During my nightly browsing of YouTube, I came across this video that opened up my eyes to ways that I can mix art with my own mental healing. Elena Bateman, or Ellbat, posted this seemingly crazy video about drawing a naked self-portrait. Though I have drawn nude models in some drawing classes, I never would have considered drawing myself naked. Especially because I’m already super self-conscious about my body in clothes, thinking of drawing myself is always nerve-wracking, let alone doing it with my entire body, rolls, body hair, and all, on show!
As most people know, becoming confident in your own body is never as simple as you think it would be. There are always the exercises from a therapist or a random online article about how to boost your self-confidence, but most of those techniques never seem to work. But this video took a bit of a different, more head-on approach.
As a subscriber to Elena’s channel, I know she often researches before making a video like this one. This is happens to be one of those videos. She links to this study about naturalism and nudism and how it boosts someone’s confidence in their own body. It is fascinating if you want to take the time to look at it. But Elena also brings up in her video the idea of nude models in art classes and I feel like that has to make so much sense.
Why wouldn’t someone who has to stand for hours completely naked in front of a group of artists feel confident in their body? Though I doubt most of us want to strip down to nothing in front of a room of strangers, I think getting used to being naked around yourself could be a good thing. Granted this isn’t an end-all-be-all solution to things like body dysmorphia, I think it might be able to help some people with body image issues.
Elena’s video makes me want to try it out for myself since self-portraits force you to look at yourself more objectively than judgementally. So why not draw or paint the parts of your body that make you self-conscious to change how you think when you see yourself. Plus you will have some cool art of yourself once you’re done. So why not give it a try? No one has to know; it could be your little secret!