In some different conversations recently, I’ve been talking with friends about what we’re working on and what to create when we’re feeling all kinds of different feelings and not really knowing how to express those feelings.

The first thing I personally tend to gravitate towards is to get out of my head about those things and allow myself to feel them in the art-making itself. I like to use a creative session to purge and let whatever come out that wants to surface and pour out of me, to not over-think it, to just let it happen and keep going. That helps in many ways, and I often can use time later to observe the art I create in those sessions to be attentive to what I see and feel from those pieces I’ve made. Many times, that alone will give me a lot of new imagery to use as a springboard for new personal work.

Sometimes, though, I might use other means of ideation, and during these recent conversations, I was reminded to share that I often write when I feel I’d like to do some working through feelings and emotions as well as some creative exploring too. Some artists were sharing that their thoughts can really make them feel frozen and unable to create. I find that doing some spontaneous writing and some different sorts of word association can help to get me back into the swing of things, and up and running again creatively.

One exercise is brainstorming in the form of stream of consciousness. I do this with mark-making while painting and drawing, and have shared this a lot in many other articles here on Muddy Colors which you can find here. When I do this in writing, I tend to use words and expand in the form of lists or a tree with bubbles that branch off. With stream of consciousness, it’s key to just allow whatever it is that you think of to make its way onto the page. Write down a word that may even feel simplified, and just keep going from there. If there are feelings I’d like to work through, I might even use a simple word to describe the feeling such as sad or happy, frustrated, stuck, or any of the words that I might even be feeling are holding me back creatively, such as the word frozen I mentioned earlier. The key is to not overthink any of it, just keep jotting anything down that comes to mind. So, let’s say you feel angry about something… in the branches, you can describe in one or two words different categories and expand from there. For example, from angry, the subgroups can stem into categories such as 1) synonyms, different words for angry, and 2) name some things that make you angry, and 3) list antonyms for the word, and so on… From those branches or lists, there can be subgroups or lists like 1) what colors come to mind when thinking of these words or feelings, and 2) what are some environments or circumstances that these words tend to feel like they live in, etc… This can be very free-flow, of course, but I’m just using some diagrams for possible ways to organize if you feel that’s helpful. This sort of free-flow ideating covers so much too. Not only does it help to visualize some type of imagery when it comes to ideation, but it also helps to get these emotions out of your head and onto the page. Heck, you can even be done there and never return to it again, knowing that you’ve accomplished that alone, which is absolutely a successful and helpful way to push past what was feeling like something that was holding you back creatively and expressively.

Sometimes, my stream of consciousness exercises will take shape in more of a free-form paragraph type of structure, rather than a tree with branches and single words or short phrases. These paragraphs sometimes turn into ramblings about the initial subject, phrase or word that inspired it. Sometimes, when I feel stuck on even thinking of a word at all, I just start with something like “I’m writing today as I sit here in my studio and there is a cup of tea on the table and a stack of sketchbooks next to it and…” allow myself to just find a groove of writing what’s in my surroundings, even describe what’s in my sketchbooks, what kind of tea I’m drinking, what the mug looks like.. and eventually, this will go in other directions that seem to not be connected to that initial start, but that’s when things really start to get rolling. There is no wrong thing to recall when doing stream of consciousness. Often times, describing my surroundings will get me into digging a little deeper into all sorts of things like remembering what I was doing or what was going on in my life when I made that sketch I described, or the sentimental value of the mug that holds my tea. You’d be amazed at where this will take you. The key is to just get something going, get something down on the page, and allow the momentum to get you into a flow. The flow will unravel so much that may be unexpected and really great musings for image-making.

I have some other ways that I use writing and imagery and word association for ideation and brainstorming for my art, and I will share that in my next article here as well. I want to express how important I feel it is, even from the standpoint of a sort of purge of emotion. To allow ourselves to feel those feelings and let them out in that way is so helpful to gain an understanding about what may be holding us back in our work or in other aspects of our lives, as well as come up with new ideas that we may not have thought of when we were caught in a cycle of ruminating about being stuck. We have so much inside of us that we can tap into (it’s infinite!), and sometimes it just takes shaking it out in new ways that allow for a kind of freedom to express and conjure from new spaces within ourselves.

As humans, we are all incredibly capable and amazing sentient beings and we should be celebrating what that means by utilizing that very human aspect of ourselves instead of choosing to allow it to atrophy by not using it. The images I shared in this article were all conjured from within, from stream of consciousness, and from the allowing of the unknown to surface from the depths as I made marks and followed where that took me. There’s a lot more where that came from! I can’t wait to share more of this in future articles here on Muddy Colors and in my upcoming art book Sentience, which I’ll be sharing more about soon! You can find the pre-launch page here, if you’re interested > SENTIENCE

Enjoy the creative journey. Let go, allow yourself to feel that, dive deeper and see where it takes you.