What Is Creative Self-Care?
Getting Fear Out of the Way
Creativity Challenge #1: Paint with Your Non-Dominant Hand

This one’s pretty self-explanatory. Just pick up the brush with the “wrong” hand and see what comes out. This exercise is about getting out of your own way. You don’t need to be an “artist” or “creative” to do the creativity challenges.
Think you have “no artistic talent?” Good. Paint something really ugly. That’s stretching your comfort zone, taking a chance, and facing a small fear to say, “In your face!”
To help get you started, you might try some of the following tricks:
For More Inspiration:
- Try one of the 5 minute art exercises in this post.
- Make simple drawings for anxiety relief.
- Take an online art journaling class to learn to use that wonderful blank journal to express and heal!
Join the Creative Self-Care Facebook Group!
What Sparks Your Creativity and Passion?
Tell us about it in the comments and share some of your own tricks for staying inspired and interested.
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Some 15 years ago i used to paint/draw without any knowledge of anything about paint, color and comp. and i was having a great time doing it.(and with real nice results) Now i know a lot of things (and there is so much more i don’t know) and its like i can’t paint , fun is gone, just sit and start can take weeks before anything happens, simply choosing what to do is a struggle and almost every time i end up doing nothing, its almost like i freeze. I know i should simply start, can you explain it to me ??
HI Ria:
Isn’t wild the way that beginner’s mind opens us up and allows us to just create without expectation, but once the “rules” are given to us, the fear of it not being good enough seems to creep in?
It can be useful for some folks to go back to that state of beginner’s mind. Give yourself permission to not make ANY ART. Just engage in ART PLAY – just like kids do. Sometimes that can help invite some of the joy of art making back in.
I hope that helps,
Amy
I love your website. I am always looking for new creative ways to heal through art. Thank you.
HI Becca:
I’m so happy that Mindful Art Studio speaks to you! I also have plenty of tutorials on Youtube. I hope to see you around here more!
Cheers,
Amy