Transcripts
1. Introduction: Our human brain from
evolutionary perspective, is hard wired to be on the lookout for dangers,
threats, and challenges. That's why if we start
observing our thoughts, we will realize
how often we keep replaying our problems and challenges again and
again in our mind. How can we break the cycle of
negative thinking pattern? How can we shift our focus to more positive
things in our life? How can we work towards
cultivating our own happiness? Hi, I'm Marsha, a certified
therapist and an art coach. My journey with art started more than ten years and since then I have been experimenting with various mediums like acrylics, oils, watercolors and pencils. Currently, I'm
based out of Kill, the southern part of
India and I conduct on line art therapy sessions as well as in person
painting workshop. To know more about my work, feel welcome to
visit my website, which is www.ashcreations.com or you can also visit
my insta handle, which is Ash Creations. A lot of what I do today is about how art can be used
in its simplest form. To support my clients in their journey of
emotional well being. To support their process of healing and
personal development. Drawing inspiration
from the role that art has played
in my own journey of self discovery and also the therapeutic power
of art on my clients. Here for this course, I have integrated mindful
reflection and creative art making to make the practice of gratitude more
interesting and fun. Now the obvious Christians,
why practice gratitude? Research shows that
people who practice being grateful experience
higher levels of happiness and
psychological well being. Here let me refer to a study
done by Kristin Francis, a psychiatrist at Unspent
Mental Health Institute. According to this
study, gratitude, Boo, Dopamine and serotonin, the neurotransmitters
in our brain that improve our
mood immediately, giving us those positive
feelings of pleasure, happiness, and well being. What does it mean to
practice gratitude? Well, practicing gratitude is definitely not about
pretending that everything is fine or be in denial of anything
that's going wrong. Practicing gratitude is about
taking some time daily to acknowledge all the
good things that is going on in our life that
adds value to our life. Cultivating the habit of
gratitude isn't complicated. It's just like a
muscle that can be developed with
commitment and effort. While there are many other
ways of practicing gratitude, I find this tool of integrating mindful
reflections with creative, repetitive patterns to be
very soothing and effective. In this class, we will
be creating a gratitude. Mandela and I will be taking you through the
process step by step. This class is designed for absolute bigness and you don't need to have any art experience. It is good for
anyone who wants to learn a creative tool
to practice gratitude. This class is also great for
anyone who wants to engage in a creative activity and have some moments
of intentional calm. It's also a great
starting point for anyone who wants to learn to
draw mindful mandalas. Here, let me take
this opportunity to welcome each and
everyone to this class. And I would also like
to express my gratitude to all of you to have taken
time to join this class.
2. Project & Materials needed: Hello and thank you once
again for joining me here. As we discussed earlier, the intention of this class
is to introduce all of you to a creative tool to
start your gratitude practice. In case you're already into it, then I'm sure that this
class will help you to add more creativity and colors
to your gratitude practice. As a project for this class, we would be creating our
own gratitude Mandell, I'm sharing some of the
gratitude Mandela that made so that you get an idea of how the final artwork
will look like. They look very much like
the normal Mandela, but the process we follow is
what makes the difference. Now, in the first
part of the class, I will be guiding you to write down your reflections based on the gratitude prongs which can also be downloaded from
the resources section. Next, we will be
learning how to draw some simple patterns which will be used to
draw our Mandela. Finally, we will be
drawing the Mandela, integrating the
reflections we wrote down and the different
patterns we practiced. Now let's have a look at the art supplies that we
will need for this class. We'll need a compass
to draw the circles, a pencil and eraser. In case you don't
have a compass, you can definitely
use any circle or objects that
you find at home. To draw the Mandela. I'll be using these
black fine tip pens. The numbers that I
have kept aside are 0.10 point 4.0 0.05 To
draw the finer details, I also have some
colored fine tip pens. You can also think of using sketch pens or markers
that you have handy. And if none of these
are available, just a simple pen would do. Let's bear in mind that the
intention of this class is not just about creating a
beautiful piece of artwork, but it's more about the
process of gratitude, reflections and spending
some creative time with ourselves to focus on the
positive aspects of our life, gather the supplies
that you have handy and get ready
to get started. See you in the next class.
3. Warm Up: Before we start the main
project for this class, let's warm our selves up with some mindful breathing
and squirrel drawing. This will help us to check
in with our selves and to disconnect from all
the internal chatter that is going on in our mind. And also practice few
moments of mindfulness. Let's start squiggling.
The materials that we need for this activity are
a paper and a pen. Sit comfortably. You can
choose to close your eyes. Take few deep breaths. Focus your attention
on your breath. Inhale deeply, and
as you inhale, feel the air passing
through your nose. Hold your breath for a few seconds and then
exhale through your mouth. As you exhale, feel the air
passing through your mouth. Repeat this couple of
times when you're ready. Slowly open your eyes. Now take the pen and
start moving your pen on the paper randomly to make squiggle lines
across the paper. Here. I'm trying to align my
hand moment to my breath. Do this as long
as you feel like, look at the squiggle
that you have created. Ask yourself, how
are you feeling? Name the emotions that
you're experiencing. Write them down in different
sections of your squiggle. Acknowledge all the emotions
that you're experiencing, Be it happiness, excitement, nervousness, sadness,
fear, or joy. Give space to each of your
emotion in your squiggle. Now use colors or patterns to fill different sections of the squiggle that
are still empty. Go slow and try to
keep your attention on the colors and patterns
that you are creating. This is a good warm up
activity to connect with our inner self and be aware of the emotions that
we are experiencing. Deep breathing in itself helps to calm our
nervous system. And when I integrate deep breathing with
some colors and lines, I find it much more easier to
focus on the here and now. This is an activity that we can practice during any
part of the day. I find this really effective, especially when
I'm going through moments of anxiety or
overwhelming emotions. It helps to give me some few
moments of intentional calm. I hope you find this useful. And I will see you in next class where we
will be engaging in reflective writing
around the things that we are grateful in our
daily life. See you there.
4. Reflective Writing: Welcome to the reflective
writing section of this class. Let me tell you, this is a very important part of
this class where we will be reflecting and writing about all the things that
add value to our life. Get ready to spend some
quality time with yourself. I would encourage
all of you to find a comfortable spot to sit. Grab your paper and pen, and if you want to grab
some coffee or water to nourish yourself
and get set to start with our process
of reflective writing about all the things that we are grateful for in our
day to day life. Writing down about all
the good things in our life helps us to
be more optimistic. Because here we are choosing to see all the positives
in our life. That's giving less power
to our negative emotions. While these good things have
always been there around us, writing about them makes us more aware and
appreciative of them. I'm going to take some
time to reflect and write down things that I'm
grateful for in my life. I write down things that comes
to my mind spontaneously In case you need ideas to identify things that
you are grateful for, feel free to use the problems that are included
in the journal. This can be downloaded from the projects and
Resources section. Here I'm thinking of
every small thing that add value to my life, be it experiences people
or my own strengths. As I'm writing down, I'm also asking myself as to why these things
are important to me. Not only acknowledging but
also expressing as to why they're important
adds a deeper value to our gratitude practice. Take your time to finish your reflections and writing
and join me in next section where we would be practicing
some basic shapes and patterns which we
will be using to create our final
Mandela. See you there.
5. Pattern Practice: Welcome back. I hope you have your paper and pen
or pencil with you. We are going to practice some simple shapes and patterns which we will be
using in a final model. While we do this, let's remind ourselves that there is
no right or wrong here. It's all about giving
ourselves permission to explore and experiment with different
shapes and patterns, rather than worrying about creating beautifully
shaped patterns. I would encourage all of you to let go of that need
to be perfect. Just enjoy the process and
have fun with this practice. Pattern is a design
that we create by repeating lines,
shapes or colors. We will be using
these patterns in the mandla that we will be
creating in the next class. You can choose to follow the patterns that
we create here, or you can draw your own. I have found Pinterest to be a good source of inspiration
to draw patterns. I have attached a pattern
practice worksheet in the resources section, which can be printed and
used for this practice. Here I'm using a plan
sheet on which I have drawn lines with a gap
of 1.5 centimetres. Here I am using a 0.4
sized fine tip pen. I'm starting with a very
simple shape of inverted U. The only thing that I'm
trying to do here is to keep the size and width of the
U similar to each other. Here, I'm going very slow, just keeping my attention on the shapes that I am creating. I'm focusing on how simple shapes join together
to create patterns. The next pattern that I am trying is similar to
the previous one. Here I'm drawing
two parallel lines and joining these two lines on the top with a curved line. As I go further, I try to keep the distance between the parallel lines
equal to each other. And join these parallel lines with jumping or curvy lines. The next pattern
that I'm trying is an organic petal shape which
is wider at the bottom. As I go up, it gets sharper
and fine tipped here. Again, I'm trying to
keep the size and the width of these petals
similar to each other. I have tried creating a few more patterns
with basic shapes. Feel free to create your own. This is a good
time to experiment and have fun creating
your own patterns. I hope you enjoy the process of creating the basic
shapes for the patterns. Now let's go level up to fill up these shapes with fillers to make our patterns
more interesting. Now for this, I'm using 0.0 5.0 0.1 pen size so that I
get some finer lines, but you can use any pen that
is available with you here. I'm filling up the
inverted U shape patterns with slanted horizontal lines. Just trying to draw these
lines closer to each other and keeping it
parallel to each other. There is no right
and wrong here. As I keep saying, you can keep experimenting
changing the direction of the lines and see what
works best for you. Now I'm trying out random wiggles to fill
up the petal shape. I just place these wiggles
close to each other. Once that's done, then I fill
these shapes with black in. This is another filler that
I loved experimenting with. What I like about
creating patterns is that there are
no rules to follow. And there is no expectation with regard to how the final
piece should look like. I hope you enjoyed creating different
shapes and patterns and you're all set to start drawing your final
gratitude Mandela. So, see you in the next section.
6. Final Mandala: Welcome to the last section of this class where we are going to draw our Gratitude Mandela. Now, before we start drawing, I recommend that you gather all your art supplies together. That is your paper
eraser, pencil pen, whichever you're going to use to draw compass in case
you don't have compass, I will also show you how
to draw the circles using basic circular shaped objects
that you will find at home. You also need to keep the
paper wherein you have written your reflections and where you have practiced
your patterns handy. So that you can look into
it as and when required. So I'm excited to draw
my gratitude Mandala. I hope you are too.
So let's get started. I'll be demonstrating to
Mandalas in this section. First one is using compass, and the second one using
circular objects that we find at home for the first Mandela. I start by drawing
circles using a compass. I start with the smallest
circle and leave approximately a gap of 1
centimeter between the circles. Now, this can be varied to
increase or decrease the gaps. As I progress, I may add
more circles if required. Again, no hard and fast rule. So, feel free to go
with the flow and see how your Mandela evolves. Now that the layout for
the Mandela is ready, I start with the first
set of patterns on the outer part of the
innermost circle. I'm using petal
shape to start with. I find drawing petals
easy and comforting. I add smaller shapes of
petals inside the bigger one, and then I fill it up to
give it a nice contrast. In the next layer, instead of adding patterns, I'm going to write down one of the things that I
am grateful for, which I had written about
in my reflection sections. You can choose to use
capital or cursive letters. Here I am using capital letters. In this layer, I'm
mentioning about how grateful I am to have
my morning cup of tea. I'm also elaborating how
my morning tea helps me to wake up and feel
energized for the day. I have some space left here. I'm filling it up with few dots. Next I draw a circle of
jumping lines around the words to create
an effect of border. I'm doing the same thing at
the bottom of the words. I feel like doing
one more layer of jumping line to strengthen
the border effect. Adding some more
details by filling the border with
smaller lines here. I'm just going with the flow
and I'm willing to see how my Mandela evolves in between, I decided to add one more circle as I wanted my words
to be smaller in size. Now I'm going to add another layer of my
gratitude reflections. This time I'm expressing my gratitude for
being able to have a garden where I can spend some time every morning
which refreshes my mood. Serves as a time for my
daily dose of sunlight. Now I'm adding a layer of
border around the words. This way I proceed
altering between layers of patterns and words
to develop the Mandela Now I'm adding the
final layer of the Mandela again using my favorite petal shape
to finish it off. I'm erasing all
the pencil lines, adding few more final touches. I'm very happy about how
my Mandla has turned out. I hope all of you enjoyed creating this reflective
gratitude Mandela. Now I'm going to draw
one more Mandela, but this time I'm
doing it without using a compass for
drawing the circles. I'm using small,
circular objects. While drawing the circles, I try to mindfully
place the objects in such a way that I can get the circles aligned
with each other. You may have to try this
a couple of times to get it right now. This Mandela may not have as many layers as the first one, but the process of drawing
the Mandela remains the same. Once I have the circles laid, I start drawing layers
of patterns and add my gratitude reflections
in between the patterns. These steps get repeated. I like drawing my
Mandela this way too, because this one looks
more loose and fluid. I find this less structured, giving me more space and
opportunity to spontaneously experiment different size and patterns without getting
limited by the pre drawn lines. Here, I have also use some colors to bring
in a variation. I recommend that you try both the ways and see
which one you enjoy more. I hope you enjoy drawing
your gratitude Mandela and I also hope that
you're not going to stop with just one Mandela. Repetition and
consistency is the key to make the best of this
practice of gratitude. I would love to
see your artwork. Please feel welcome
to share whatever you are comfortable in
the project section. Now, having a community
for sport and inspiration is especially when we are
starting a new habit. Please share your
ideas, thoughts, and your artwork so that we can learn from each other
and keep growing. Once again, thank you
for having joined this class and wishing all of you a happy
gratitude journey.
7. Final Thoughts: All right, that brings us
to the end of this class. I hope you found
this creative way of approaching and practicing gratitude interesting
and meaningful. I would like to wind up this class by
reinforcing the power of gratitude on our mental
health by author Jen. So who says that gratitude is one of the strongest and most transformative
states of being? It shifts our perspective from lack to abundance and allows us to focus on the good
in our life once again, at the risk of repeating myself. I would like to say that
practicing gratitude definitely does not take away all our
problems or challenges. But it does help us to build
our emotional resilience, which is very
important in managing these challenges in a much
more healthy or positive way. Once again, thank you for
joining me in this class. This is my first on skillshare. I would love to
hear your feedback, suggestions, ideas through
the discussion board. I look forward to creating
more classes here. So definitely follow me here on Skillshare so that we can
stay connected till then. Happy Gratitude Journey.
Asha Suresh, Artist / Expressive Art Therapist.
