Transcripts
1. Introduction to the art therapy class: Hi friends, Welcome to
the art therapy class. I invite you to this art therapy class where
you will find out the power of the art and how it helps to
our mindfulness, how it helps us to heal our
emotions and our interstate. For those of you who are for the first time here,
my name is all. I'm a sched illustrator and
watercolorist from 2020. I'm an art teacher too, with art therapy exercises. I'm working for more than
three years now on my own. Now, I want to share this experience that I have
in my background with you. To share these
interesting exercises that are at the same
time very simple, but very good ones to heal
your inner state of mind. I invite each time that you start an exercise
that you have a goal. For this exercise, you
should have a question, something that you want to
solve during the exercise. I invite you when
you start to paint, that you are not
crossing your legs, neither hand, and
you believe that your energy flows
throughout your body. It is a very common
use thing to do is that we are crossing our legs or hands because our
body wants to close. It doesn't want to give
out these emotions that are staying
inside us as well. It is important that during the exercises that
you are inhaling and exhaling fluidly and without stopping your breathing
to take away. During this class, I will share with you how to learn
and how to understand. How to mix up
beautiful the colors, how the colors improve
our state of mind. The exercises are based on different shapes
painting as well. I'll share with you how
different shapes are working in the healing process and how it helps in
your state of mind. I invite you to
take some time for you and to think
about your questions, your thoughts, what
you want to solve out. And enter into this class
with lots of questions. And you will go out with lots
of solutions for yourself.
2. Supplies: The supplies that you will
need during this class. You can have only
three color paints in water colors like
red, blue and yellow. But if you have a larger pulled, it is obviously better
because you will have the colors and you
don't need to mix those up. You will need two
size pain brushes. Or if you want, you can take
different size pain brushes. It is up to you which
result you want to have. I will use size pain brush and smaller pain brush to create thinner lines and
thicker lines or shape. You will also need plain
water, some tissues. I also invite you to
have another piece of paper with a pen
where you will write down your insights and your emotions that are
happening throughout the process of painting and during the focusing
on the exercise. If you will come up
with a question or with a goal into this exercise. During the exercise, you
will have a lot of insights. This paper and pen will help
you to fix those questions, to find out solutions, and to write down all
the ideas that will come up through these exercises.
3. Dots painting as a self expression: Coloring with watercolors can be a really delightful and
versatile artistic activity. Today, I invite you to create several therapy exercises and
to enjoy more watercolors. In this class, I invite
you to paint dots in watercolors and to stay
creative in this way. I want you to allow
yourself to focus on the process and create
and explore the color. There is no any rules. I'm just taking the colors that I like more from my polite. And I advise you to
take it the same in this way you can play with
warm colors, cold colors. I just wanted to remind you that the art therapy exercises are highly personal
and subjective. There is no right or wrong
way to create your artwork. Allow yourself to
explore, experiment, express your emotions through this act of painting
dots in a colors. Enjoy this process and embrace the therapiedic benefits
of this exercise. Pay attention that I started by making small
dots on the paper. I use the tip of
my pain brush can experiment with different sizes or spacing or arrangements. Just feel free to change. You don't have to follow along and to create it
exactly in this way, you can create a
beautiful pattern or random clusters of dots. You don't need just to
make the same design. It is obviously my wish
to make it like this, but you can choose
how to do it as well. After painting the exercise, I really advise you to
reflect and engage. Take a moment to
observe your artwork. Reflect on the process of creating the dots and
the colors you use. How do the dots make you feel? What thoughts or emotions do
engage with your creation? And let it speak to you. Here I paint another dots, but these are bigger. And this is a very
common exercise that you will see
any artist is doing, is mixing up the
main three colors, red, yellow, and blue. You can choose any other
colors to mix it up. And to relax, I just remind you, feel free to do whatever you like and how you enjoy as well. The dots can be painted
in a smaller way. Size and arrangements
that I have painted earlier and you can
make like I did. And you can play with
mixing up colors. Try to mix up colors
that are not mixing up. Even if there is a
multicolor happening, it is the process
and enjoy it and learn something new how some
of the colors are mixing up, even if the color won't
be transparent or as beautiful as any main colors
that you are used to mix.
4. Monochromatic colors, circles in art therapy: In this class, I invite you to create a monochromatic
polite in water, colors with different colors, to explore the
various nuances and possibilities within
one single color. It can be a very meditative
and expressive exercise that will help you to develop your understanding of
color and its effects. I invite you to enjoy the
process of experimenting with different shades
and techniques and to leave your creativity
to guide you. I took my pot with blue colors
and I started with paints. Gray. Then in thin, blue, ultramarine
blue, turquoise, blue. I'm just playing around
with the same color, different shades and
different tones. Pay attention that
the blue colors have different
warmth of the color. Some of the colors are
warmer, others are cooler. This exercise helps a
lot to understand this and to fill the color
within this exercise. You can also take
only one color and play around the
darkness by adjusting plain water and adding more or less water to have
the color darker or lighter. Or you also can mix up
different colors of the same color and to see how those are working
in between with others. Now I'm taking the green color. I will play here around a little bit with
different greens. If you take into account
the first two colors are warmer and the other
two are cooler colors. Now I will start playing around the red colors that
I have on my palte. I advise you to play
around these to some of the colors I use a lot
during my paintings, others. But in any case, it is
beautiful to play around. Maybe in this exercise, you will find out a new red color that will catch up your attention for
your future works. I think that this
exercise helped me to find out new
tones of the red, because I was the addict
of the ruby color. But I think that I will
add some other colors. So I have added as well
some orange colors. Because orange is, by the end, a lighter color of the red when adding yellow
color into it. Now let's start with an
art therapy exercise and we will paint half circles. It is a very simple
but effective activity that can help
promote relaxation, self expression,
and mindfulness. Pay attention that I'm painting the half circle small
enough if you want, you can paint those bigger, You can divide it into sections, patterns, and create a
design within the shape. You can also create a beautiful pattern for
yourself later to digitalize it and leave this creativity to guide you and experiment with
different possibilities. Explore the symbolism
of the half circles. Because half circles can
carry symbolic meaning, reflect on what the half
circles represents to you. It can symbolize, balance, transition, or the
integration of the opposite. Consider how this
symbolism relates to your current feelings
or experiences. If you feel inclined, you can engage in writing
activity alongside your work. You can write down
your thoughts, feelings or insights that are coming up during
this exercise. Pay attention that I started to paint with warm colors and then I decided to switch on
with the cooler colors. Even though for the blues, I started not with
very cool colors, I started with meat, cool color. Remember that this
exercise is not to create a perfect or
realistic representation, but rather to engage
in a creative process that allows for self
expression and exploration. Embrace the
imperfections, and let your intuition guide
you through choices. Enjoy the therapeutic
benefits of the exercise, and the opportunity to
express yourself through art.
5. Focus your mind through lines: Gather your materials.
War, paint, pet mixing, watercolor
paper brushes. And let's get started with a new art therapy exercise where we will draw
lines in watercolors. It will be a very simple but yet effective
art therapy exercise that promotes focus, mindfulness, and
self expression. I took a thinner paint brush
to create these lines. You can also experiment
with the lines on your old. You can take some
different brushes, different sizes
vary the thickness, length, and directions
of the lines. In this first exercise, I'm painting the
horizontal lines and different sizes
of those as well. I go slower from narco
colors to lighter colors. I'm moving from, for example, from brown colors to yellow, then from yellow to orange and creating these
beautiful transition. Later on, I will
paint vertical lines. It is up to you
if you want to go with vertical lines or
curving lines as you wish. The idea is that
you concentrate. Focus on the things
that you are painting. Explore the water colors, how those works with more
pigment, with more water. How the lowering and
blending effects happen. And how the colors are changing from lighter
color to darker, or from darker color
to lighter one. Through this exercise,
you can explore the fluidity and
expressive qualities of water colors by engaging in a mindful and
meditative practice. Allow yourself to be
present in the moment. Focusing on the
brush strokes and the sensations of the
paint on the paper, Enjoy the therapeutic
benefits and the freedom to express yourself through
these lines and colors. A simple trick that I
haven't mentioned earlier is that once you start to
paint anything in art therapy, you have to question
yourself what for you need to have a goal before
you start to paint. The goal is that you give
yourself a question, you ask yourself something that you are working a long
time and you don't find how to get to the result during the
art therapy exercise. It will help you to
relax your mind, to relax your body, to focus in the process. And you will find out how many insights will
come for your question that you gave to
yourself once you started to work in this
art therapy exercise. The creative process
will help you to gain insights into your
own thoughts, feelings, beliefs will lead to increased self awareness and
self understanding as well. This exercise is
promoting problem resolving skills like
you are experimenting. The different
colors, techniques, approaches, lines
smaller longer. It makes you to be more
flexible and adaptable. It helps you to develop
the coping strategy that can be applied later on in your real life challenges. Within all of the
exercises that I have shared with you earlier and the one that
will follow along, this exercise is one
that I like the most. It is true that it
requires more patience. In my case, I really like it. I love to spend
exploring color lines. In this case, I loved
to focus and to paint these lines
somewhere as well. I enjoyed the changing the colors and how the colors
go one through another. It made me disconnect a lot. I really hope that you will
find these exercises as well reliefing as I found it. It takes a little bit longer
than any other exercise, but still it is
more open minded. It is important to mention
that the benefits of art therapy exercises can
vary for each individual. Process of creating art in a therapeutic context is highly
personal and subjective. The outcomes may differ depending on individual
needs and goals. This is the reason that I insist that once you
enter into the exercise, you have a certain goal, a certain question in your
mind for what do you need this exercise once you are doing this exercise
or during doing it, I advise you also to
have a piece of paper and pen to write down
your insights and notes. Later on, you will find out how many insights are coming up. During the work, I decided to go on
with another exercise. It is very similar. Actually it is the same
exercise as we did till now. The only difference is that
in the first exercise, I have been leaving space
in between the lines. My main reason was to focus and to create the lines
shorter or longer. And not to mix up into those to have a very
slow transitions from light to darker colors of different colors and
different tones here. Instead, in this exercise, I changed the game
a little bit and I started to paint with
lines, vertical lines. I don't leave space in
between the colors. I believe that the colors
do go fluently from one color into another and
to mix up beautifully. At the beginning, I
started to follow along the color wheel and to have
this transition smoother. But later we, as you find out, I started just to add colors
and to find out how to
6. Triangles and green color as a way of growth: During this exercise, we will play around the green color. The green color in water colors can be particularly
beneficial in art therapy due to its symbolic and
therapeutic associations. I start with showing
you that we can obtain the green color from
the main two colors, yellow and blue. Depending on how much yellow
or how much blue color, we will get the intensity of one or another color as well. I invite you to practice the colors of different
blue colors and different yellow colors to see how differently
green will be. For example, there are
warmer colors that will get into the green
color or cooler colors. As you see, I took some yellow
and now I will play around different blue colors and
we'll mix up the color. You don't necessarily need
to have the green color. It is enough to have one or two yellows and
a lot of blue colors. Once you will mix up those, you will find out how different green
colors you will get. I chose to make the therapy exercise with green
color because green, a very symbolic
color of the nature. It is associated with nature representing growth,
renewal, harmony. It can evoke feelings
of tranquility, balance, and connection
with the natural world. When we use green
in art therapy, this can help to explore and express our relationship
with nature. This calming presence by
symbolical representation of this personal growth and
transformation as well. Green can be used to symbolize specific emotions or
states of emotions. For example, it can represent calmness, relaxation,
being grounded. It can also represent envy, jealousy, or feelings
of being stagnant. But obviously it depends
of the feelings and with the question that you enter into the art therapy exercise. Green is also associated with the heart chakra in spiritual
and energy based practices, and it is associated with emotions, love,
compassion, empathy. When we are working with
Green in art therapy, we can explore and express our emotional experiences,
relationships, and feelings of empathy to
ourselves and other people. After exploring the colors and how to mix and to
get green colors, I invite you to start
with the exercise itself. It is about painting
with green colors, different triangles up and down, and to change the forms. The shape of the triangle has its own symbolic
representation. In therapy, triangles can carry various symbolic meanings. It depends obviously
on the cultural, personal, or contextual
association. But usually it is about stability, balance,
harmony, strength. It can also symbolize different aspects of
the life relationship, personal growth, inner balance. When working with green colors, with the triangle that have more or same symbolic meaning, it helps to focus
more and to enjoy more of this exercise as well. Triangles can explore
dynamics relationships between people as well. It, depending on
the arranging of the triangles and
sizes of triangles, we can visually represent
the connections, power dynamic interplay between various elements in our lives. It is a starting point
for your reflections, Relational patterns
and dynamics. Pay attention that my
triangles are not perfect. Some of those are bigger, smaller, the colors
are different. I also try to play around
the green colors somewhere. I mix even green colors in
between to get another color. Remember that the
therapeutic value of working with triangles, not only it is about
the final artwork, but also it is the process of exploration, self
expression, reflection. During this time, please pay attention to the insights
that are coming to your mind. Because if you are coming up into the
exercise with the goal, there will always,
always be insights. I really advise you to have
another piece of paper with a pen or pencil that you write down all the insights
that are coming out during the art
therapy process. The power of mixing up
the green color and triangles is huge because it offers a powerful and very
meaningful experience when you are painting
these triangles, imagine the
symbolization of green. And with a triangle, it is about personal growth,
personal transformation. It represents a milestone, achievement, or aspect
of personal development. This exercise of
personal progress, the celebration of
your inner state of mind and understanding, How do you feel
during the process? We are coming by the end
of this exercise and all of four exercises that I have shared
with you earlier. I hope you enjoyed the
process of joining and painting with me
until the next time.
7. Last thoughts: Thank you for joining this class and having all these
four exercises. I want to remind that all the art pieces that you have created don't
have to be judged. It is about your emotions. It is nothing related that you have to do it
exactly like I did. Each of the exercise should show and share within you
the emotions that you had. I hope that these exercises had a healing effect on you as
well, a transformative effect. Whether you have entered
with the question, I hope that you
found the solutions for your questions
till the next time.
Ala Lopatniov, Illustrator & Watercolorist
