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As an American, things are looking pretty dark right now. Within the past two weeks or so, countless videos and stories have come out about immigration raids and brutality by ICE, especially in Minnesota. Whether you’re an American or not and whether you’ve been directly impacted by this chaos and cruelty or not, it’s important to take care of yourself as much as possible.

Here’s the good news: artistic self-care is accessible to everyone, even if you think you don’t have any artistic skills or “talent.” This post will go through what art as self-care means and some easy ways you can use art to take care of yourself.

What “Art as Self-Care” Means

You may be wondering what it actually looks like to use art as self-care. Simply put, using art as self-care is the process of using creativity to help improve your mood, process feelings, and calm your nervous system. In practice, there are many different ways this can happen. You can use art journaling, digital illustration or graphic design, crochet, or any number of other creative artistic activities.

Your art can be directly related to the emotions you’re trying to process. For example, going back to my earlier comments about what’s going on in MN with ICE, you can make protest art that honors Renee Good or depicts something you’ve seen in any of the numerous photos/videos coming from the area.

But it can also be a sort of distraction. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by whatever you’re dealing with, this can sometimes be more helpful. Use your creative time to crochet a nice hat for yourself or to make a nice floral watercolor painting. This approach may not necessarily help you directly process your feelings, but it can help improve your mood and calm you down, helping you feel less anxious and on edge.

Regardless of which approach you take, my biggest piece of advice is to focus on the process, not on the outcome. I know I say this a lot, but focusing on the actual act of creating will help you feel much better than focusing on the outcome, which may lead you to fixate on the imperfections rather than the joy or peace creating it brought you.

What Art As Self-Care Is Not

Now that we’ve talked a little bit about what art as self-care can look like, let’s go over a few things that it definitely is not.

Using art as self-care should not feel like another responsibility or be filled with pressure to create something perfect. It’s not a performance; it’s a tool to help you. We’re using art as a coping mechanism to help us take care of ourselves, not as a way to prove ourselves to anyone else.

It’s not a contest. We’re not trying to create some perfect masterpiece. We’re using it as a way to nourish and take care of ourselves.

Using art as self-care is also not a substitute for professional help if you need it. While I often talk about the many benefits being creative has for our mental health, it will never be a substitute for actual professional interventions that can help you deal with depression, anxiety, etc. So if you think you’re dealing with something especially heavy that needs professional help, please seek it!

Using Art as a Coping Mechanism

Not only can we use art for general self-care, but we can also use art as a coping mechanism. In case you’re not familiar with the term, according to the APA, a coping mechanism is anything that is used to decrease tension and anxiety in stressful situations. Art and creativity can definitely be very helpful in this way.

Art can be helpful as a coping mechanism for a variety of different things. I personally find it helps most when I need something to ground or distract me. Often this is when I’m feeling particularly stressed or anxious. I also find it helpful when I’m having thoughts or feelings that I want to vent and let out but I don’t feel like I really have an appropriate outlet to do so.

Different kinds of artistic activities may help with different purposes. Here are some suggestions of different activities to try depending on what your goal is. Keep in mind these are only suggestions – they may or may not work for you personally and I’d encourage you to try out any artistic or creative activity that appeals to you, not just the ones I’ve included here!

When You Need to Calm Down

Coloring: Use coloring pages with repetitive patterns and it feels like a nice meditative activity. Mandalas are great for this purpose.

Drawing with Repetitive Shapes: Using repetitive shapes or marks like lines, spirals, dots, etc. may also elicit that meditative feel and help calm racing thoughts.

When You’re Holding a Lot and Need to Feel Your Feelings

Drawing/Painting with a Mood Color Palette: Choose a couple colors that represent how you’re feeling and use only those colors to draw or paint something that represents your emotions. For example, if you’re feeling angry, you might choose a couple shades of red and draw an angry face portrait or a picture of the things angering you.

Collage: Use magazines, junk mail, or even printed pictures or quotes to create a collage that represents the feelings you’re experiencing. Using cut out or printed words and quotes can be especially helpful if you’re wanting to put words to what you’re feeling.

When Your Thoughts are Racing and You Need to Make Sense of Them

Journaling: Either some sort of art journaling or regular written journaling can be helpful in this situation. A lot of the time I find that just writing the thoughts in a sort of “stream-of-consciousness” style can really help me make sense of the thoughts I’m having. But you can add collage elements, drawings, stickers, or any other sort of artistic pieces to your pages too if you want to add a more creative visual side to it.

Mind Mapping with Illustrations/Doodles: Mind maps are often used as a productivity tool to help with planning or outlining projects, essays, etc. But they can also be a helpful way to sort out thoughts and feelings, too. If there’s a specific event or situation that is causing a lot of stress, for example, you can make that the center of your mind map and surround it with the different thoughts you’re having about it. To make it a more creative activity, you can also add illustrations or simple doodles to help represent those thoughts and feelings.

When You Feel Flat and Need to Recharge

Mini Joy Art: Make simple drawings, paintings, collage representations, etc. of things that make you happy. This could look like doing a drawing of your pet, making a painting of your garden, or finding words/pictures that represent things you love and making a collage out of them. The idea here is to do something simple (whatever that may look like for you) that won’t take too much of your energy to represent the things that light you up and serve as a reminder of your joy.

Favorite Color Palettes: Going back to the idea of using a specific color palette to help, you can create a color palette with colors that make you feel energized and happy. For many people, this may be bright colors, but if something else works better for you, go with that! You can then use this color palette in your art activity of choice to make something that helps you feel more energized.

When You Feel Lonely and Want to Connect

Art/Paint Night: Look to see if there’s anywhere near you that does paint nights. Generally these consist of a bunch of people being guided through making their own version of a specific painting. Grab a friend to go with you or go by yourself and enjoy hanging out with strangers. You can also check with your local library; a lot of them have events or even regular group meet-ups that involve some sort of artistic activity.

Make Art for a Friend: If you’re looking for connection but don’t want to leave the house (I feel you), consider making a piece of art to send or give to a friend. This can be something as simple as decorating a card and envelope (or even just a postcard) or something more elaborate, like making them a watercolor painting or doing an artistic rendition of one of your favorite photos of the two of you together. Just make sure it’s someone who will appreciate the gesture. 😉

The possibilities for using art as self-care are truly endless. What it comes down to is finding a creative activity that helps you feel refreshed or more calm and using that regularly as a way to take care of yourself and bring more peace into your day-to-day. In our stressful daily lives, we all need ways to keep ourselves sane and art is a versatile option that allows for a lot of flexibility to suit your specific needs. If you’re ever stuck on what to make, check out this list of places to find creative inspiration to help get the ideas flowing again.

Key Takeaways

• Art as self-care is using creativity to calm your nervous system, lift your mood, and help you process feelings (no “talent” required).
• It can be expression (like protest art or emotion-based work) or distraction (like crochet or a simple watercolor) depending on what you need.
• The best rule: focus on the process, not the outcome. Perfection steals the comfort.
• Artistic self-care should not feel like pressure, a performance, or a contest. It’s for YOU!
• Art can support mental health, but it’s not a replacement for professional help when you need it.
• Match the activity to your mood: coloring or repetitive marks to calm down, mood-color art or collage to feel your feelings, or journaling or mind maps to sort racing thoughts.
• When you feel low, try mini joy art or a favorite color palette to recharge with less effort.
• If you want connection, do a paint night or make something for a friend (even a simple card counts).
• Don’t be afraid to explore activities to find what works best for you for self-care.

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