and just have fun. There's no goal here just to have it fully filled with color. Oh, my God, and this is the expand, where, you know, it is, like, expanding. There are crystals. Wow. Can you see that? Distorting the edges. So weird. I love the twirl right with this distortion the most, so I'm going to make these colors around so that I have all kind of these colors everywhere. I will not move on. I can do this the whole day. I think it looks super interesting. I love it so much. Okay, so the next thing that I'm going to do is basically to duplicate this layer. The reason I'm doing this because we're going to carve into a black layer. This is a colorful layer behind, and it should be Gashi and blurred. But when I was playing with the previous one that I've already shown you, I loved it a bit more when it was not Guhenblurd. So I will just keep it at the background, you know, so you can choose whatever you like. So I will just go to this stop layer and go to adjustments and Gashenblur and blur it just a little bit. Okay. Yeah. Just a little bit. Now, I will create another layer, choose black, and fill the whole layer. Now, I love to keep the authentic feeling that we had as kids. And that layer, if you remember well, that we carved out of, was a little bit chalky or had a texture and was not completely like flat, I had a bit of a texture, and I tried to replicate it and I chose from the brash side that is in procreate charcoals compressed pencil, or you can choose whatever else like charcoal. I chose white and just really, really lightly, go through the hole to add a bit of this chalky texture over this black. And if it's too much, you can just lower the opacity of this layer. And now I will make sure to connect these two layers. And now let's move on to the curving part, S in the next video. 4. Doodling & Carving : Okay. So our playground is prepared. Choose brush for the eraser tool, okay? So I'm going to go to the drawing sketching, yeah, sketching, and I will choose the six B pencil. I will erase with that one because it will have a little bit of texture. If you want cleaner lines, choose like different different liner brush from maybe from inking. They can be really fun. So what I'm going to do is to basically I will make a small pencil so it makes sense that I'm carving out. And I will look for symbols that I love to draw when I was a kid, you know, I was the art kid, and when I was on different subjects, I used to, you know, draw into my exercise books, cool symbols, just to, I don't know, entertain my brain. So I will just start with a heart and maybe I will make it a bit. Thicker than eraser. So I want you to think about things that you love to draw as a child. I'm now drawing a hot air balloon because I love to draw it when I was a kid. And some symbols. I don't know. The sun. And I don't know, a star. It doesn't necessarily have to, you know, make sense the whole. It is for fun. And as the colors are revealing, it looks so cool. I love how it looks. And I love that we don't have the mess that we had back then, and my kids, like, loved doing this and cleaning up after this activity was horrible. So you can do this activity with kids. They will appreciate it because this is super fun, I think. So just take your time. My creativity started to kick in. I already using my elements that I love to draw in my illustrations. This drawing just healed my 12-year-old inside me. I love these colors and I will just show you if I will turn off this Gaussian blurt. T, these colors, like, keep being, like, with edges, and I love that effect as well. So you can just choose if you want the Gaussian blurred or not Gauten blurred layer as the background layer. And I think this exercise is really cool just to, you know, take a second to meditate, to have some fun, to release some stress or really just, you know, doodle and something colorful or have just fun with your kids or have just fun with your inner child because that is important as well. So, um, yeah. I hope you enjoyed it. Let's just wrap this up in the last video. 5. Final Thoughts: Hey, I hope that you enjoy this exercise and had a lot of fun. I definitely did. I can't wait to see what you have created. So please don't forget to post your works into the project gallery, and we'll just have a glimpse of each other's inner child in this gallery. And I really hope that it helped you to have some nice memories come. And to connect with your, you know, playful, authentic self that should come out through your art. And let's just try to be more of ourselves through these exercises. I wish you all the best and stay tuned for more and happy creating.