Featured image by student Carolyn Egerszegi
Lately the news has gotten so out of control with recent events and politics thrown into the mix, that it’s often hard to even watch or listen anymore. Many of our students and Sketchbook Skool community members have found solace in drawing and proven time after time that art does have the power to heal.
This past week in our own community, many students have come forward to describe a healing experience they have had with drawing, or even facilitated with a friend in need.
Student Lynn Cohen gifted a grieving friend Danny Gregory’s book, A Kiss Before You Go, and helped her begin the healing process by reintroducing her friend to drawing as a way to cope with her grief over the recent loss of her husband. During their interactions, the two found themselves drawing each other and creating an exchange in that moment that might not have otherwise happened.
Another student, Carolyn Egerszegi, wrote about an experience she had amidst a panic attack in which the meditative and simple act of frantically reaching for a ball point pen and drawing the nearest thing (that stapler above!) on a scrap of paper led to the complete calming of her racing mind (and heart).
In addition to using drawing to cope with external issues or the problems of friends and loved ones, one of our community members even had an experience where drawing helped her work her way through a series of awful nightmares. By putting her dreams on paper and actually changing the way they ended, Kim Kitt Tecca was essentially able to shake herself out of a funk brought on by those horrible dreams.
While they differ greatly, each of these smaller moments allowed people to transform their situations through drawing (or aid a friend or a loved one in doing so). Thanks to these reminders, we’re inspired to keep sharing art and drawing as a powerful form of healing. Stay tuned as we will revisit this topic soon to talk about art’s power to heal on a larger scale. Has drawing ever help you in a similar way?