Unlocking Self-Expression!

1. Introduction: Welcome to the course, creating out for self-expression. In this course, I'm going to cover a variety of tips and techniques that you can use to start expressing yourself through what you don't need to be a good artist. You don't even need to have any skill in the matter. In fact, that's part of the point. The point is to get out what is going on in your mind, onto the page, onto the canvas as a way to express yourself. I'll use this personally. It was one of the things that helped open up my creativity and allowed me to write and create the poetry and do this sort of work that I'm doing now was the gateway to self-expression and self-acceptance. Like I said, talent isn't necessary. It's about just, just freedom of expression and getting out what you're feeling. The act of expressing ourselves is therapeutic, is healing. It helps us to grow. Because what we're doing is we're putting in, we're putting the thoughts that are in our mind that a ruminating that are bouncing around onto the page and it's like what sort of shining the light of awareness on them. But by drawing them out of my mind and putting them on the Canvas, we're saying, Hey, I acknowledge, I accept, I express u. And that helps to, doesn't have to completely eliminate them. But it helps you to sort of reduce the severity, reduce the duration, and just help to live a more whole excepted and present life. My name is Zachary Phillips. I'm an online mental health advocate, author and coach. And in this role, I've helped thousands of people move from a place of surviving, passionately thriving. And one of the things I get people to do is creative art therapy, either with poetry and writing, which I've got some other courses up on, or with artistic stuff, which is what we're going to go into now. So without further ado, let's get started. And in terms of like stuff that you need for the course, you've got it lying around the house, a pen and a piece of paper at the bare minimum is fine. Anything more on top of that is right. 2. Why Create Art: So why should we try and express ourselves through out? Why is that even necessary? Well, there's a couple of reasons here. I will just list them through quickly. First one, which we already touched on, It's a way of self-expression of finding out about yourself, of clearing your mind of the thoughts and sort of putting them into reality onto the page. A second thing is that it can help unlock other creative pathways. So you might find that although you're not creating your drawing or like, you know, Canvas based on triggers, the same part of your brain. So if you're looking to create a book or music, or some sort of creative business projects or literally anything down that creative pathway you have to make novel connections. Practicing art therapy can help unlock that part of your brain and sort of prime the pump. So a rotting analogy that I like to use is you just sort of fragrance, just sort of get going to sort of get the brain going, get yourself ready, prime the pump. So one go riding muscles up in the same way we're applying the same concept to warming your creativity up. Literally just doodling on a pen or a paper, just expressing an emotion or a theme or a topic. I'll get into the different ways we can do this later in the course. But the idea is, is that it just helps us to get our creative juices flowing. And beyond that, it's, it's a way of sort of processing issues that are happening in our life, all that have previously happened. Think about what a good friend does, or what a good therapist does, or what a good system to design to make us Hill does it just basically let us listen. You express yourself and then therapist or friend, the support structure listens back. But there's a couple of problems with this. What happens if you don't have someone? What happens if you're too shy or embarrassed? What happens if you're just on your own and you want to do it right now. Well, art and writing and creativity is a perfect outlet. So people like I've said, you use riding therapy for this, they use dance for this. So what we're gonna do is use drawing based or creativity based, artistic based, self-expression. 3. Turn Off The Internal Editor: So the first key thing that I want you to think about without therapy is to just throw away the internal editor. I'm going to show you some of my out soon and you'll see that the quality of it isn't that great. I'm going to show you stuff that I worked on for a while and stuff that I worked on very quickly. So you can see the sort of a range between like, you know, sort of flesh and then sort of focused on but I'm not good and i'm, I'm freely admitting that because this isn't a life has to draw good class by any stretch. It's, it's self-expression through out the ID is to just the feeling is the process that matters. So I can't stress enough that you need to throw that internal editor away and just get it on the page and just do, I'm going to give you a class project will be a specific activity that will get you started on this process. But just for the moment, just to keep in mind, It's not about what you create. It's not about the end product, it's about the process and the expression that sort of leads to it. And realistically, what you can do with your ad is up to you. You choose to display, you can choose to keep it, you choose to burn. It's ritualistic, wash it down the toilet, whatever you like. Because the point isn't to make beautiful art. If you wanna make beautiful out, there's a bunch of people up on line up on Skillshare everywhere, everywhere. You can find the, you know, the how to do specific techniques. That's not the point. I would just want to get you expressing yourself. So the point is, is throwaway that internal editor, window drawing or creating. And this little voice is saying this. So if this doesn't look good, okay, that's fine. The point isn't to create something pretty, the point isn't to make a groundwork of art that would be displayed in some museum somewhere. That's not what we're doing. We're just expressing ourselves for our own internal benefits to make ourselves feel better, to make ourselves better people to make ourselves understand ourselves better. That's the whole point. The point is pure artistry. It's not to create a product. I use this process with my writing and it's paid off massively. It's just about getting that free flow of expression down. So if you take nothing from this course other than this 1, it's just go for it, turn off that internal editor and keep creating. 4. My Art Explained: So I'm gonna show you a bunch of the odd that I've done for my own art-based creative expression. And I'll talk through some of them in depth and some of them I'll just show you. I'll also put a picture down below so you can look them with a little bit more clarity and detail rather than me just holding them up like this. So feel free to click down below and check them out. Once again, the point is, it's not about what they look like in terms of, that's a great piece of art. It's about the expression and the meaning behind it in the process. So I'll talk you through some of the stuff that I've done and a brief explanation of why. And then we'll get into it for you. This first piece I call the eye. As you can see, it's a circle with reflective colors in each of the circles around the outside, sort of rotate that same patent around. And it's sort of quiet in imposing there. What I was trying to get is you can't see the writing, but the rotting around the edge is very self defeating. It's very negative. It's very sort of the negative thoughts that were going through my mind when I was quite low. And the idea was that I was like looking at myself, noticing these thoughts and then I'll sort of looking through them. And this is the sort of image that came back to me. Now, like I said, this was sort of I, the sort of inner eye looking back at me, looking through, looking possibly can be owned the thoughts that were going through my mind. Okay, The second one is called the smile. Now similar ideas, similar theme. The idea being that I in the past, particularly when used to express myself just this sort of fake smile. But underneath that smallest a lot of negativity, a lot of folks, a lot of self hatred and issues there. And I'm sort of dealt with that in big bold writing, a little bold warnings like a big folds of the little thoughts. But the first glance you just see a Smiley face. And that's sort of what I felt internally and what I felt like I was projecting outwards. So I call this pace fractal. And the idea was that I wanted to sort of have a look at how colors interplay between each other with different patented haven't loadable like matching but opposite. This was just made just taking the time to just create something and just seeing where I went with it on top of the visual lot and they like the colors that I use. I also added some sort of paper mesh I stuff around the outside. Once again, I'm not really sure why this was just made just exploring what came up and they just ended up producing this one. These next two don't have names, they just super quick scribbles that I wanted to highlight the difference between something that took a little bit more thought and a little bit more creativity and sort of focus compared to something that was just like, I'm just gonna get this out of my head. So as you can say, terrible. It's like a fire in the middle. Basically this one was like a, an image in my mind of a very positive memory that when I was younger, when canteen those river and his trees and a fire in a tent and that sort of stuff. But just expressing that once again, the quality isn't the point, It's the point is the self-expression of that. And then this one is the face of someone that I didn't have that good and memory, although it was sort of like a bit person who was quite negative in my life. Now, obviously, that's not what they looked like, but that's how my brain and my ability. So I like expressions of the time. 5. Focus On The Process: So given a look at the US produced with this, I want to just very much emphasized that you can go anywhere with this. It doesn't have to be just drawing. It can be painting, it could be multimedia. It can be a variety of different things. It doesn't even have to be physical. You can do digital. Once again, the point is to take what's in your brain and put it on the page as best possible. But we're not worried about the end result. We're worried about the process. We're just going through the motions and expressing ourselves in all the pieces that I had. It it was the act of creating, the act of doing it had that therapeutic healing that made me feel good. Some of them I had an idea in mind of what I wanted to create. Others. I just was he had begun. But the point is, is that it's the act of doing it. Now, I want to re-emphasize that we need to turn our internal editor off. If I was worried about the quality of my work, I wouldn't have gone past the first line because my first-line sucks. I'm not a physical based artist. My my my my talent, my ability, what I practice, my, my craft so to speak, is with words, is with poetry is with books. That's where I studied, that's where I practice. That's where I am to pay my career path down. That's not the point. Like, you know, going down that path. I'll be far more precise. And I don't take a lot longer and it's sort of like more purposefully directed behaviors. Whereas with the artistic expression, it's about creativity. So I can't emphasize enough that you just turn off that internal editor and you get going. So what I'm gonna do is we're going to look at the class project and sort of started. And then sort of add some extra principles and extra ideas of what you can do beyond to the class project. 6. Class Project: So for the class project, all you need is a pen and a piece of paper any size, it doesn't matter. These activities gonna take no longer than five minutes and it's just going to get us going and get us started. Now, what you can do is you could use this activity as just all of your artistic expression, all of your creativity, if you like, or if you used as a springboard for other creativity projects, or you could use it as a warm-up activity for other are you doing? It's quite versatile, but like I said, the self appendix of a paper, pause the video, grab this Ofwat some and we'll get started. So what we're going to end up creating is something that looks sort of like this. Okay, now once again, I'll put a picture down below and you can check it out so you can look at it in depth, not just me holding it up, but what we're doing here is basically I'm going to do it on the board behind us, but you put a bunch of lines and limb details in and then you'll start filling it out. And you just sort of letting the piece sort of manifest itself. So let's give it a try and see what I'm doing and then I'll encourage you to do it with me, okay? Okay. So what we're gonna do to start off with is just, I just random lines. Again, just, just literally just no thought, just scribble on the page. Yet. Now, obviously I'm determining the white board, so it's gonna look a little bit different to the, a piece that you can click down below and check out, but just, just your straw. And if you're lucky, then when you're satisfied with that, you might start adding little emphasis lines, little extenuation points. Once again, we're not trying to create anything that looks super sexy and spectacular. All we're doing is just expressing ourselves, adding to the lines what we feel like. We want to express. Nice and easy, just not caring. I'm not too concerned with what this is going to look like because realistically, I don't know what this is going to look like. I'm just going to keep going. I'm just gonna keep extending it and keep adding to things and just sort of keep putting it in the end. I can get as detailed as, you know, minute as I lock it might do little, little dots. I'm not connect those dots. I might add a little sort of hand looking things, little circles with eyes, it doesn't matter. Which is our goal is to just keep putting stuff down and express it now using a whiteboard marker on the thing just so you can see it live. It doesn't look quite as fancy and Nate has a pen and pad and doing it was trying to explain sort of takes me into the sort of explanation mode as opposed to the art mode. You can lose yourself doing something like this, just, just adding little things and connecting them and drawing them and adding all these little things. And what you're gonna find is, is that azure doing it when you start losing yourself in this process, you'll find that you're finding yourself caught mindful. And then you'll find yourself just keeping on going and you'll be like, Okay, well, I really want all my lines to have sharp edges. So you're going to start adding some sharp edges to it. You'd be like, okay, I want to eliminate all these little lines. I'm going to connect it up. I'm going to color the color of stuffing, right? You'll sort of keep going, keep going, keep going. And once again, the end product isn't the point. The idea, if I show you my thing, I ended here because I felt better. This is just how it ended up turning out there was no sort of plan, no sort of idea. This is. So for the class project, I just want you to go through this process, spend no more than five minutes on this. I mean, feel free to go on for longer if you're finding benefit from it. But the idea is just get small piece of paper. It can be a little notepad IV, it doesn't have to be big. And just a couple scribbles and start adding the lines to it for the class project, take a picture, upload it, and just let me know how you felt doing this. Like I said, this is just a very quick, easy, portable approach to artistic expression. You could go from this and this sort of helps to turn off the internal editor because once again, what are we creating? Nothing, it's not, it doesn't look, doesn't look great. We're not aiming to make some sort of specific buyout based thing. It's not like a portrait, It's literally just lines and squiggles and dots that we're just doing our Leading Out brian flood. So it helps us to get into that artistic flow. It helps us to express. So like I said, for the class project, just little pen, no more than five minutes. Jot something down, take a picture, upload it, and just little one single paragraph. How did this make you feel? Now like I said, any of the other I've got up there, you'll be able to click down below and chicken out what it looks like in a little bit more depth in person, but just give it a try. Let me know how it felt. 7. Get Mindful When Creating: You're free to go where ever you like with, with your art. Okay, so feel free to try different forms of mediums. Try different forms of utensils. Just play with it so you can try drawing in chalk. You could try crayon and controlled watercolor. You can try paint, you can try collages, you could try it digitally. How you choose to express yourself. Ultimately, it's up to you. And remember our goal isn't to create something amazing. It's just to get the thought-out and just start opening up those creative flow in that creative process. So try different things and when you're doing it, I want you to sort of just check into what you're doing as in being mindful about it. I've got a bunch of courses on mindfulness meditation. But the process that I want you to think that now is, is when you're doing the right, That's what you're doing. When you're creating this art. You're not like all thinking about the future or depressed about the past. Ideally getting to the state of flow where you're just doing what you're doing. And that can be really liberating and really frame. Because not only does it help give you a break from the craziness in the chaos in your mind and in the world. But it enables you to have it like that little bit of a recipe, a little bit of a stopgap, a little bit of a like a tool that you can go. Okay, I'm going to shut that off, be present, and it sort of resets you. This is risk of over the day of things. Not many or most stressful, stressful stress. And then we can't get to sleep at night. And that makes the next day sock and the next day stock. Well, wouldn't it be good if we had a tool at our disposal to stop that brings us back to normal and then reset. Now, we'll end up doing this sort of one. But that's far less extreme than the top end. So really consider the idea of checking into what you're doing and being mindful about your app. 8. Quick Recap: So super-quick recap. The whole idea of this course is to get you creatively expressing yourself throughout, to get you out of your mind and into the present moment by drawing or creating or painting or anything like that. Remember there's gonna be that internal editor that's saying, Hey, think of this, think of that, this isn't great. You ignore that the whole point is the process, it's not what you end up producing. Now if you've liked this course, I suggest you check out my poetry for self-expression, running for self-expression, and my mindfulness meditation courses because they all cover similar topics. The idea being that we're at about head and into the present moment. And we're expressing ourselves. The stuff that we've covered in this course will help you to either get creative and sort of help you trigger you to start your creative processes, whatever that is, it'll help you to reset you to the present moment if you having a stressful day and it's something that can just make you feel good for the sake of doing that good thing. Once again, it's not about what we create, it's about the process of creation. That's the point. Now if you like this course, up above you, there'll be a thing or down below maybe that says Write Review, please do so. It lets me know that you're enjoying the course. It lets me know what I need to improve on and all that sort of stuff. I encourage you to complete the class project. Remember doing that little quick five-minute doodle, drawing on it and then just filling in those gaps and just upload it. Let me know what it made you feel. And if you want to check out all of the other stuff that I'm doing, my book, my podcast, my blog, all of that sort of stuff hit over my website at Zachary Hoffman Phillips.com. And you can connect with me on social media at Zach P. Philips. I'll be uploading a bunch more courses over time. So feel free to follow me on Skillshare and yes. Thank you. Just give it a shot. Okay. And checking how you feel before. Check into how you feel after and if you noticed that it's an improvement, do it again.