It seems, and I never thought (ever) that I’d be writing this… 

I quite like drawing.

Okay, clearly not with paint hahahaha. But, I have surprised myself recently – all I seem to be doing is drawing and doodling – everywhere. I’m not going to upload any photos of my Vincent Van Gogh like skills… but just have faith that I am awesome.

hahaha

In all honesty I’ve always been awful at art, though the concept of being awesome, drinking red wine, sitting in an old studio sketching something wonderful has always been appealing to me. But I’m useless at art. My mother and sister are fantastic at drawing, but neither of them do it often enough if you ask me. Though I was never cool enough to be blessed with awesome artistic skills I have always been really creative. My mind works differently to others in my family though – for me I think I have a very big imagination, and my favourite way to set it free is through singing and writing. Singing is everything to me. EVERYTHING. I love singing, it is 100% who I am, and the one thing that I could happily do every day for the rest of forever. I also really love writing – something which somehow I’d managed to forget in the past, but through this blog and other jobs that I’ve taken on my passion for writing has resurfaced.

I love different types of writing, I love love love writing blogs, songs, poems and academic stuff. Anyway, I’ve sidetracked slightly… the point of this post is just to express my new found passion for drawing.

When I was in Cornwall recently I invested in a Mindfulness Colouring Book – I can’t remember the name of the exact one I bought (I’m at uni at the moment, so I’ll write another blogpost about it tomorrow). What I can remember is how awesome it made me feel the first time I started colouring in. There is something so fulfilling and calming about colouring, and I absolutely love it. I spent a good solid week colouring in this book – which has since escalated to me drawing my own floral-type stuff and coloruing that in.

Admittedly I have for a while been trying to enhance my artistic skills – simply because I’m jealous of how awesome my mum is haha, but now I doodle mindlessly and it isn’t until I’ve completed my masterpiece* that I realise how happy it makes me.

I’ve heard a lot, and read a lot about art and well-being, and recently mindful colouring has become quite popular. If you are in need of something to do to fill time, and to relax you then I’d suggest colouring. Colouring is more for adults than it is for kids. When I was younger all I cared about when I was colouring was not going over the lines (or just doing a better job than my brothers and sister.) Now I use colouring to get inside my own head, the calmness and repetitiveness is unbelievably soothing for me. Also, there’s nothing like seeing an image brought to life through your own handiwork. For me colouring is time-consuming but in a healthy way, when you’re colouring you have something to focus on but you also have room in your mind to think about things. It also really helps to ground me, plus you can put on some music in the background and get completely lost in the moment. It’s wonderful. (Foo Fighters, Ed Sheeran and James Bay are at the moment the favourites on my colouring playlist.)

Though I’m certainly not the next Da Vinci, I’ve really found mindful colouring to be a fantastic coping strategy, grounding mechanism and release. I’d definitely recommend it! You don’t even have to buy a book to get started – there are plenty of downloadable images and stuff that you can discover if you give ‘mindful colouring‘ a quick search.

Take some time out and set your creative self free! 🙂

Also, slightly linked, slightly not… I do sometimes do little doodles over on Instagram which I often use as ‘featured images’ for my blog posts – these are just things I do to give Dearest Someone, it’s own unique little thing. (And also sometimes I just can’t find images that relate to what I want to express.)

You can see more over on Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/EllaRobson/dearest-someone/

Here’s a really awful version of the Dearest Someone, logo with some wonderful (sarcasm) doodles on it:

Adios amigos xx

*I use the term ‘masterpiece’ loosely – I am still pretty rubbish haha.