Art Therapy 1

Set The Mood

Art therapy for me included having on soothing music, maybe some interesting videos on the TV, and just letting my mind wander and see where it wants to go. I try not to worry to much about exact spacing or lines or composition, the goal is to just set marks on paper.

The Art

Below, I break down the psychology behind the two pieces I created during this session.

Piece 1

With the Eyed piece, the fleshy orange color I’d painted made me immediately want to paint an eye so I went straight to it. Eyes are one of the few things I’ve consistently practiced through most of my art history. I even used to take macro photographs of people’s eyes and seeing the different iris colors and patterns. That fascination continued here.

This art session gave me the opportunity to explore why eyes are something I am fascinated by.

Which eye is this? Is it the left eye looking forward or the right eye looking back?

Why The Eyes?

As I created Eyed, I reflected on my fascination with eyes in a conversation with my husband. I think eyes represent a lot for me, namely: being seen, being watched, focus, and attention.

Being Seen

Being understood has been a major contributor to who I decide to keep in my life. We are all complex beings and I need a lot of understanding when it comes to my eccentricities. I don’t want to constantly mask myself, I want to be around people who truly see me.

Eyes represent being seen and validated.

Being Watched

Social anxiety is something I struggle with, and I constantly feel like I’m being judged. I overthink every interaction and worry that I come across as weird instead of quirky or goofy. Other people’s perceptions impact me, even though they probably shouldn’t.

Eyes represent my fear of constantly being monitored and judged.

Focus

As I stated earlier, I tend to externalize my thoughts, feelings, dreams, memories, experiences, etc because I worry that if I don’t, I will lose them/forget them. One common ADHD symptom is a lack of object permanence. It’s why we lose things so easily. Once it’s out of our physical sight, it’s GONE. This includes people, appointments, even things we like doing. Out of sight? Out of mind. It why a lot of us are so cluttered…because we like having out stuff around us to remind us it exists. I need to focus on what’s in front of me in order to progress.

Eyes represent object permanence.

Attention

ADHD is a misnomer, because it isn’t a deficient of attention that’s the problem. The problem is a dysregulation of attention. People with ADHD have infinite attention…for the things they are interested in. So I have a particularly rough relationship with attention, having ADHD myself. It’s why art has taken me so long to practice and actually get good at.

Eyes represent the metaphorical strain it takes to focus my attention on specific things.

Eye Art History

This is the oldest drawing I have of me practicing a full human eye. I followed a tutorial and was so pleased with the results. I drew this in 2013.

However, a lesson I haven’t learned very well is to stop while I’m ahead. I ended up adding color and felt like I’d ruined it. This mean that blurry picture above is the only picture I have of the beauty that was my first attempt at a human eye.

After that, I did eyes and faces every now-and-then. The below spans 2-3 years.

Something I’ve noticed about my eyes is that when I do draw them on faces, they are quite large…much larger than they should be proportionally. I think I like large eyes because they remind me of alien eyes, and also because I just like drawing eyes.

Eye Advancements

While in my digital experimentation era in 2019, I found another really cool tutorial on how to digitally paint irises. It was easy to follow and helped me creating stunning images.

Tutorial 1 (Rainbow Eye)
Tutorial 2 (Purple Eye)

And then, one of my more recent pieces, a favorite of mine, is this eye with the doodled iris.

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I’ve also began experimenting with animal eyes. Most animals don’t have scleras so they’re just irises in the face. The irises are the most interesting part of animal eyes and are something I want to explore more so when I do color studies, more so than pencil sketches.

My brother said he really liked the eye in particular in the above fish piece.

Random Eye Tips

• Biggest tip is to remember the eye is a ball, even if in a human face, they’re just a sliver of that. Remembering they’re balls will help place everything else around the eye.
• Lashes don’t form individually, nor do they appear individually. Eye lashes form in clumps.
• There is a shadow directly under the eyelid on the eye in almost every context. There is also shading in the corners.
• In super detailed eyes with a bright reflection, you can see eye lashes reflected.

Piece 2

There isn’t much to say about this piece besides “trust the process.”

I scribbled on the paper to show my husband how the paint sticks work, and from there I saw a calla lily and brought it to life.

I like plants and flowers, they’re pretty and I love the coloring. Calla lilies are interesting shapes so I wanted to draw them. It was relaxing and theraputic.