Monkey Mind, Healing Art and the Power of Supportive Kommunity

The past few weeks have been a difficult time for me. My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and, perhaps unsurprisingly, in the first few weeks after her diagnosis I was finding that I was hating much of what I was drawing. In Sketchbook Skool (SBS) we call these critical thoughts our monkey, a term coined by Danny Gregory, one of the Skool’s founders (To find out more about the monkey visit Danny’s blog here). I call this state of mind “monkey mind” and after a few days of monkey mind I turned to the SBS kommunity for help, posting on our Facebook page asking for tips and ideas to get me out of this state of mind.  The response was immediate, creative, hugely supportive and felt like an enormous virtual hug. So, for those of you who might also suffer bouts of monkey mind, here are some of the suggestions students made:

• Draw the gorilla that has you in his grip
• Go through your sketchbooks and do different versions of specific drawings that you enjoyed
• Draw/write/decorate quotes
• Suspend judgement and just keep drawing
• Pick something difficult to draw and just draw it repeatedly as an exercise; or paint something simple (e.g. a square) repeatedly
• Create colour swatches
• Practice lettering
• Sketch and scribble things that are less precious – maybe on scraps of paper or post-it notes
• Draw with your opposite hand
• Sketch your mum or for your mum or things she loves

I was also challenged by another student to take part in an ongoing 5 day challenge, which involved posting pictures of old or new work for 5 days.  I decided that rather than posting old work I would try to post new work for 5 days. The sketch above was one I drew on the second day. That challenge probably helped me more than anything, because I felt like some SBS friends were looking out especially for my daily posts and being so supportive and encouraging in their responses to them! And if it hadn’t been for that challenge I might not have drawn at all that week – so thanks Karla Stevens for nominating me keeping me drawing when I might have given up. The sketch below was made on day 4 in the car at 70mph (I wasn’t driving) while we were travelling to visit my parents.

The following Monday, after a very emotional weekend with my parents, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to draw at all when I received that week’s SBS challenge (in between kourses we have been receiving a weekly email with new challenges set by a different kourse tutor each Monday) because I was just too upset. But by mid-afternoon I was cried out and decided to have a go. The challenge was to draw on some kind of tinted paper with watercolour and white gouache. I’d never used gouache before but I had, by chance, bought some a few weeks before thinking it might be useful and I found some brown wrapping paper to paint on. Within ten minutes I was totally focused on drawing and then painting and in what I can only call “my happy place”.  I was drawing and painting for perhaps two hours and for those two hours all my worries were forgotten and my spirit was calm.  Now, a day later even looking at this painting makes me feel calm. And I can honestly say, since I don’t paint very much at all, that it’s probably the best painting I’ve ever done!

I’m not at all religious and I don’t believe in fate, but I can’t help thinking that that decision to join SBS last July was meant to be because right now I have art and SBS and this very powerful supportive kommunity just when I need them most.