Emotional Health through Art

Our world continues to struggle with mental health despite great advances in knowledge about mental health. Often we are left scrambling for the way out of mental misery when confronted by things like suicide and depression. I firmly believe that the gap between mental health awareness and its implementation lies in a lack of emphasis on consistent efforts towards emotional awareness at the individual level; even on days when everything is fine.

For me, art and writing have been ways to not just temporarily relax my mind but, more so to deepen my awareness of my emotions and become emotionally intelligent. Through this class, I hope to share a tool aimed at empowering each one of you through drawing. 

This class is for anyone interested in becoming emotionally intelligent. Mental health awareness is a universal need and so, is this course, universally applicable.

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The project entails drawing a self-portrait using oil pastels (can branch out to other mediums) and not only understand colour but, also become emotionally self-aware. 

It will entail the following steps:

1. Write a journal entry detailing your day / your responses to things or just generally how you were / are feeling, at the end of the day.

2. Draw a self-portrait. It need not be a replica of you, rather a representation of your version of you based on how you’re feeling after writing in your journal.

3. Identify various moods from the text of your journal entry and pick out a colour representing each of the moods.

4. Fill in the self-portrait with the colours representing the moods and SHARE with us!