Drawing as Self-Discovery: 5 Ways to Start

1. Introduction: I'm Mari Andrew. I'm an illustrator and a writer. I post an illustration every day on my Instagram account bymariandrew and I have a book coming out in 2018. I accidentally became an artist when I was going through a really tough time. I've always processed my emotions through writing. I wanted something a little more happy to do during this really depressing time. I had just broken up with my boyfriend and I thought that's about as bad as it's going to get. A few days later, my dad died of a heart attack. A little while after that, I found out I had cancerous cells that I had to get removed in a pretty traumatic surgery. I felt like I had lost so much and I really felt like I was starting from the beginning of life again. And I felt like, "All right, I have some work to do here. I needed to make myself happy again." One method of doing that was actually put happiness on the calendar every day which was to make an illustration a day. I started posting an illustration on Instagram every day that I paint over with watercolor and I realized that a really good way to feel less lonely was to share what I was going through. In doing that, I realized that a lot of people were going through the things I was going through. Everyone goes through heartbreak. Everyone has lost. A lot of people are grieving. A lot of people feel directionless especially when they're young. And I realized that I was really connecting with people that I didn't even know and that was a way that my vulnerability gave me connections to the outside world. The illustration project that I started last year came out of a place of self care. It was something that I do for myself every day. So, I would love to give you some methods for you to heal yourself and care for yourself by making your own art at home. I'll give you some prompts and self reflection exercises and some ideas and at the end you'll have a beautiful collection of art that's meaningful to you. You don't have to be an artist to express yourself through art. All you need is a desire to bring some joy into your life every day and a pen and paper. Let's get started. 2. Healing Through Art: The wounds that we have internally: pain, depression, grief, loss, heartache, those are wounds that no one else can see except the person going through them. When you break your leg, you have a cast, people know to give up their seat for you and treat you gently but when you're going through something internally, no one else can see it. Putting it down on paper is a tremendously powerful tool to show the world that you're going through something. Even if you don't share it, it's really helpful just to put that out in the world, in public. It can feel very healing to do that and it can give you empowerment over your own situation. Art is a way that you can process what's going on and therefore you take control of your own story. You're writing what's happening to you. When I was going through that bout of depression, I needed a way to get myself out of it and I felt like I was writing and drawing my way out of my situation. I was taking control over it, I was singing in a new way, I was sharing it with people, I was taking control over the humiliation that sometimes comes with pain and toward the end, I was showing how I got out. I was referencing the way that I overcame my challenges and I was trying a new life, a new life for myself that was really full of joy and in the end really triumphing over the pain I had experienced. This is a myth that all artists must be tortured, or all artists are tortured. I think we get this from this sexy notion that artists are pained and you can only be a real artist if you've actually gone through great despair. I think that's ever been true. I actually do a lot of my best art when I'm in a really happy place, so you certainly don't have to go through a lot of pain to be a great artist. I think that this myth can be destructive because it dismisses the happier parts of our lives. I'm a very optimistic person and even though I've gone through a lot, I try to always keep that spirit of optimism and hope in my drawings even the ones that may seem more cynical or more honest to the challenges that they have gone through. All artists have happy times and sad times. A lot of it is really boring. Art takes a lot of discipline and is pretty mundane a lot of the time. So, it's not like artists are always going through a lot of great pain. To make really good art, sometimes you have to get yourself into a happy place so you can look back on times that were more painful with greater perspective. So, whether or not you're going through something rough or you're perfectly fine, you can still make really powerful art. Being able to draw on the experiences that were tough is a tool that will help you the rest of your life whether you're an artist or not, being able to look back at things that happened to you, will make you more empathetic and compassionate and those are traits that great artists need. My favorite example is Picasso who had a blue period, but also a rose period when he was in love and things were wonderful in his life. Both were equally powerful periods of art for him. I think both are equally as beloved. They were just different phases of his life and we all have different phases. We all have different seasons. Sometimes I think artists get a little worried. I'm too happy now. I can't create great art but of course, that's not true at all. A lot of people are doing just fine and would love art that's a little more optimistic and glowy. Sometimes again, when I'm in a great place in life, it's some of the best time for me to look back at the more painful parts and realize, "Wow! That really brought me to this place." So, having perspective is key and no matter what you're going through, you can process your life and make great art out of it. Art can be a really powerful tool also to look at your situation and decide the way that you choose to think about it. So, when you make your own art, you're the one taking ownership over your life. You're the one telling this story. I draw a lot about the same relationship that I had a couple of years ago and sometimes I see it in a really beautiful and thankful way and sometimes I look at the tough lessons that it taught me. So when you're looking at your own story, you're the one who gets to guide the way that other people see it. This can actually change the way that your brain thinks about it. Sometimes, I'm in a really tough place and I'm caught up in thinking about a heart ache I went through, or I'm thinking about my career and I'm worried about it, and I choose to draw an idealized situation. A couple months ago, I was dealing with some heartache and I talked to a therapist who said why don't you draw your ideal romance, like draw the way you want to experience love, not the way that it's been told to you but the way that you want to experience it. And doing that was so powerful for me. It actually changed the way that I thought about my future and it gave me a lot of hope. So art can be a way that you give yourself hope, it can be a way that you tell your own story, it can be a way that you take ownership over your challenges, and it can be a way that you actually change the way that you think about your life going forward. 3. Getting Started: The first step to making art is self-awareness. I did a lot of journal entries before I started actually making art and I still do. Or sometimes I have a conversation with a friend or I go on a walk and think about how things are going in my life. Having the awareness to know what to talk about, what's actually going on in your life is an essential tool to begin making art. I try not to rush into art before doing some self-worth reflection, because then my art can be very cynical, it can even be vengeful. If I'm talking about a difficulty with a friend or relationship, so, it's helpful to get in the mindset where you're really caring for yourself. You're not doing this out of spite, you're not doing this necessarily out of anger, although, anger is a perfectly reasonable feeling to process through art, but to have some time to yourself first and process what you're going through in your head, that's really the first step before you're actually processing your feelings on paper in public. In this class, before every creative exercise, I'll give you a prompt to see you'll have a period of time to self-reflect and figure out how you want to approach a certain situation that you're going to draw about. Once you're ready to start making art, you get to decide the materials you want to use. I use a Sharpie pen and watercolors but you can decide whatever is easiest for you. I think that using a pen can be interesting because you can't really make mistakes and in doing that you realize that mistakes are really part of the process. I actually like seeing the mistakes that I do and going over them in creative ways, but it's really up to you, whatever is the most comfortable. You don't need to be an artist to process your life through art. I'd never really drawn before last year. I'd never drawn people before but I didn't let that hold me back, I just started drawing. So, just pick up a pen and go for it. No one needs to see it, just enjoy the process, it's really fun to do. And especially when you're coloring in the lines, that's my favorite part. It's very therapeutic in and of itself. So you certainly don't need any skills to be able to do this. This is your opportunity to process your life the way you want to. If you want to use all of these exercises every day, great. If you want to pick one and do it every so often, that's good too. I do this every day but I don't process what I'm going through every day. Some things need a little bit of time. Some things I don't share. Some things I think about all the time and some things I don't let myself think about that often because it is painful. So, again, give yourself a mental and emotional checkup and see what you want to start processing. See what feels comfortable for you and what feels meaningful to you. What's meaningful to you isn't going to be meaningful to me and vice versa. So use what seems relevant to you. If one of the exercises doesn't resonate, no worries, just move on to the next one. If you're feeling stuck or creatively blocked doing these exercises, it might be time to move on to something a little different, even if what's different is just looking at what you're doing in a different way. Sometimes I start an illustration and it's not really making sense, not even really resonating to me. I just leave it for a couple days and sometimes in the middle of the night, it will become something totally new. That may happen to you too. You might want to change your perspective of the situation that you're actually processing and that can be mentally changing your perspective, like talking with a friend about it, maybe writing in your journal about it, thinking about it in a different way, or it might be changing your perspective literally. Go to a different place, use a different art supply. Maybe think about it in a way that you've never tried before. That can be something that can really push you through a creative block and can actually make some really powerful art. So use your creative blocks to your advantage and just open your mind to a new possibility. Once you make your art, you can decide whether or not you want to share it. I share art every day on Instagram but it's not the only art that I make. I make a lot of art just for myself, because I'm either still processing those feelings or I don't necessarily want the criticism that can come with putting your art in public. Some stuff is a little too personal. This is your opportunity to think, do I want this public? Will this maybe help someone else who's going through the same thing? Do I want to share this in an attempt to feel less alone and build my community that way? That's really up to you. You also might make some art you're just not really proud of and that's fine too, keep it to yourself, it'll still make you happy. When I think about whether or not I want to share something, I think about have I already processed this? Am I making this out of spite or am I making this because I've already gone through it and I'm ready to announce it to the world and be vulnerable? Those are the questions that only you can answer, but the answer should be pretty clear. Once you're ready to share it, it can be an amazing experience to connect with other people and realize that we're all pretty much going through the same stuff. When I was going through a really tough time, I was so thankful for artists who use their own vulnerability and put their own art out there that I really resonated with. It actually got me through a tough time. I cried to artists completely for helping me realize that I wasn't alone, I wasn't isolated, and that I could get out of my own challenges too. So, I was thankful that none of them were too afraid of criticism, or too afraid of looking self-centered, and they put their own stories out there, which was so powerful for me. If you are ready to share, I would love to see your work in the project gallery and I'm sure a lot of other people would too. It's a good place to share your work with the online community and it can be a good step in figuring out if you do want to make your art more public. So, now we're ready to go through the exercises that have helped me in processing my life through art. 4. Draw a Pie Chart of Resilience: In this exercise, we're going to make a pie chart of your resilience. When I need this, I considered it kind of my badge of honor. These are the experiences I've already gone through. This is stuff I've already weathered. I can use these experiences that I've had to get me through future challenges. So, in creating this pie chart, you're saying, "This is my identity. These are the things that have made me who I am, and these are the things that are going to get me through anything that comes at me in the future." To me, this is an exercise in being vulnerable. Vulnerability is showing the world parts of yourself that aren't perfect. These are the things you've been through and what you are going through. Vulnerability is really powerful because it's the first step in really connecting with other people over your shared experiences. Anyone can share the perfect seeming parts of their life, but it takes a lot of bravery to say, "This is the tough stuff that I've been through. This is the tough stuff that's going through my head right now." So, first things first, we're going to do some self-reflection. Think about what you've already been through in your life. One question I like to ask is, how did I help myself get through tough times? Even if they weren't big tragedies, we've all gone through challenges, even times when we weren't really sure what was coming next in our lives. So, I start by brainstorming things that you might want to put in your pie chart. Sometimes, I add funny stuff in addition to the bigger issues that I've gone through, little things that make up a bad day or really difficult years in your life. You can run the whole spectrum of what has made you into the resilient person that you are today. A pie chart is my favorite thing to draw because it's so satisfying to make and to color in. It's a really simple circle, and you're just going to make pie slices. You can make them bigger depending on how big the event is that you were talking about in your life, but I think playing with sizes can also be part of your humor. You can make parts of the pie chart bigger. That might not seem as significant, but maybe you've experienced them over a longer time. You can pick colors that might be meaningful to you or meaningful to the outside world. It's really up to you the way that you want to do this. But I think that a pie chart can be particularly therapeutic just because it's so pleasurable to make. It's a really nice exercise just to color in lines. If you're feeling kind of like directionless and out of it one day or kind of angry, it can actually make you feel a lot happier just to sit down and draw something that you are going to color in. So, it's as much a physical exercise as it is a powerful mental exercise. So, I started with father dies when I was 28, but I'm actually going to make the breakup before my father's death a little bigger. I think it's just a little more potent that way. I'm also making tinder a pretty large slice since that's taken up a big portion of my life the past few years and it's given me a lot of resilience. Once you've drawn your pie chart, this is the fun part, start coloring it in. So, part of turning your experiences into art is thinking about what kind of art do I want to look at, what kind of art do I like doing. Again, this is all about you. It starts and it ends with you. So, whatever colors you like, whatever media you like, it's totally all up to you. The more authentic you make it to yourself, the better it's going to turn out. Because it's so therapeutic to do this kind of activity, it can become kind of like a habit, like physical exercise. It can become such a habit that maybe you'll want to do it every day. I love making pie charts, and I do one once a week because it's so enjoyable for me to do and almost feels beneficial to me in the same way that physical exercise does for my body. So, this is my pie chart. What I came up with today, on any given day, my resilience chart might look a little different. So, this is a fun one to revisit every once in awhile, every season of your life. I really enjoyed making it and for me, that's the ultimate goal to enjoy what I'm doing. So, I hope that you enjoy this too, and please share if you feel so moved because I'd love to see what makes up your resilience. 5. Draw Your Heart or Brain: This exercise is about drawing your heart or brain as it is right now. This is going to be a really good one to self-reflect and see what's really going on inside of you. Sometimes you have feelings that might feel like they're conflicting like how am I so hopeful and optimistic while I'm really despairing? You can also look at what's going on in your brain. If you're feeling like you're really in love with someone or there's a big worry on your mind, maybe it feels like that's taking over your entire brain. But think about what else you're thinking about. What else is taking up space in your heart or brain? This is just kind of a fun self-reflection exercise to see what's really going on inside. So the method that I use for this one that's popular in art therapy is this notion of levity. This is the idea that there's a lightness to life even when life is feeling really heavy and difficult. I think there a really excellent example of this in art is jazz music. Jazz is often very danceable, it's light, it has a rhythm, it's fun to listen to, sometimes it's easy to dance to, it's romantic and buzzy but a lot of the lyrics are really sad, really profound, really serious and decided that a Latin music too. I like to dance salsa and bachata and in those songs, some days I'll be listening to it and dancing to it. I don't speak Spanish very well but people will tell me this is about like a guy crying because his lover left him for his best friend. It's like oh this is so sad but it's like easily danceable. So sometimes when you're making art, it feels really fun and you can experience this joy and even like this slightness and you can find humor in your art all while experiencing some really tough stuff. So in getting perspective, think about what you've been through recently and what advice would you give your past self. So, take a little mental scan and emotional scan and think about the following questions. What's making you happy right now? What is the hardest part of your life right now? What are you proud of? What's something you do every day that makes you happy? You can think about what is going on in different parts of your life like your career, your relationships, your family. Think about your life as a whole and not just the part that feels really dominant right now. So you can do this a couple different ways. A very classic way to map out your heart or mind is to draw an actual map and the different parts of it. So this is kind of like a pie chart. I'm going to draw my heart as I was experiencing it recently. I was feeling really rejected and having a really hard time dating and people kept telling me just put yourself out there and I drew this picture of my heart to show this is what I'm going through right now. This is the way that my heart feels. So, I'm going to draw that for you. This is certainly a time when maybe you're invisible wounds you can make visible. You can show people this is how I feel right now, this is what I look like to myself. I wanted to make this heart look pretty beaten up and downtrodden, so I'm giving him some sags under his eyes and in the background someone is saying just put yourself out there. So, this one I think is still an example of levity even though it's kind of a bummer because I think it's kind of cute and it's sort of funny and it is the perspective that I have that gives me the ability to do this. I got a lot of comments on this one. There were people who felt really similarly. When people asked me what my favorite illustration I've ever done is or what are some of my favorites, I always say any of the ones with tears stains on the paper, any of the ones that I felt really emotional while I was doing it. This one in particular I was just about a really specific instance but it did make me feel pretty isolated and then when I shared it, I realized how many people thought exactly the same way and we're getting the exact same advice and felt like I can't really fight anymore, I can't really put myself out there anymore. This is something also like with the levity a different version of the same drawing has this heart wearing high heels and going dancing. So, even though it's a sad and broken heart, it's still able to dance and that's where the levity comes in. This is how it shows how I was feeling at a certain time of my life. You can also draw your heart or mind around a specific theme like one of my students recently did an election brain. There are a lot of ways to approach this and I look forward to seeing what you come up with. 6. Draw a Grateful List: This exercise is all about gratitude. Processing your life through art doesn't have to be all about pain, can be about things you're really thankful for, things that make you happy, happiness in your life right now and what you want to remember. We all know that we should practice gratitude even and maybe especially in difficult times. But it's hard to just sit there and be thankful. It's a lot easier to make a list or to talk about things that you're grateful for in your life. My preferred method is drawing them out. The more that I doodle things that I'm grateful for, the more I think about other things I'm grateful for. A lot of these are really small but they're really meaningful. So, it actually makes me more creative to draw them out and doodle little things and big things that are really good in my life. These are things I can reference when things feel really tough and I'm losing perspective of all the good that's happening at the same time. So in reflecting for this exercise, I encourage you to think about the little things. Like, what is your favorite part of your commute. What is your favorite hour of the day. What is a sound or smell or sight that you've really enjoyed recently. What's a memory that makes you smile. Who is a person who always makes you laugh. So I like to just make a literal list of things I'm grateful for and illustrate them. I find that that's really fun. Like I said, it makes me more creative as I'm going along, often get one idea and it makes me think of another. But you can easily make a pie chart from this. You can draw a single picture of something you really like, like one of my favorite things to do is draw a memory that makes me smile and then I have that piece of art that I can always reference. So you can approach this however you like. I'm going to make a list. So I'm just going to call this list, thankful. This is a list that I wrote on Thanksgiving. First one is a sleeping cat who is at my mom's house on holiday and I said soft and gentle as the world should be. My next one is a highly anticipated email and accompanying stomach flip upon seeing the one in your inbox, if your inbox zero. Again, these do not have to be very big things. That was something I was thankful for that day. It's not anything too profound but it made me really happy. Last summer, I went to Brazil for a couple weeks and whenever I think about it, it really lifts my mood. It's one of those tools I have that whenever I'm feeling bummed out, I just think about this one place in Brazil and I feel warm and happy and that's something that I can give myself any time. So, you could do one of these everyday if you wanted. You don't have to make it that elaborate and the more you make them, the more things you think about. Again, knowing that it doesn't have to be that serious, it can just be little things that brightened your day. That can be a really good meditative time for you. I sort of struggle with making time to meditate every day and I'm also really not sure how to do it. But I find that drawing out these things is actually a meditative exercise. It's really calming, it's relaxing, it makes me happy. Then when I share with people, it seems to make them happy too. So everyone wins. Or you can pick a time like once a week or once a month, once a season. Just things that are making you feel happy now. When you drive them out you actually get the same feeling as when they're actually happening to you. So, giving yourself these memories and these feelings is a gift that you can give yourself when times are challenging or you're feeling like you're really losing perspective. This pie came out kind of pink so I'm going to go hover with orange. This is the number one pro of water colors, you just changed the color. I'm grateful for them. Adding that to my gratitude list. See, you can think of things you're grateful for as you're making mistakes. 7. Draw a Comic from Your Life: In this exercise we're going to make a comic of something that's happened to you that either seems really sad or embarrassing, something that you need to gain control over. This is something I do almost every day to process what I'm going through and I find it really empowering. When I was going through grief and heartache and then I got this call that I also had cancer cells that needed to be removed, I felt like all I could do was laugh at that moment. Of course, I'm going to keep having this stuff happen to me. It felt like the only response I could really genuinely have to this storm of events was to just laugh and say, "All right. I got to go in. I've just got to do this." Since processing all of those things that happened to me I used humor a lot as a way to gain control over my own story. So that's really what using humor is about. It's not so much laughing at things that are sad or difficult. It's about giving yourself the control of your narrative. So, if you are able to laugh at the difficult things that have happened to you or humiliating things that have happened to you. You are the one in control and you can begin to move forward. So in reflecting before this exercise, think about a time that was painful or humiliating for you and the different perspectives you can have on this period. How did society want you to feel about that moment? How did you actually feel in the moment? And what are some ways that you feel now about that moment. When you're telling this story, is there a time when people laugh about it? Is there a time when you're feeling more empowered to talk about it? How can you change this narrative from one of humiliation and pain into something empowering and even funny. How can you turn this moment into material for your art? So, the exercise is actually making a comic of this experience. This might seem a little overwhelming if you've never done this before but you don't need to do panels, you don't need to do a whole scene, you just do one brief interaction. Can read someone like Allison Bechtol who writes a lot about her painful experiences in funny ways. There are also cartoonists like Roz Chast who usually just draw one simple experience or even just one thought bubble. That's all you really need. If you're feeling a little stuck in this exercise, you don't have to draw or write the situation exactly as it happened. Think about something you wish you would have said. Think about a good zinger. Think about a superpower you wish you had had at the moment. These are ways to make a comic too. So I'm making a comic about something that happened to me pretty soon after my dad died. I was at the doctor and my doctor was asking me if there are any changes in family history and I forgot that my dad died of a heart attack, so I had to bring that up awkwardly. I feel like a lot of humiliating experiences happen while you're wearing a doctor's gown. So that might be a good place to begin if you're having trouble. So this is just a really simple scene of me not really knowing how to communicate this thing that had just happened to me. So the doctor for a checkup and the doctor said any changes in medical history and I always just say no and so I said, "No. Oh yeah. My dad had a heart attack." And she said, "Oh, how is he doing now is he ok?" I was just like, "Not really." That was a moment that felt really awkward to me. But as I was telling it, it made me laugh and it was the first time I had laughed in quite a long time. A lot of these things, they might not feel funny or interesting in the moment and then as you're telling the story later on even just writing about it in your journal, you can get a different perspective on it that might actually turn it into a story. This was my approach to this particular situation. This is what actually led into an essay that I wrote later. This exercise can be a great jumping off point for more creativity in the future. 8. Draw a Future Self Portrait: So, this last one is my favorite exercise. This is envisioning yourself in the future beyond whatever you're experiencing right now. When I was going through a tough time, I put a date on the calendar and I thought about that date all the time. This is when I knew that I would be over the really difficult part of what I was going through and I knew that at that point, I would actually be a different person. I would be more resilient. I'd be more compassionate. I would have a new strength within me. I would probably have some new talents and hobbies that I had acquired over that period of grief. I knew that I would become a better person for what I had gone through. In reflecting for this exercise which is envisioning yourself in the future, think about the ways that you want to be described in the future. Let's say the future is about 10 years from now. So, they can be superficial things, they can be that you want to have great hair, and a grade butt, whatever. Talk about the traits that you want to adopt while you're going through whatever you're going through now. So maybe you feel like you're struggling with your career but in the future you want to be a CEO. Think about you want to be considered a leader. You want to be a better artist or a better friend. Think about traits that you'd like to adopt in the next 10 years. Think about places that you'd like to go, talents you'd like to acquire. You can use words like great French speaker if you want, but you can also think about more serious things. How do you want to be seen by your friends? How do you want to be seen by the world? Do you want to be described as kind or smart or talented or well traveled? How do you want other people to see you in 10 years? So, I'm going to draw the anatomy of myself, top to bottom, just the different traits that I've thought about for myself but you can draw a self portrait of your face in 10 years. It doesn't even have to be yourself. You can draw your dream apartment, your dream job. What is your desk look like in 10 years? What is your ideal morning look like in 10 years? You can draw yourself in the future without actually drawing your physical self. Something like the outfit gives me a good starting place. What am I wearing in 10 years? Let's say it's fall, and I'm in this fuzzy sweater and enjoying the outfit that I'm wearing, I'm thinking about where I am in life. I'm wearing a necklace made by a friend because I have all these fabulous art friends. Maybe I met them on my trip to Spain. I hope in 10 years I've learned how to do my hair so it looks perfect. I'm going to say that I have strong arms and you can give yourself accessories that make sense for the lifestyle you want in 10 years. I'm giving myself a bag full of pens, and notebooks because I hope I'll still be writing and illustrating. In my other hand, I'm going to have a book that I've written. I like to adorn my anatomies with other things that are going on like things about my friends or things about my lifestyle at the time. I'm going to say that I have a refrigerator. I have always wanted a really big refrigerator full of sparkling water. It's really a big part of my life. Words that I want to be described as are comfortable and to be a great tango dancer. I could add that I'm also in love with a beautiful Portuguese man but I want to leave some room for surprise. I'm going to give myself title of writer and illustrator based in Berlin, and I just turn myself in 10 years with weird glasses. So now, I can look at this and I can reference it and I can say, "That's the person I'm going to be. I'm envisioning that I am going to be that person." It's really powerful to say that in the present tense. "I'm becoming this person. I'm putting in place everything that I need to become this person that I want to be." 9. Final Thoughts: Thank you so much for taking this class. I hope that you found meaning in the exercises you did. And I encourage you to revisit them in different periods of your life. Whether or not you're going through pain right now, there are exercises that are useful for me at any time of my life. I do process my life through art every single day. But there are certain exercises I love revisiting and I find really helpful throughout my life. By sharing what's going on in your life, it can make people feel less alone. They can also empower other people to make their own art. If you feel ready to share your art, I encourage you to share it in the project gallery. I would love to see what you made and I'm sure the online community would appreciate it as well. 10. What's Next?: way.