16 Art Therapy Exercises You Can Do at Home

Art therapy is an interesting field of mental health care that is based on the premise that expressing yourself creatively can enhance well-being and promote emotional healing. It can also boost self-awareness. While there are licensed art therapists, you can do many of the same art therapy exercises at home that you would do in a clinical setting.

You don’t have to be a great artist to receive the benefits of art therapy. Anyone can draw, paint, color, sculpt, or create a collage. It’s true that some can do these things better than others, but skill is irrelevant in art therapy. The act of creating is what’s important.

Sunshine City Counseling provides individual therapy, mental health coaching and couples therapy in St. Petersburg, FL. We work with issues such as anxiety treatment, depression counseling, postpartum depression, Christian counseling and premarital counseling (and more).

Try These Art Therapy Activities At Home

1. Create sock puppets and put on a play. Making a couple of sock puppets will put a smile on anyone’s face, and possibly help connect you to your inner child. You can act out a scene from your life. 

2. Create a sculpture that matches your mood. Get your hands on some clay or Play-Doh and let your imagination run wild. Feeling anxious? Create a sculpture that represents that feeling. Dealing with some rage? See what ideas you have for representing rage with clay. 

3. Make a collage with photographs that you love. Go through your old photos and make copies of some of your favorites. This alone will probably help to lift your mood. Create a collage that exemplifies the emotions that those photographs stimulate in you. 

4. Draw a picture that represents happiness to you. What is your version of happy?  Did this evoke a memory, an idea, or a sensation, if you can try to draw it. What makes you feel this way?

5. Create a painting that represents your childhood. What are the most important moments of your childhood? Will you include only positive memories? Or are you in the mood to get your hands dirty and deal with the negative events, too?

6. Draw or paint your negative traits. Consider your negative traits and find ways to represent them.  There is no wrong way to create art.

7. Draw or paint your positive traits. Do the same with your positive traits.

8. Make a flag with a motto that represents your intentions for the future. What motto would you put on a flag that best describes this?

● Power?

● Sacrifice?

● Peace on Earth?

● Love?

● Domination?

9. Make a dreamcatcher and find a place to hang it in your room. If you don’t know what a dreamcatcher looks like, look it up. Create your own version of this, and put it in an appropriate place.

10. Draw a scene from one of your nightmares. Since we’re on the subject of sleep and dreams, recreate a scene from a recent bad dream. If you could change the ending or make it less fear evoking, what would it look like now?

11. Build an altar. Create an altar that is unique to you and will help you to connect fully with your spiritual side.

12. Create a map of all the personal connections in your life. Put yourself in the center and diagram all of the relationships you have. Compare that to all the relationships you had 10 years ago. What’s changed?

13. Create a website. There are plenty of places to create a free website, such as www.wordpress.com. Build a website that represents you, and your interests.

14. Paint a rock. List your values on the rock and put it where you can see it each day.

15. Draw your safe place. Use any medium you like. Create a place that makes you feel safe 

from the world.

16. Draw yourself as a superhero.  What special qualities or abilities would you possess and why?  Give yourself permission to be all powerful.

Chelsy Snell, LMHC

Learn More About Chelsy

Art therapy is a gift that you can give yourself. Pick one exercise and give it a try. Experiment and see what happens. These 16 exercises are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds more for you to discover. If you’d like to learn more about art therapy or even incorporating it into your therapy journey, schedule a free session with me and lets explore together!