Art as Therapy: Exploring the Healing Power of Sketching and Creative Expression

If you sketch occasionally, then you know how meditative the work you are doing is! It is like therapy, after which you feel reinvigorated and have less stress or anxiety (if any). Is there any metaphysical instinct to this process? Let’s describe some phases that I have gone through to illustrate this and understand the archetypal process of art as medicine.

I worked hard to hone my art skills for a long; I drew literally hundreds of sketches (not gestures), sometimes simplistic figure draws, trees, cups, bowls, etc., to develop muscle memory. I copied from many old master drawings and other professional artists and tried to express a bit different style but with an original interpretation. To me, technical knowledge for my formative years of art journey was of paramount importance, so I always tried to maintain the quality of my drawings.

Interestingly, I was not in my best mood; in fact, I was going through depression for a reason that I couldn’t explain to anyone.  I generally locked myself in my room and practised lots of figure drawings and other sketches. After months of making the same kind of scribble of human figures, I slowly began to draw people in some original style. With time, I experienced a lightness in my heart, and sleeplessness and other symptoms were gradually obliterated. It was nothing less than a miracle because I was learning a new skill, and at the same time, heaviness in my heart and other physical symptoms were gradually reducing.

I never thought of any art therapy, but I was convinced about the therapeutic validity of practising artistic endeavor. Later in my life, I realized that my development in mental strength was constructed in response to the prevailing standards of the mental health world.

Today, in the quiet realm of art therapy, when someone asks me how to begin, I cannot help but feel the weight of their question. It is not merely about painting but about confronting oneself. So I tell them, “Just paint. Let the brush move, even if it feels aimless. Watch what emerges as if you are discovering some truth buried within you. If you paint, it will come—it must come. But nothing will stir if you refuse to begin. Paint not as though your hand alone is at work but as if your entire being is compelled to the task. Let your arm, your body, even your soul, throw itself into the motion. See what shapes arise as if they are whispers from another world, and let them guide you to possibilities you hadn’t imagined.”

This understanding of creation has been chiselled from years of working with people who wrestle with themselves in front of the canvas. The novice, gripped by a kind of desperation, often tries to reproduce some image already etched in their mind as though they could impose their will upon the void. But the void resists, and the attempt falters, tightening the process and filling it with frustration. I strive to lead them away from this tyranny of vision, this obsession with controlling the outcome. Instead, I beckon them to approach painting as something physical, even primal—a communion of movement and feeling. In the early moments of creation, we reject the tyranny of the eye, of the mind’s relentless critique. We move freely; we allow expression to pour forth unfiltered, suspending judgment, and in doing so, we come closer to the truth within us.

It is important to engage with art in our present lives and let it flow from the source. It is equally important to craft from where you are and not from where you should be.

It is the ceaseless movement through the tangled corridors of life that allows the artist’s innermost self to rise, trembling and raw, into an authentic style. Ambitions, those rigid edifices of the mind, must crumble, and the well-laid plans must bow their heads in humility, following the wandering, restless soul as it weaves its way through the chaos and beauty of its immediate world. It is not the artist who shapes the path but the path that carves its truth into the artist, leaving behind traces of something both deeply personal and profoundly universal.

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