112- Art : from art, to art therapy

In post 111, I mentioned how I've been suffering from emotional numbing and dissociation, as part of my cPTSD. 

To help me revive my emotions, I thought of using art as another self-expression tool - aside for my blogs and photography.  But, as I lacked self-esteem regarding my art and the feeling that I was too much of a novice and wouldn't share it outside of my inner circles, I hadn't initially planed to post any of it online. 



Then, I discussed the topic with a twitter mental health advocate who also loves art of all sorts, and especially flowers, I shared with her a couple of my floral paintings and she loved them a lot and encouraged me to post them online and share with the world, calling my art beautiful, which boosted my self-esteem to the point of following her advice and I subsequently posted my past art - which was done for the sake of art and self-expression, but not as therapy. 

Then, I continued with her advice and started making art again for the first time in 7 years. 

In 4 days, I made 4 pieces of art and the last one was an actually personal victory over my usual self-defeating nature. 

I was quite happy with my 4th piece, a sketch which garnered a few likes and positive comments - just like some of my older art had received immediately after I posted some of it on twitter. 

Since yesterday, I asked around twitter and my friends for an opinion regarding my art : I wanted to know if I should post it here on my mental health blog, or create a whole new art blog where I could post my old non art-therapy pieces as well. 

The responses I got went in the same direction : posting my new art here, and showing the difference with the older. This is something I'm going to do just after this specific entry. 

The logic of posting here is to help other people who suffer from mental illnesses to find their own tools, and possibly encourage towards art-therapy as well - we are all beginners at some point, but if we don't start and practice, we'll never improve, right ? 

I can do it. You can do it. We can do it. For ourselves, at least, and for others if we so chose. 

Our art doesn't have to look like anyone else's- in fact, it shouldn't. We are different people. We have different needs and talents as well as different outlooks and personal experiences. 

We have different tastes. 

We must remain unique and cultivate our specificity. 

Further  discussing this with a close friend, I came to the conclusion that I should also create an art blog that will also feature some of my photography - and discuss more the technical aspects, instead of the emotional - thus my entries will complete one another.

The new blog won't see the light of day until early August, most probably : the next 2 weeks are quite busy. 

But, until then, I'll try to post entries about my art, old and new, and discuss the emotional impact of each - though details about my past ones will inevitably be shorter.  
This way, you, my readers, can see the progress of my technique (should you be interested) but especially about my emotional state and impact of these projects have on my mental health.

So, if you want to know what you might see from my art-to-therapy entries :

Sketches, paintings, sculpting, and a few photos (that I'll have to select from the thousands, but not all have a therapeutic goal. 

I'll also, at some point, color from adult coloring book or books (the only one we got now is star wars).

Thank you to all who responded my questions, and to those who encouraged my art : my wife, my friends, and fellow mental health activists from youtube & /r twitter - especially to Brenda who initiated my return to art, and to my wife who has started it and helped me through the hard parts of it, throughout the years.