Art Activity #4: Emotion Illustration

Apr 20

Feelings can come in all shapes and sizes. In this activity we are going to be using our art supplies to create an illustration of our emotions that can be shared with others. The fun part about this activity is that every emotion looks different for everyone. What I draw as joy might look like sadness to you, and that’s okay. Everyone interprets their emotions differently! With that said, for this activity you will need:

colours of some sort (crayons, markers, paints, pastels, pencil crayons, whatever you have on hand)
paper
a hard surface to draw on
a quiet space to focus in

Miss Marks illustrated three different emotions above. What emotions do you think they are?
Hover your mouse over the picture or listen to the recording to find out!

Follow these steps to make your Emotion Illustration:

Gather your supplies in a nice quiet space. Spread your colours out in front of you, take a deep breath, and draw 8’s in the air to loosen your wrists.
Close your eyes and focus on a feeling. It is easiest to focus on however you are feeling in the moment when you are starting out. What sort of sensations do you feel in your body when you focus on your feeling? Do you feel any tightness or tingles? Where in your body do you feel them? Do you see anything in your mind with your eyes closed as you focus? Any colours or shapes? Does your body want to move? Once you are really focused on that emotion, open your eyes and look at your colours.
Grab the first colour that reminds you of what you are feeling. Try to do it without thinking or making connections. It can be tempting to overthink these sorts of things with thoughts like “well when I’m mad my face gets red so I pick red”. It’s okay to make those connections, but try not to limit yourself. Anger can come in every colour, shape, and movement. Grab whichever colour feels right and touch it to your paper.
Draw what you feel. This may be easier said than done for most people, but it helps if you try to connect your feelings to your hand and let them guide your movements. This might be scribbles, dots, dashes, blots. You might want to use only one colour or lots all at once. There are no rules around how you draw your emotions. You can use both hands, or even two or three colours all at once, just try to keep your colours on your paper.
Keep going until you feel like you have captured the emotion. You may be able to do it in a very small space very quickly, or it might take pages and pages and every colour you own. Feelings are big and complicated things that can be tricky to translate sometimes. Just remember that there is no wrong way to do it, and that anything you create is valid. Illustrating our emotions can help us understand them better and learn from them more easily. Just give yourself time.
Once you have completed your Emotion Illustration, share it with someone in your home. Invite them to draw their emotions too. You can share your drawings with your teachers and classmates on Microsoft Teams, and feel free to email them to me to share in the student gallery here.

This is an art project you can do whenever you like. You can draw any emotion you want, and could even create a collection of drawings of your emotions. Maybe the way you draw them will change over time, it could be fun to see how you draw the same emotion a month from now, or even a year from now!