Mood & Hue

02

Illuminate your inner world by reflecting on the subtleties found in your daily emotions.

CREATIVE SELF-CARE

Feelings are like our internal compass and labeling them is a first step in building emotional intelligence. When we open our awareness to the vast array of emotions we as humans are capable of feeling, we can reduce physiological distress, heal conflicts, make decisions confidently and move through stress more freely.

Evening Ritual

Prepare: Create a calendar-like grid in your sketchbook. Find an art material that feels accessible and comfortable to use regularly (ie: colored pencils, watercolor, colored pens, etc). Referencing the downloadable Empathy Wheel, choose 4-5 emotions that exist in your daily life and attach a color to each one. Make a swatch of each hue in your sketchbook and label it with an emotion. Set this aside for your nightly rituals this month.

Ritual: Every evening, reflect on your day. In a square of your grid, record the emotions you felt throughout your waking hours with a swipe of color. As the month goes by, assess how your mood shifts week by week. 

Tip: Purchase the Internal Coloring Compass from our studio shop and receive a kit to simplify this month’s evening ritual.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

— Marcus Aurelius

MONTHLY THERAPEUTIC ACTIVITY ABSTRACT REFLECTION

It can feel tricky to identify how we feel, let alone acknowledge the role emotions play in our daily lives. Science proves that connecting color to emotions makes them easier to understand.

The activity below was designed to help you consider and process how you felt during a given era in your life, through the act of subtle, abstract art-making. Becoming familiar with our unique feelings leads to a more fulfilling and elevated life.  

Materials: Sketchbook + preferred artistic tool (it’s best if it’s the same one you used in your evening rituals)
Set your space: Have your calendar grid handy and give yourself 2-3 hours to dive deeply into mindfulness reflection. Playing music that resonates with you is suggested.

  1. Refer to the calendar grid you made for your evening ritual and observe the color patterns that showed up over the course of the month.

  2. Find a page in your sketchbook. Using the same colors that you chose to represent your emotions, apply your medium to the page in a way that feels connected to what you documented as the overall mood of your month. For example, if most days on your calendar grid were red, then red should be the prominent color of this art piece. Continue to apply color in whatever shapes or patterns feel right for you. 

  3. Observe your finished art piece and reflect on how it represents your emotional state over the past month. Do you see the same energy on the page that you felt over the past few weeks? Will you title your piece?

  4. Write a little about your process on an adjacent page in your journal. It can be enlightening to reflect on your work as a whole.

Submerse yourself in the emotion of color with these vivid musings ⎯

CULTURAL INSIGHTS

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1951

Saul Leiter, Snow, 1960

Inner Compass Coloring Ritual

Laina Miller is an Artist, Creative Wellness Consultant, and Social Emotional Arts Instructor. All viewpoints and activities expressed were generated from personal and professional experience and bolstered by favorite mentors, readings, and teachers. The aforementioned have been cited whenever possible. For additional support, please reach out to a trusted mental health advisor.

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