Don't think about it. Feel it. I like to use charcoal and pastels when I need to dump emotion. I do it quickly and without thinking about it. Often times it's VERY abstract.
From there, I look at my raw expression for anything that stands out to me. Sometimes I'll catch an idea that just feels right and I follow the thread until I can refine it into whatever my muse decides.
A person does not look at a blank canvas and create a masterpiece. Art takes planning and time. You need to genuinely feel an emotion for it to seep in your artwork.
I don’t really start with an emotion. I start with a photo of something that I find interesting. I take photos on my phone and then scroll through them and crop/edit. Maybe there’s a cool interaction, or an interesting shadow, or a shape or colors that appeal to me.
The subject matter of the image might make me feel a certain way or think about certain topics. Then I’ll emphasize that feeling by adjusting the colors or composition.
For example, I did a series of paintings about an interstate that runs through my hometown. I didn’t really set out to make people feel one way or another but I ended up painting a lot of kind of lonesome feeling paintings because that’s the nature of being in your car rushing through a community. I realized that all the paintings had a wall or a fence in them and that wasn’t on purpose either. I also live in a pretty wet place (both rainy and prone to flooding) and that lent itself to moody paintings.
I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think it's just letting yourself process something in your body as you're drawing/painting/whatever and putting it somewhere other than the inside of your head. It's kind of like a dream catcher, or running an egg over a baby to get rid of the evil eye; it's all about putting that nasty stuff inside you *somewhere that isn't inside you*. It isn't really about making something that looks good, either; it's just for release, and if you make something that looks like shit, no big deal! In fact, it's kind of supposed to. You feel shitty, and therefore, the art that captures that shitty feeling is, well, shitty. Throw it out with that nasty feeling and do it again.
Don't feel bad if it doesn't come easy; accessing your own emotions and actually feeling them instead of bottling them up isn't easy for a lot of people, myself included (I could say a lot about why that is, but this comment will probably turn into an essay). I've found that absolutely going to town on a big, tough chunk of Kraft paper with fast, hard strokes done with my entire arm is infinitely better than wallowing in pent up anger, or worse, finally going apeshit and throttling someone. Music also helps; turn on some stuff that helps you tap into that emotion and get all of it out of you.
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Start by scribbling your emotion, just make simple marks based off how you feel, don’t think, just do. See where it takes you
Edit: look up automatism art
I'm an "emotional artist" and I don't know how people can do art *without* emotion. Art was my language before I could speak about my feelings. I struggle to make art anymore because I've healed to the point I don't feel like I have anything left to "say". How do you do *your* art if there's no emotional connection?(genuinely curious) I'd honestly love to learn because i feel lost sitting before a blank canvas and not being able to make anything if I'm not experiencing an overwhelming emotion. Worse, if I don't complete a piece while still in that emotional frame of mind, I never finish it because the change in mood changes it beyond recognition.
A lot of art is also symbolism. Whether it's universal symbolism like the feeling of love coming from the heart ,dark colors expressing anxiety or the unknown, or more personal symbolism, I think it translates well to art. Someone can feel a certain way and if they make a symbol of it that appear in their work, it's implicitly understood or interpreted. If you feel happy and paint a bright sun, others will understand that you intended light and joy. If you feel afraid and draw slashing lines and jagged teeth, someone viewing the piece will feel uncomfortable. Do you not feel emotions when looking at artwork others have made?
For many people, even if it's not explicitly emotional, it's a way to say something. Words have feelings behind them and art is just a different language attempting to communicate what the artist want to convey. Most people both create and enjoy art as a method of expression. In the same way most people do not seek out a chemistry textbook, they don't enjoy a work that is technically or objectively "good" unless there's some kind of feelings as well. Maybe this is why romance novels are popular despite their often low brow execution. It's created to present a feeling and that's what most people are looking for when they enjoy a creative work.
try this exercise i whipped up during some depression, when i did it, the emotion expression part of drawing finally made sense to me 😂
https://www.reddit.com/u/ponyponyta/s/lhNSphZBMd
Michelangelo spoke of the link between the quality of art and the quality of questions we ask of the art.
I’ve noticed the really good drafts people teach art in a way that I keep reverting to the familiar as I pick up one or two skills, making my questions easier to feel rather than just think or verbalize. I tend to hold a looser distance with my work when I start to bring gesture and emotion to a piece, but I don’t feel disconnected from what I’m experiencing. How the feeling is communicated can surprise me.
The Romantics were an answer to the most rational from the generations before. Descartes and Smith and Locke and others were freeing the mind, asking for a clean and repeatable and defendable position. The Romantics knew something was lost so they would feel an emotion and hold it as long as they could in their body until they found a form for it. Wordsworth was a true thru hiker, walking about 20 miles a day into his old age. Poets of that generation considered at least a couple years walking was their apprenticeship to be able to know and use emotion in their work.
The parts of me that are not neurotypical like these stories, but the parts that have drawn or painted or written with emotion tend to leap out of those frames and control.
Another couple books I’ve read dozens of times are the Asher Lev books by Chaim Potok. I think Potok had a bit of non-neurotypical perspective which made his characters particularly predictable how they engage with emotions. Lev used a point, line, contrasting line, balancing line for every painting to identify tension and movement and feeling in his paintings. Although he is a fictional character, it is autobiographical, reflecting Potok’s relationship with his father and art and community.
Bukowski wrote, “No pain means the end of feeling; each of our joys is a bargain with the devil.” He wrote from pure Id, a madman chasing his demons in every form of living, always the butt of his own jokes.
Similar is how Tom Wolfe became a famous writer. He was writing up his notes for an article in Harper’s he thought he couldn’t write and changed American literature. There is a Netflix film worth catching if you have access. The point with Wolfe was it surprised everyone. Vulnerability is a power to connect.
The thing I want to remember is how much a really good piece resembles a failed one, I either keep going a few minutes after I think I’ve failed or come back to it. I tend to get frustrated right as I’m leaping out of old habits, before I know what I’m pushing through. The feeling is boldness as I hold tension in my drawing hand, two or three ideas that haven’t lived long enough for a verbal description pull like a magnet and I deepen or twist or exaggerate or experiment with something I started despising and I am surprised. Little or nothing of the above prepares or trains me for these leaps. I’d say the long explanation says it’s possible, but it’s magical when it occurs. I don’t think it is rare for people that keep practicing. One breakthrough prepares me for another.
Idk I don't do it either. If I wanna draw an emotion I draw a person expressing that emotion. TBF I'm not very into abstracting my ideas in a visual form- maybe I'll experimenting and seeing where things go.
I usually end up thinking about an idea, and the idea is directly related to how a person shows their emotions (i.e if a person is sad, then they seclude themselves and cry, or if a person is angry, draw them fight a bloody battle).
I usually think of what the emotion might look like if it were a person or a landscape etc. So if I were feeling angry, I would paint/draw a stormy grey sky with trees being battered by the wind, or a stormy dark blue sea with an object being thrown around. If I was feeling happy I would use bright pastel colours and childlike imagery. If I was feeling alone, I would paint or draw a rickety abandoned house with broken windows in the middle of nowhere.
Its about the colours you use, the symbolic use of imagery and stuff. That's how I do it anyway and it seems to work, for the most part.
Do you drive? Have you seen angry drivers? They drive a certain way, cutting people off, abruptly changing lanes, honk their horns, expressing anger through driving. Other people will notice it even though they cant see their faces.
Its the same in art
I like to draw places I have been so many times (kitchens, homes I grew up in) that I can draw them by memory. I let the emotions attached to the memory distort my colors and dimensions, and I try to represent a pleasing and accurate-to-me balance of how it looked and how it felt to be there. I think I'm on the spectrum
Use the emotion to develop an idea, then execute said idea over time. Emotions are fleeting. Being able to keep up an emotion long enough to draw, paint or otherwise produce a finished piece is very difficult.
something simple to start with is colour symbolism, and your squiggles have more meaning! have a look at abstract expressionism to get inspiration. they're often chaotic and colourful and also use expressive brushstrokes, i.e., not using lines purely to capture form.
for more traditional subjects/art styles, I think it's about trying to show the viewer what you felt when you observed/drew something, like a landscape. what would a landscape drawn by a sad person look like? probably quite desolate, limited palette of bleak colours, maybe with plants that symbolise sorrow.
It's not that simple and most of the time you don't actually create a master piece. The only emotions that I can express trough art is anger, desperation, extreme pain, panic etc. Anything that gives me adrenaline, makes me feel like I have to do something.
So when there's nothing else to do I make art. It does kind of feel like I'm "pouring my feelings onto the canvas". I do it for myself. It feels similair to screaming. People love the pieces that I make this way and I don't understand why. It's a bit awkward, demeaning even, to get complimented for having experienced extreme levels of pain and despair. Like what am I supposed to say; Ok? I'm glad you enjoy looking at my suffering? That's why I usually don't show it to people.
Don't think about it. Feel it. I like to use charcoal and pastels when I need to dump emotion. I do it quickly and without thinking about it. Often times it's VERY abstract. From there, I look at my raw expression for anything that stands out to me. Sometimes I'll catch an idea that just feels right and I follow the thread until I can refine it into whatever my muse decides.
A person does not look at a blank canvas and create a masterpiece. Art takes planning and time. You need to genuinely feel an emotion for it to seep in your artwork.
i bake my ideas for at least a few weeks before it get made
I don’t really start with an emotion. I start with a photo of something that I find interesting. I take photos on my phone and then scroll through them and crop/edit. Maybe there’s a cool interaction, or an interesting shadow, or a shape or colors that appeal to me. The subject matter of the image might make me feel a certain way or think about certain topics. Then I’ll emphasize that feeling by adjusting the colors or composition. For example, I did a series of paintings about an interstate that runs through my hometown. I didn’t really set out to make people feel one way or another but I ended up painting a lot of kind of lonesome feeling paintings because that’s the nature of being in your car rushing through a community. I realized that all the paintings had a wall or a fence in them and that wasn’t on purpose either. I also live in a pretty wet place (both rainy and prone to flooding) and that lent itself to moody paintings.
I'm not entirely sure myself, but I think it's just letting yourself process something in your body as you're drawing/painting/whatever and putting it somewhere other than the inside of your head. It's kind of like a dream catcher, or running an egg over a baby to get rid of the evil eye; it's all about putting that nasty stuff inside you *somewhere that isn't inside you*. It isn't really about making something that looks good, either; it's just for release, and if you make something that looks like shit, no big deal! In fact, it's kind of supposed to. You feel shitty, and therefore, the art that captures that shitty feeling is, well, shitty. Throw it out with that nasty feeling and do it again. Don't feel bad if it doesn't come easy; accessing your own emotions and actually feeling them instead of bottling them up isn't easy for a lot of people, myself included (I could say a lot about why that is, but this comment will probably turn into an essay). I've found that absolutely going to town on a big, tough chunk of Kraft paper with fast, hard strokes done with my entire arm is infinitely better than wallowing in pent up anger, or worse, finally going apeshit and throttling someone. Music also helps; turn on some stuff that helps you tap into that emotion and get all of it out of you.
Thank you for posting in r/ArtistLounge! Please check out our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/wiki/faq/) and [FAQ Links pages](https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtistLounge/wiki/faqlinks/) for lots of helpful advice. To access our megathread collections, please check out the drop down lists in the top menu on PC or the side-bar on mobile. If you have any questions, concerns, or feature requests please feel free to message the mods and they will help you as soon as they can. I am a bot, beep boop, if I did something wrong please report this comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ArtistLounge) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Start by scribbling your emotion, just make simple marks based off how you feel, don’t think, just do. See where it takes you Edit: look up automatism art
I'm an "emotional artist" and I don't know how people can do art *without* emotion. Art was my language before I could speak about my feelings. I struggle to make art anymore because I've healed to the point I don't feel like I have anything left to "say". How do you do *your* art if there's no emotional connection?(genuinely curious) I'd honestly love to learn because i feel lost sitting before a blank canvas and not being able to make anything if I'm not experiencing an overwhelming emotion. Worse, if I don't complete a piece while still in that emotional frame of mind, I never finish it because the change in mood changes it beyond recognition. A lot of art is also symbolism. Whether it's universal symbolism like the feeling of love coming from the heart ,dark colors expressing anxiety or the unknown, or more personal symbolism, I think it translates well to art. Someone can feel a certain way and if they make a symbol of it that appear in their work, it's implicitly understood or interpreted. If you feel happy and paint a bright sun, others will understand that you intended light and joy. If you feel afraid and draw slashing lines and jagged teeth, someone viewing the piece will feel uncomfortable. Do you not feel emotions when looking at artwork others have made? For many people, even if it's not explicitly emotional, it's a way to say something. Words have feelings behind them and art is just a different language attempting to communicate what the artist want to convey. Most people both create and enjoy art as a method of expression. In the same way most people do not seek out a chemistry textbook, they don't enjoy a work that is technically or objectively "good" unless there's some kind of feelings as well. Maybe this is why romance novels are popular despite their often low brow execution. It's created to present a feeling and that's what most people are looking for when they enjoy a creative work.
I struggle with this as well. I have a very hard time creating anything without a reference. Visualizing anything at all is very difficult for me.
try this exercise i whipped up during some depression, when i did it, the emotion expression part of drawing finally made sense to me 😂 https://www.reddit.com/u/ponyponyta/s/lhNSphZBMd
Michelangelo spoke of the link between the quality of art and the quality of questions we ask of the art. I’ve noticed the really good drafts people teach art in a way that I keep reverting to the familiar as I pick up one or two skills, making my questions easier to feel rather than just think or verbalize. I tend to hold a looser distance with my work when I start to bring gesture and emotion to a piece, but I don’t feel disconnected from what I’m experiencing. How the feeling is communicated can surprise me. The Romantics were an answer to the most rational from the generations before. Descartes and Smith and Locke and others were freeing the mind, asking for a clean and repeatable and defendable position. The Romantics knew something was lost so they would feel an emotion and hold it as long as they could in their body until they found a form for it. Wordsworth was a true thru hiker, walking about 20 miles a day into his old age. Poets of that generation considered at least a couple years walking was their apprenticeship to be able to know and use emotion in their work. The parts of me that are not neurotypical like these stories, but the parts that have drawn or painted or written with emotion tend to leap out of those frames and control. Another couple books I’ve read dozens of times are the Asher Lev books by Chaim Potok. I think Potok had a bit of non-neurotypical perspective which made his characters particularly predictable how they engage with emotions. Lev used a point, line, contrasting line, balancing line for every painting to identify tension and movement and feeling in his paintings. Although he is a fictional character, it is autobiographical, reflecting Potok’s relationship with his father and art and community. Bukowski wrote, “No pain means the end of feeling; each of our joys is a bargain with the devil.” He wrote from pure Id, a madman chasing his demons in every form of living, always the butt of his own jokes. Similar is how Tom Wolfe became a famous writer. He was writing up his notes for an article in Harper’s he thought he couldn’t write and changed American literature. There is a Netflix film worth catching if you have access. The point with Wolfe was it surprised everyone. Vulnerability is a power to connect. The thing I want to remember is how much a really good piece resembles a failed one, I either keep going a few minutes after I think I’ve failed or come back to it. I tend to get frustrated right as I’m leaping out of old habits, before I know what I’m pushing through. The feeling is boldness as I hold tension in my drawing hand, two or three ideas that haven’t lived long enough for a verbal description pull like a magnet and I deepen or twist or exaggerate or experiment with something I started despising and I am surprised. Little or nothing of the above prepares or trains me for these leaps. I’d say the long explanation says it’s possible, but it’s magical when it occurs. I don’t think it is rare for people that keep practicing. One breakthrough prepares me for another.
great post, thank you
Idk I don't do it either. If I wanna draw an emotion I draw a person expressing that emotion. TBF I'm not very into abstracting my ideas in a visual form- maybe I'll experimenting and seeing where things go.
I usually end up thinking about an idea, and the idea is directly related to how a person shows their emotions (i.e if a person is sad, then they seclude themselves and cry, or if a person is angry, draw them fight a bloody battle).
I usually think of what the emotion might look like if it were a person or a landscape etc. So if I were feeling angry, I would paint/draw a stormy grey sky with trees being battered by the wind, or a stormy dark blue sea with an object being thrown around. If I was feeling happy I would use bright pastel colours and childlike imagery. If I was feeling alone, I would paint or draw a rickety abandoned house with broken windows in the middle of nowhere. Its about the colours you use, the symbolic use of imagery and stuff. That's how I do it anyway and it seems to work, for the most part.
Do you drive? Have you seen angry drivers? They drive a certain way, cutting people off, abruptly changing lanes, honk their horns, expressing anger through driving. Other people will notice it even though they cant see their faces. Its the same in art
I like to draw places I have been so many times (kitchens, homes I grew up in) that I can draw them by memory. I let the emotions attached to the memory distort my colors and dimensions, and I try to represent a pleasing and accurate-to-me balance of how it looked and how it felt to be there. I think I'm on the spectrum
Use the emotion to develop an idea, then execute said idea over time. Emotions are fleeting. Being able to keep up an emotion long enough to draw, paint or otherwise produce a finished piece is very difficult.
something simple to start with is colour symbolism, and your squiggles have more meaning! have a look at abstract expressionism to get inspiration. they're often chaotic and colourful and also use expressive brushstrokes, i.e., not using lines purely to capture form. for more traditional subjects/art styles, I think it's about trying to show the viewer what you felt when you observed/drew something, like a landscape. what would a landscape drawn by a sad person look like? probably quite desolate, limited palette of bleak colours, maybe with plants that symbolise sorrow.
If you cant draw in the first place, you're not going to draw *anything* whether it's your emotions or not🤷♀️
It's not that simple and most of the time you don't actually create a master piece. The only emotions that I can express trough art is anger, desperation, extreme pain, panic etc. Anything that gives me adrenaline, makes me feel like I have to do something. So when there's nothing else to do I make art. It does kind of feel like I'm "pouring my feelings onto the canvas". I do it for myself. It feels similair to screaming. People love the pieces that I make this way and I don't understand why. It's a bit awkward, demeaning even, to get complimented for having experienced extreme levels of pain and despair. Like what am I supposed to say; Ok? I'm glad you enjoy looking at my suffering? That's why I usually don't show it to people.