Youth Visual Art Workshop Blog Post

“Our first visual art workshop was on April 13th, led by our artist Lynna. After salutations, we familiarized ourselves with the various tools and their abilities. Then, we began our first exercise: to imagine and draw as many feelings, or emotions as possible and to label them. To my surprise, this was much more difficult than anticipated because I’ve never been asked to express such terms through artistic means.

What kind of body does [this feeling or emotion] form? What colour should it be? This is how I would describe [a feeling]; this is how I would feel experiencing it, but what does it look like?

These were questions that raced through my mind as I sat amongst the other youth participants who were sketching away. However, what I loved about this exercise was that we were limited to expressing these feelings and emotions to basic shapes and lines, yet we were able to bring powerful feelings and emotions to life.

The second exercise was my personal favorite- it was simple, yet thought provoking. The instructions were clear- to draw as many flowers as we could, in any shape, size, and colour. Then, we were tasked to add shapes and lines- a combination of the first exercise. Because the instructions were so straightforward and open ended, we had to rely on our instincts. As a result, this exercise provoked the creativity within us and our artistic voices.

Finally, what I took away from this experience is that “Art is an expression of oneself. Therefore, learning to love your art is equivalent to learning to love a part of yourself. - Savannah Ong”