Handle Stress With Your Creativity: Ms. Namrata Bagwe-Salian

The teacher told me to complete the college journal sheet by the next day, the extra-class tutorials to be submitted, the self-study and concepts to be understood! A “student” life is full of challenges to be faced every day, we almost forget to enjoy the little things in our lives. Why not think of “de-stressing” your mental health after all the workload?

One should always utilize a few minutes of their day in the hobby of their choice like a sport, a musical instrument, singing, dancing or “art and craft”. I know it is very difficult to take out time from our fully occupied schedule but according to research spending only about 20 minutes a day in a creative activity helps you to reduce stress significantly. Involving ourselves in a creative activity is equivalent to doing yoga, or meditating to freshen up ourselves.

To start with, the internet is an ocean of knowledge and when it comes to creativity, there are no limits. The use of social media to learn an art is a way better idea than spending hours meaninglessly scrolling through them. Many artists are available on YouTube, Instagram, etc, who share their knowledge of painting and craft. To begin with, choose a type of art for a particular month, explore all the content available. It’s not about being perfect because the aim is to feel fresh and de-stress yourself. No one to judge you for the art you make.

Various media like watercolors, poster colors, crayons, pencils, acrylics, etc. are available on forms of cakes, sticks, liquids. All these media come with their own features like different finish, shine, consistency, and texture. One can experiment with these media to learn different styles of painting. Brushes like flat, cats’ tongue, round, dagger, angle, mop, fan, filbert, etc, can be used. Each brush is used for specific strokes. Pens like fine liners, brush pens for watercolors, pens which work on acrylic paints, calligraphy pens for artistic lettering, calligraphy nibs and inks are fun to work with.

There are various surfaces to paint on that include watercolor papers with specific gsm value (grams per square meter) which tells us the thickness of paper to bear watercolors. A high value eg. 300 gsm is a good choice for watercolor painting for beginners. For acrylics, various textured acrylic papers, canvas in the form of sheets, cotton cloth, board, or even stretched canvases are used. If not all these fancy stuff, a regular chart paper or drawing book is all that you need to show your creativity.

If you do not want to invest in brushes, something known as finger painting is trending these days and in fact, it is very fun and interesting too. If no colors are available you can use coffee with water to paint a monochrome art piece. We can also paint a textured piece using things like tissue paper and glue, sponge acrylic textures, create patterns with crumbled aluminium foil, and hair combs. Even a carved potato is used as a stamp to create designs on textiles. Any leftover wooden planks which we throw away at times can be used to paint on. There are also drawing, painting apps available on phones which can be used. At last anything and everything can be a canvas for your creativity.

New forms of art like resin art, doodling, murals, mandala art, wood art, thread and nail art, embroideries, digital art using apps like Procreate, paper cutout art with fine cutters, chalk carvings, clay modeling, miniature models, etc, are fun to learn.

“Art” is something that makes you breathe with a different kind of happiness. Creating an art piece of your own makes you forget all the worries you tackle, soothes your soul and refreshes your mind to go back to your mundane routine. It also gives you a sense of confidence to create something new of your own and self-satisfaction. When our mind is refreshed, we are able to complete our daily tasks with full swing and can concentrate on our work very well. At the end of the day, it’s all about feeling satisfied with what you do. That’s the aim of life!

Follow author on Instagram at @narrations_by_namrata

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