Art as Therapy Activity Book & PDF
Over the fall co-op semester of 2020, in my free time I continued research and brainstorming on my capstone project. While the main focus of the project remains the same, the execution of it has shifted a bit.
I want to now focus on “art as therapy” in place of art therapy and develop an activity book to help guide my audience through their own journey. The free downloadable PDF aspect of it will remain the same, but the printed version may have additional pages and features to make it worth the purchase.
Since August, I have refined the activities and practiced them myself. I then put together a rough draft of the PDF with just the activity instructions. Next, I will send them out to my focus group to participate in and provide feedback.
So far, I have these activities under these areas most common categories based on my research:
Depression
- Draw a specific object that you noticed throughout your day and explain why it was important to you in that moment
- Listen to instrumental music and write your own lyrics to match it (does not have to rhyme, could be more of a spoken word style).
- Photograph images that you feel express different emotions. Print and sketch the emotion over top the image with either a word or icon. If not able to print, you can also do this digitally.
Anxiety
- Modified contour drawing of a person or object very slowly drawing only the outline of it
- Painting to music with a wide brush and water colors
- From A to Z assign a word to each letter and write your list of words on paper. Tear each word into a separate piece of paper and rearrange into a sentence, story, or short poem. Either photo document or glue/tape words onto something.
PTSD/Trauma
- Make a mask showing how you show your emotions on the outside and a private feeling you have on the inside
- Storytelling activity — Build A Safe Place — could be a photo collage or a physical creation.
Anger
- Crumple a piece of paper really tight, unfold and fill in the created shapes with color to create a mural
- Tear colored paper, cardboard pieces, or any other colorful kinds of rippable materials. Glue, tape, or connect together the pieces into a colorful mural or art piece.
- Molding and re-molding clay. Try creating multiple pieces and photo document each one before moving onto creating another.
I’ve also redone a little of the branding as far as colors, but I would like to rework more. Below is an example of my page layout design so far.
And that is all I have so far! This spring semester I will be refining the branding and filling in the pdf and book with all the needed features (which I also need to decide on).
