Hi everyone! I’m new here and happy to join the group. I’m friendly, I love art and creative work, and I enjoy meeting new people. Looking forward to connecting and growing together—hope you’ll welcome me with open arms 😊

First Up- Big Welcome to our newest member Itsuki-aoyama-4259! Looking forward to getting to know you and thankyou for joining us! Apologies for not posting for past few weeks, we've had a family crisis and things have been hectic. I'm going to be posting a meditation video soon. It is based on the work of Dr Dianne Divett's 'Refocusing Therapy'. I use it at the start of my workshops as a way for participants to connect to their creative selves and to also feel safe as we come together as a group. I'll talk more about the meditation when I post, but I'd like to ask you all to vote in the poll if you haven't yet. Your feedback is really valuable in regards to how we grow as a community. In the mean time, what has everyone been up to? Anyone want to share some of your art work or an image that inspires you? I brought my first piece of art made by another artist this week! The artist, Soph Williams, has a really unique style, full of vibrant colours and detail. I've known Soph for many years but it's only in the last 6 months that we've been catching up regularly. She's great at self-promotion (an area I really struggle with) and is diligent about showing her art on her Facebook page. Her work often features her friends, family, flowers and patterns. I fell in love with this piece! It brings me such a sense of joy when I look at it! Everything about it just warms my heart! My rule with buying original artwork has been I'd only buy art if its better than something I could make on my own. And while I could probably replicate Soph's style, I've never painted a piece that fills me with the same joy and hope that this piece does! I've hung it up in my bedroom. If anyone ever told me that the first original artwork I'd buy was a picture of Jesus on the beach, holding a Bible and a baby with a little girl beside him, I'd think they were crazy! But inspiration speaks to our hearts, not our heads. And Soph's piece is feeding so much positivity to my spirit right now, it's wonderful!

Hey, I'm Andrea and I'm an author and artist. Creating Art has been a life long passion for me, but one of the things that breaks my heart is hearing people say "I wish I could be an artist like you!" Which is why I'm offering 'Art from the Heart', a series of art workshops where anyone, with any skill level, can join in the exercise and create a beautiful piece of art for themselves! Not only can you discover your inner artist, but hopefully you will enjoy yourself by using your creative talents in a few different art mediums! Making art has also been a big part of my healing journey. In my younger years, I experienced a lot of trauma and struggled with mental illness and drug addiction in my 20s. While I still have difficult days with my mental health, I have been clean of drugs for nearly 22 years! Creating art has helped my healing in many ways: 1. It enabled me to express hurts, emotions, memories and ideas when I couldn't use words to get those things out. 2. I learnt different art exercises that I could intentionally adapt into a healing practise for myself to process some of my inner pain. By using art as a healing tool, I could move towards a life free of past emotional burdens. And know when things do get difficult, I can use these tools to express and explore what I'm going through. 3. I discovered ways I could use art to visualise future goals, dream for better outcomes and shape the healing I wanted in my life. I'm not an art therapist but I do have lived experience with trauma and as an artist, have used art and the exercises I'm offering here as part of my own healing journey. That's why with every exercise, I'll give you the instructions on how to make art just for fun, followed by the option to 'go deeper', that gives you the choice to look at some of your hurts and use the art exercise as a healing tool. Sometimes you might want to make art just for fun, that's great! But there might be times when you feel ready to go deeper. You have the freedom to choose what's best for you.

Even after years of drawing and painting, I still have the Fear! The Fear of messing up my work by adding the wrong stroke or colour or doing anything that might make my piece look crap! The thing is, if I gave into that Fear, I'd never grow as an artist, I'd never give new materials or techniques a go, I'd never try anything! For sure, sometimes trying new things can lead to unpleasent (or unsatisfactory) results. But with art, if we switch our goals from making 'good art', to just having fun, whatever doesn't bring us joy leads us to just trying again, having more fun, and allowing curiousity rather than perfectionism drive us. I've been working on and off on this piece for my neice (rhymes! 🤣) for a few months. It's nearly finished but there are things I'm not happy with (the background colour isn't vibrant enough) and there's a new technique I want to try on the face. The Fear is telling me to leave it as it is, that it looks great and if I make any changes, I'll end up wrecking it. But my curiosity over what it will look like if I make the changes and try the new technique are bigger than the Fear! And if I do mess it up...I can always start again! What are some of your Fears when it comes to your creative expression? How do you overcome it? Is your inner artist desperately wanting to get out? What's stopping them?

When I was a little girl, around 6 years old, I was very shy and was bullied a lot in school for being chubby. I remember being in Grade 1 and we all had to draw farm animals. I did a cow! When we all had to share our pieces, I could see my cow drawing was the best one out of everyones! But I also knew, that because I was the bullied kid, no one else was going to admit it was the best. That was the first time I knew I was really good at art! I didn't have any friends and things weren't good at home, but I had discovered this part of myself, that I was good at drawing, and that made me feel special! As I got older, I was fortunate that my parents always provided me with pencils, textas and paper, so I could practise my drawing. I've always loved colour! I'd happily spend hours putting my coloured pencils in colour gradient order (this is a neurodivergent thing as well!). And as I went to different schools and my family went through its own problems, art was my safe space to go, where I could escape into fashion sketches or drawings of vampires and monsters, or just play around learning how to draw geometric shapes in 3d and apply shadows. That creative spark I discovered when I was 6 grew into a flame and eventually a passion that fuelled me through hard times and even gave me joy and entertainment when I just wanted to have fun expressing myself! How is it for you all? When did you discover that creative spark? Is it a part of you that has always been there and had a chance to grow? Or is it a shy little spark, that you've always wanted to grow, but been too busy or too intimidated to let out? Share your comments in the discussion below❤️