Mindful Drawing 101: Guided Prompts for Creative Self-Care

Mindful Drawing combines the benefits of mindfulness with the practice of drawing through the foundations of presence, awareness, and non-judgment.

Do you wish you could feel calmer when life gets busy? Maybe you’ve been told to meditate, but you’ve found that it can be easy to lose focus or motivation.  On the other hand, maybe you want to create more art, but have trouble making something because your inner critic gets in the way. These two problems may seem different, but actually have more in common than you might think!  In this class, I’m going to share a fun and easy exercise for developing your mindfulness and your creativity. I call this practice Mindful Drawing. 

This class is for everyone who wants to relax and draw! It is meant to provide simple and useful guidance for starting or deepening your mindfulness practice. 

In this class, we’ll cover: 

1. Basic principles of mindful drawing 
2. The benefits of mindful drawing  
3. Beginning your drawing in the present moment
4. Prompts to engage your senses and connect you to the environment 
5. Prompts to help you reflect on gratitude and self-compassion 
6. Top-down drawing demonstrations for guidance 

This class also includes a downloadable template that you can use to follow along with the drawing prompts we will do in the class. 

As promised, here is the link to the Tangerine Meditation that I mentioned in the class.

Here are also some of my favorite mindfulness and mindful drawing recommendations: 

• Mindfulness & the Art of Drawing: A creative path to awareness by Wendy Anne Greenhalgh 
• Breathe: A Thich Nhat Hanh Meditation Journal by Thich Nhat Hanh 
• Mindfulness Cards: Simple Practices for Everyday Life by Rohan Gunatillake 

• Introduction
• Part 1 - What You’ll Need
• Part 2 - Mindful Drawing 101
• Part 3 - Drawing Exercise
• Exercise 1 - Sight
• Exercise 2 - Touch
• Exercise 3 - Smell
• Exercise 4 - Taste
• Exercise 5 - Sound
• Exercise 6 - Gratitude
• Exercise 7 - Self Compassion
• Part 4 - Final Thoughts