my favourite mindful drawing technique
When I speak to people about Mindful Drawing, they often assume that you need some level of creative skill or mindfulness know-how to achieve it, and honestly, this could not be further from the truth.
With this in mind, I want to share one of my favourite, go-to mindful drawing techniques which literally anyone can do. Yes, even you!*
*Person nonchalantly waving their hand and saying “oh but I don’t draw”
What is Mindfulness?
First, let’s clarify what I mean by Mindfulness, because this is hugely misunderstood and easily over-complicated too.
In essence, Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment, without judgement. That’s all.
The ‘paying attention to the present moment’ part is what can be most challenging for a lot of us - our brains are complex and busy, always working on keeping us safe, remembering things, running through scenarios, processing past events - and it can be incredibly difficult to stop them for long enough to allow us to be entirely in the present moment.
HOW DOES DRAWING FIT IN?
Where Mindful Drawing techniques come in, is they give us something physical to focus our attention and awareness on.
So let’s explore a very simple Mindful Drawing technique:
Draw a shape (it could be a line, mark, squiggle - anything really) and another, and another for as long as you can, counting each shape as you draw it.
I bet you were expecting something far more complicated. Let me explain. If I was drawing lots of repeating shapes (say circles) without counting, my brain does not need to do much work at all in order for me to continue with this task, so it will merrily go off on it’s thinking tangents and internal chatter. By giving myself a relatively easy additional task to do - in this case it’s counting - it is giving my brain just enough of a task to do to prevent it from wandering off, but it’s not so taxing that it breaks the creative flow of the drawing process.
You have likely heard the advice that ‘counting sheep’ can help you drift off to sleep, and it is for pretty much the same reason - it gives our brain something simple to focus on in order to keep it in the present moment and not wander off to wherever it may have been going that was likely keeping you awake at night.
Now remember the ‘without judgement’ part of that definition of Mindfulness above? How this is likely to play out, is that you will simply loose focus, forget where you got to and loose count. At this point it is easy to get frustrated with ourselves and give up. This is okay. It is more than okay - expect that it WILL happen. When it does happen, don’t worry about it, just start again at 1, and continue drawing and counting.
MAKING IT WORK FOR YOU
The great thing about this technique, is that you can do it anytime, anywhere and with any materials too.
You can also substitute the counting for any other logical labelling system - something like letters of the alphabet, or something you’re really familiar with works best as it shouldn’t be too taxing to recall.
I hope this has demystified mindful drawing for you a little, and you feel able to give it a go! Even a couple of minutes doing this can make a HUGE difference in how you feel. Giving your brain a little rest for a few minutes can be SO GOOD for you!
If this type of drawing is right up your street, I have a full and comprehensive course which takes you through 14 mindful drawing exercises and pattern drawing prompts - you can find all the details here.
