What It's Like To Watercolor For Anxiety

I’m not a painter by any means. Not. Even. Close. But I realized that lately, I haven’t been able to just be present. However I may be feeling – anxious, confused, sad, stressed – letting my creative and crafty side take over the reigns for the day is a form of emotional, physical and spiritual therapy. So today I gave watercolor painting a shot:

What I Used

Nothing professional at all. I found some of my old high school supplies lying around. Any set of water color paints + a brush or two + a small cup with water for rinsing + plain white paper (any type of paper is fine – just grab a few from your printer, but double up to avoid leaking through).

The First Time

Since it’s my first time with watercolor painting (cue crash and burn noise), I turned to my trusty friend: YouTube. I followed Every Watercolor Flower You’ll Ever Need by Shayda Campbell. The whole point of this exercise was to reduce my anxiety so getting guidance through a tutorial eliminated any confusion and I didn’t feel overwhelmed. Just watching someone else move the brush around and bring flowers to life left me hypnotized. I must be feeling all that alleged increased dopamine accredited to painting.

No Perfection Here

This experience is about you and what brings you joy. At first, simply just mixing paint and creating new colors was fascinating. So I did that for a while. Like a kid layering crayons for the first time. I randomly layered different shades of the same color just because I felt like it. At one point, I put on some music and wiggled around while rinsing my brushes. There are no rules - let your self expression and imagination run wild.

Taking A Break

Doing something like this with no purpose other than just pure enjoyment allowed me to step away from my multi-colored scheduler. The fact that I tried something that I hadn’t done since art class (albeit, with a little more sophistication) made my mind feel curious yet my hands felt familiar. Once I got into the motions of the brush strokes, the ease and comfort came naturally. Each watercolor painting only took 30 minutes – the perfect way to step away from my desk to focus on trying something new.

By Asna E.Shah