How to Draw Emotions with Lines
How to Draw Emotions with Lines Only
Hello! In this post, I will show you how to draw your emotions by just using lines.
I'm Youhjung and I am an art therapist in the states. This step by step activity will give you some guidance on how to express your feelings through drawing, without any skills needed; even if you feel like you can't draw or you're not an artist!
And if you want to watch the video version of this post, you can do so here:
Art Materials You Need
The art materials you will need are:
Oil pastel (or any other drawing medium of your choice)
Drawing or mixed media paper (any size, but preferably 11x14” or larger)
Index cards (or kraft paper of similar size)
Now, you might have a few more questions about art therapy sessions…so below I’ll be answering some of the common questions I’ve been getting about this topic.
The Art Prompt
Now that you are ready, here are the steps:
Warm up by scribbling on your drawing paper
Imagine your hand was an animal or insect perhaps - and it left marks wherever it went. Make those marks on paper and vary your lines, dark to light, fast to slow, hard to soft, skipped lines to continuous lines, zigzags to wavy lines. There’s no wrong way to do this! Have fun and experiment.
Then, use index cards and choose different emotions you'd like to explore today
You can do the 4 basic ones like happiness, sadness, anger, and fear, or other emotions like: joy, excitement, surprise, confused, overwhelmed, annoyed, disgust, serene, calm, gloomy, depressed, bored nervous, disappointed, agitated, bitter, irritated, resentful, hurt, stunned, and desperate.
Tap into the emotion and choose a color that seems to fit that emotion
Imagine the animal or insect again feeling that emotion. How would it move across the paper? What marks would it leave? Start with just lines.
You can ddd more to the lines - such as shapes, textures, shading, etc. as you go, to develop the work further.
Optional exercise:
You can take this further by doing a larger piece, starting with how you feel today - you can think of that one emotion, and use only lines. Continue working on that line, adding shapes, textures, or anything else you want to add to develop the piece further. See where this takes you; you can include other feelings as well, because we often don't feel 1 emotion at a time, but multiple emotions simultaneously.
Reflection
After you’re done, step away from your pieces and look at them side by side. Look at how each line seems communicate a different feeling or mood. Notice what your response is to each - does one seem to feel more familiar? Do you like one over the other?
You can choose to write your reflections on a journal or piece of paper to go deeper.
And that is it for the exercise! Let me know if this helped you. Feel free to share in the comments below.
p.s. If you want to actually learn more about how to incorporate therapeutic art into your work as a facilitator, then come to my ✨Therapeutic Art Facilitation School ✨course - where I will teach you the method I used to successfully facilitate therapeutic art sessions online. Check out the details here! 🎨
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