This is an example of some of the doodles I make to help me cope with anxiety or nervousness. What helps me is to doodle the certain emotion/feeling/event that caused me a lot of anxiety. Drawing it helps me get it out of my system and seeing it on paper makes me aware that it’s out of my mind.  I have a submission by the wonderful http://justynadabrowski.tumblr.com/! She was kind enough to share her art that helps her cope with her anxiety. -Olga
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This is an example of some of the doodles I make to help me cope with anxiety or nervousness. What helps me is to doodle the certain emotion/feeling/event that caused me a lot of anxiety. Drawing it helps me get it out of my system and seeing it on paper makes me aware that it’s out of my mind.  I have a submission by the wonderful http://justynadabrowski.tumblr.com/! She was kind enough to share her art that helps her cope with her anxiety. -Olga
Zoom Info
This is an example of some of the doodles I make to help me cope with anxiety or nervousness. What helps me is to doodle the certain emotion/feeling/event that caused me a lot of anxiety. Drawing it helps me get it out of my system and seeing it on paper makes me aware that it’s out of my mind.  I have a submission by the wonderful http://justynadabrowski.tumblr.com/! She was kind enough to share her art that helps her cope with her anxiety. -Olga
Zoom Info
This is an example of some of the doodles I make to help me cope with anxiety or nervousness. What helps me is to doodle the certain emotion/feeling/event that caused me a lot of anxiety. Drawing it helps me get it out of my system and seeing it on paper makes me aware that it’s out of my mind.  I have a submission by the wonderful http://justynadabrowski.tumblr.com/! She was kind enough to share her art that helps her cope with her anxiety. -Olga
Zoom Info

This is an example of some of the doodles I make to help me cope with anxiety or nervousness. What helps me is to doodle the certain emotion/feeling/event that caused me a lot of anxiety. Drawing it helps me get it out of my system and seeing it on paper makes me aware that it’s out of my mind. 

I have a submission by the wonderful http://justynadabrowski.tumblr.com/! She was kind enough to share her art that helps her cope with her anxiety.

-Olga

Q:Hello Olga, I stumbled upon your Art & Anxiety post & your methods have helped me as an artist who is trying to cope with anxiety. I agree with your advice on not working on major projects when anxious because your thoughts definitely get in the way of your work & it's best to work in a calm atmosphere when your head is clear. Some methods that have worked for me are creating silly doodles with a certain emotion attached to it/events that have made me anxious. Again, your post is really helpful!

justynadabrowski

Thank you so much for getting in touch! It’s really amazing to have tangible proof of your words reaching people.

Drawing things that trigger your anxiety seems like an amazing therapeutic technique - I wish I’d thought of it myself. I’ll try it next time.

Thank you for sharing, I am sure this will be helpful to others too!

Olga

PS. The original post cane be found here

Art and Anxiety

teaandink:

Hi guys! As some of you know, my name is Olga and I am an illustrator from Russia who lives and works in England. I also struggle with anxiety which can at times be overwhelming and it really, really gets in the way of my work. 

This post is about how I, as a person who draws, handle anxiety and I’d like to get a discussion going on about what you, as a person who draws or sculpts or paints or photographs or knits, do to manage your anxiety. If we share our methods, who knows, we might help each other cope better.

Please reblog this, whether you’re an artist or not. Tell me how you use your skills to cope with anxiety. Let’s help one another!

Read More

Reposting to try and reach a wider audience.

Art and Anxiety

Hi guys! As some of you know, my name is Olga and I am an illustrator from Russia who lives and works in England. I also struggle with anxiety which can at times be overwhelming and it really, really gets in the way of my work. 

This post is about how I, as a person who draws, handle anxiety and I’d like to get a discussion going on about what you, as a person who draws or sculpts or paints or photographs or knits, do to manage your anxiety. If we share our methods, who knows, we might help each other cope better.

Please reblog this, whether you’re an artist or not. Tell me how you use your skills to cope with anxiety. Let’s help one another!

Read More

Source: teaandink

I haven’t done a process post in a while, so I thought it might be interesting to do one from a slightly different point of view: I’ll talk about looking for a visual solution rather than my usual illustrator-y problem-solving approach. This image was just a random drawing that started in my sketchbook, but once I got it in my head that I wanted it to look a certain way, it ended up being something I spent hours on. So let’s see what happened! I was in a pencil mood, so I wanted to draw something soft yet colourful, but as I was doing a preliminary graphite sketch, I thought that it might be an interesting idea to create a juxtaposition between the reality and softness of the human body and the more impersonal texture of clothing’s fabric. So I drew this: The idea was there, but it looked terrible. I wanted to make it look good, so I took it to photoshop, where I spent ages trying to clean up the existing shape of the jacket and play about with the background. It sucked. So then I got rid of everything except the face and the arms and whipped out my tablet. Things were starting to look up! But was that really enough? Eh. I added some context to it: Ohh, that looked a lot better. But I felt like something crucial was missing. How about adding a pattern? I used the pattern from yesterday’s image as a placeholder: YEAH! That worked (by the time I was so exhausted I was actually talking to myself out loud). Time to draw a pattern for this image and be done with it! And draw I did: And, finally, I arrived at this: It was 3 am. I looked at it, and it seemed like it was awful. The next morning I woke up, moved the pattern around, and it looked great.
Zoom Info
I haven’t done a process post in a while, so I thought it might be interesting to do one from a slightly different point of view: I’ll talk about looking for a visual solution rather than my usual illustrator-y problem-solving approach. This image was just a random drawing that started in my sketchbook, but once I got it in my head that I wanted it to look a certain way, it ended up being something I spent hours on. So let’s see what happened! I was in a pencil mood, so I wanted to draw something soft yet colourful, but as I was doing a preliminary graphite sketch, I thought that it might be an interesting idea to create a juxtaposition between the reality and softness of the human body and the more impersonal texture of clothing’s fabric. So I drew this: The idea was there, but it looked terrible. I wanted to make it look good, so I took it to photoshop, where I spent ages trying to clean up the existing shape of the jacket and play about with the background. It sucked. So then I got rid of everything except the face and the arms and whipped out my tablet. Things were starting to look up! But was that really enough? Eh. I added some context to it: Ohh, that looked a lot better. But I felt like something crucial was missing. How about adding a pattern? I used the pattern from yesterday’s image as a placeholder: YEAH! That worked (by the time I was so exhausted I was actually talking to myself out loud). Time to draw a pattern for this image and be done with it! And draw I did: And, finally, I arrived at this: It was 3 am. I looked at it, and it seemed like it was awful. The next morning I woke up, moved the pattern around, and it looked great.
Zoom Info

I haven’t done a process post in a while, so I thought it might be interesting to do one from a slightly different point of view: I’ll talk about looking for a visual solution rather than my usual illustrator-y problem-solving approach.

This image was just a random drawing that started in my sketchbook, but once I got it in my head that I wanted it to look a certain way, it ended up being something I spent hours on. So let’s see what happened!

I was in a pencil mood, so I wanted to draw something soft yet colourful, but as I was doing a preliminary graphite sketch, I thought that it might be an interesting idea to create a juxtaposition between the reality and softness of the human body and the more impersonal texture of clothing’s fabric. So I drew this:

The idea was there, but it looked terrible. I wanted to make it look good, so I took it to photoshop, where I spent ages trying to clean up the existing shape of the jacket and play about with the background. It sucked. So then I got rid of everything except the face and the arms and whipped out my tablet. Things were starting to look up!

But was that really enough? Eh. I added some context to it:

Ohh, that looked a lot better. But I felt like something crucial was missing. How about adding a pattern? I used the pattern from yesterday’s image as a placeholder:

YEAH! That worked (by the time I was so exhausted I was actually talking to myself out loud). Time to draw a pattern for this image and be done with it!

And draw I did:

And, finally, I arrived at this:

It was 3 am. I looked at it, and it seemed like it was awful. The next morning I woke up, moved the pattern around, and it looked great.