Anti-Burnout Artists Spa

Course Goals

Restore joy and creativity via playful, low stakes, and soothing drawing exercises.

Structure

We'll meet once a week for 5 weeks, 2 hours each session.

Each class will roughly be composed of:

• Short check-in/journaling session
• Short lecture
• Individual exercises
• Collaborative exercises
• Shareouts

All class members will have access to our class Discord, where members of old and new cohorts can chat with each other. Optional homework assignments will be posted in the Discord.

Syllabus / Schedule

Week 1: Exorcism

• This week is all about getting it all out, venting negativity to make room for positivity.

• Exercises: Introspective self portraits, embodying your demons, and more.

  Week 2: Good Bad Art

• This week is about reminding ourselves to embrace imperfection by drawing under constraints.

• Exercises: Blind contour, timed gesture drawing, purposefully messing up pages, and more.

Week 3: Soothing Mindfulness

• This week is all about relaxing and taking things slow, stopping to smell the roses and making room for our minds to wander.
• Exercises: Repetitive markmaking, tuning into music, drawings based on cute animal videos, and more.

Week 4: Indulgence

• Remember when you were a kid, and you'd just draw whatever you wanted with no regard for quality or taste? This week is about bringing that mindset back.
• Exercises: Doodling all the doodles you first learned to draw (e.g. The Cool S), drawing cartoons from memory, and more

Week 5: Outside Inspiration

• This week is about getting some outside inspiration from art from another time and place.
• Exercises: Exploring online museum or libraries collections, creating drawings based on those explorations, and more.

Artifacts

A series of exercises done during class time.

Who Should Sign Up

This class is open level! It's for anyone who's feeling burnt out and looking for some creative rejuvenation.

• Excellent for beginner artists who want to try something new in a low-pressure environment.
• Perfect for experienced artists who feel like creating's become drudgery and want to restore the joy of it
• Great for people with non-visual creative practices who want to see how their creativity changes with some new mediums

If you're up for trying some drawing in service of self-reflection, connection, relaxation, and goofing around, you'll get a lot out of it.