This past semester, I struggled a lot with my mental health, but painting (badly) ended up being such a great way to deal with it.
Something a lot of sororities do for their big sister-little sister reveals is making cute paintings with the sorority letters or mottos. I decided I wanted to get a jump on making mine, so I bought paint, brushes, and a few small canvases.
When I started, I really had no idea what to do. I still don’t, but even just putting any kind of simple design on the canvas gives me a sense of accomplishment. They don’t take very long to make because they are so simple, which makes the feeling of achievement common. The pictures I paint aren’t artistic by any means. The cartoonish rudimentary figures are not good by anyone’s standards, but that makes them good for me.
Accepting that the art is going to be bad is easy because it doesn’t need to be for anyone but me. I don’t need to have sorority canvases done for a while, so for now I can just make whatever I want. In most other aspects of my life, I can be kind of a perfectionist, so this gives me a much-needed break from that.
By making art that you’re okay with being terrible and not going in with expectations of perfection, you can just relax and focus on the action of painting. Painting itself is just therapeutic in general no matter what or why you’re doing it. You can listen to music, watch a show while you paint, or just do it in silence and think.
The calming aspects of painting aren’t limited to canvas, though. Tote bags and pottery have also felt the wrath of my unskilled brush. FSU has Paint-A-Pot at the Askew Student Life Center, so if you can’t get your own supplies for whatever reason, those are some places to try as well.
I’ve never been an artist nor do I claim to be now, but I do like making art. Since last semester, my mental health has improved a ton, partly thanks to coping skills like painting. I still feel a little out of it at times, but I know I can take out my supplies and calm down so quickly and easily, and I might get something fun to hang on my wall later.
This is so much better than the doom-scrolling I used to distract myself with. That usually led to other worries about things I wasn’t mentally prepared to be worried about. Social media is an easy way to avert your attention from whatever you’re trying to avoid, but it usually is unhelpful in that it gives you new things to worry about. By choosing an activity like art instead, you can process instead, or focus on something that won’t cause you more unneeded stress.
Whenever you feel like you’re stressed or just need a calming semi-productive activity, pick up a paintbrush!
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