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Today, I have a sensory drawnaling (journaling+drawing) exercise for you. It’s simple, so I won’t write too much and overcomplicate it. After all, the whole point of the exercise is to write less and feel more.
Step one: Use a colorful medium (paint, markers, pens, pencils, nature rubbings) to make a bunch of swatches of color on a piece of paper. Maybe 10-30 different colored swatches, or whatever you have time for. You can overlay colors to make new colors, or mix colors if you are painting. Enjoy the process!
(Don’t have anything colorful on hand? No problem- use a pen or pencil and draw a bunch of unique abstract shapes or squiggles instead.)
Step two: Without much thinking, guided by intuition, write what the color reminds you of. Maybe the color reminds you of something in your recent life memories, e.g. mystery beach foam, depression, pea soup, a five dollar latte.
The result is like a visual poem, which is what I would call a lot of the work I’ve made in the past year or so. Words and colors dancing on a page, cryptic like a poem, understandable to someone maybe, maybe not. I’ve attached my color journal from October of 2023 below. There’s no right way to do this, it’s just meant to be reflective and fun and open the mind to new associations.
My long-form journaling typically veers toward what is going great or what is going terribly. I like this exercise because it allows me to name what is without spiraling into anxious judgments over what it means or whether it’s good or bad. There is pain, there is pleasure, and there is everything that happens in between. It’s a relief to notice and move on.
If you give this exercise a try, pretty please send pictures! Thanks for reading.
Thanks for reading! If we haven’t met yet, I’m Allie Sullberg, and I’m an artist, writer, and illustrator. If you liked this post, one of the biggest ways you can support my work is by subscribing. Likes, comments, and shares are also a quick and meaningful way to support! Paid subscribers make this work possible. If you’d like to check out more of my work, here’s my website and my Instagram.
Drawnaling. What a word!
Also love this exercise.
This is superb! Adding this to my color workshops for my the high school painting classes I teach. So simple but such a great exercise for working with color. Thanks for sharing this!