Creative Self-Care: How to Stay Mindful with Your Art

There’s a lot of talk out there about self-care. Could it be that we are more and more stressed as a whole? I wonder what’s causing that. Maybe some things come to mind for you as you read this … they definitely do for me. I’m not here to solve the world’s problems, but sometimes it’s helpful to take a moment to define what’s making us feel stressed.

So … go ahead. Name the things that are putting you on high alert today … this week … this year. Write them down … just to take them out of your head for a minute.

How do you take care of yourself through your busy life?

Personally, I try to eat healthy, exercise, and make sure I have some down time. But it’s hard, isn’t it … turning your brain away from those emails, the people who want you to help them solve problems, the endless activities and responsibilities? I mean, if you don’t do it now, it will still be waiting for you to take care of it. Maybe you can get a little self-care when the list is done …

My list is never done.

Here’s a thought: What if it gets done faster and with a better attitude if I pause to take care of myself for a few minutes?

But … we’re going to have to be intentional. Time rarely opens up on its own.

Self-Care Ideas

There are lots of ways we can engage in helpful self-care:

A pedicure or massage is nice. My body needs to recover from the tension. I need to stop doing, doing, doing for a few minutes, and let someone else do something for me.
Journaling is great. There are definitely times I need to get words or numbers on a page. It helps with my processing and reduces my anxiety. I find that it ‘nails my thoughts down’ and removes the swirling, unfinished thoughts and ideas to help me see clearer.
Fresh air helps. Getting my body moving works out the stress and makes things feel more solvable and clear.
Some of my favorite ways to care for myself are creative and artsy.

Let’s explore four ways art helps me stay creative and mindful. Maybe they’ll work for you, too.

For me, it has to happen on actual paper with real pencils, pens, and/or watercolor paint. Something about the creative process mingling with the feel of the paper and sound of the tools moving is refreshing. It doesn’t happen in the same way when I work with my art in Photoshop.

How to Turn Your Art Practice into Creative Self-Care

It helps to pay attention to four things. Let me tell you about how it works for me.

1. It brings me back to the present.

Not tomorrow, not this morning … now. I am here, doing this, at this moment, with these people.

Normally, I’m focused on the next project. What has to happen tomorrow and what are the plans I need to have in place to make that happen? With design, sometimes I need to think about Christmas in June and summer in the middle of winter.

Here’s one way I intentionally stay present creatively: I’m not always very confident about choosing colors for a painting, so a couple of years ago, I started taking pictures of things I thought were beautiful. If they looked beautiful together … logically, there had to be a color palette that worked. So, I took a picture and chose colors from it to make a color palette. These palettes also make a great reference to return to when I’m feeling color stuck on a project.

Do you know what else it does? It allows me to tune into what’s happening in my life right now. I don’t want to miss today because I’m preparing for something in the future.

I still intentionally look for color palettes when I’m out and about and share them with my email list about twice a month..

Here are a few examples:

2. Creating helps me to focus on one thing.

In a world full of distraction, endless entertainment, and unlimited information at our fingertips, focus can be elusive. Scattered chaos is more familiar. When I create art by hand on paper, I have to slow down and concentrate. While I do that, my other senses awaken. I listen to the calming scratch of the nib as I draw with calligraphy ink, see how the color blends and mixes as the watercolor dries, smell the paper and ink, and feel the weight of the pencil in my hand.

And I am not distracted, I’m engaged. My mind isn’t a million places, clamoring for a hold, it’s doing one thing.

3. It quiets the verbal part of my brain.

The verbal side of my brain is constantly at work: analyzing, strategizing, researching, processing, looking for solutions, and definitely overthinking things. Sometimes, it needs a break, and I find it extremely difficult to turn it off for a while. But … when I do something creative, it settles down and gets quiet. It relaxes.

Something about creating something visual turns the verbal off for a while. And that rest soothes the overwhelm, reducing my anxiety.

4. Making art gives me a place where I get to choose the outcome.

I’m not typically a person who needs to be in control all the time, but sometimes, we have stress and anxiety because we’re facing chaos … not of our doing. When creating, we can bring order to it. We can face it on the page and give it an outcome we want or hope for, even when we can’t see it in real life yet. Choose the colors, shapes, and tools we use. Add the feelings we want to be there to the image. And if it doesn’t turn out as planned, we can redo it.