The relationship you have with yourself is one of the most important relationships in your life.
These therapeutic drawing exercises help you build and nurture a loving relationship with yourself. While engaging in different activities you’ll practice self-acceptance, self-awareness, self-love and build your self-esteem.
Self-love or loving yourself means behaving in a way that is beneficial for your well-being. Allowing yourself to choose what’s right for you. And always speaking lovingly with yourself. Negative self-talk can be so deeply rooted that you might not be aware of it. Through simple drawing exercises, you’ll be encouraged to practice more positive self-talk.
Having self-esteem means knowing your worth, accepting your faults with grace, and behaving respectfully toward yourself and others. True self-esteem comes from awareness of who you truly are and acceptance of yourself as you are. Therapeutic drawing activities can help you practice self-awareness and self-acceptance to build your self-esteem.
Accepting yourself means allowing yourself to be yourself, just as you are right now. Realizing you don’t need to change anything about yourself to be worthy of your own acceptance and love. Choosing not to rely on the external validation of people around you. When you accept yourself you allow yourself to be you, to make mistakes, and to behave and talk respectfully to yourself. Self-acceptance is the basis for self-love and self-esteem. Accepting yourself is an active process. Through drawing exercises you will practice accepting yourself, especially those parts of yourself you’ve been having a hard time accepting.
Observe how you’re changing over time
It’s a good idea to have one notebook that will hold all your self-care drawing activities. You can repeat these activities regularly and observe how you’re changing over time. During times of change or particularly emotional times choose activities that feel right at the moment and use them to practice self-care but also to work through and document your emotions and thoughts. Later you can come back and revisit it to gain clarity and a better understanding of yourself and the way you changed over time.
Discover more therapeutic artistic activities:
Therapeutic Art Activities For Emotional Wellness
Art Therapy Activities To Develop Self-Awareness
Art Therapy Activities for Relaxation
Art Therapy Activities For Self-Discovery
Therapeutic drawing activities for self-esteem, self-acceptance, and self-love
Water lilies
Water lily is attributed various symbolic meanings because of the way it grows from the mud, through the water, and emerges beautiful and clean. That’s a beautiful notion and makes a perfect prompt for a therapeutic self-love drawing activity. While drawing water lily think about your strengths. And dedicate each petal to one of your strengths. At the bottom of the drawing, in the ‘mud’ write words or phrases that symbolize the difficulties you had to go through and the mistakes you made from which stem your strengths.
Directions
Draw a water lily flowers and leaves. On each petal write one of your strengths. Color the flowers and draw their surroundings. At the bottom draw the ‘mud’ and write words that represent struggles that helped you build your strengths.
I heart my insecurities
To love yourself truly is to love and accept all parts of you. We all have our quirks, that’s what makes each of us a unique human. And most often, those quirks are what people who love you love most about you. Turn the narrative in your mind, from being insecure about certain parts of yourself to loving those parts. Draw colorful hearts and dedicate each heart to one of your insecurities.
Directions
Draw a heart and next to it write something you’re insecure about yourself. Draw as many hearts as you need. With each drawing of a heart send love to that part of you.
Love fractals
Making abstract drawings like fractals is a relaxing activity because it takes away the pressure of drawing “perfectly”. While thinking about what you love makes you happy and optimistic. Holding loving thoughts in your mind supports your mental health by helping you cope better with problems and stress.
Directions
Draw a continuous line that curves and crosses itself. Draw it in the shape of a heart. To get a heart shape you can lightly draw a heart with a pencil and then draw your continuous line inside it or you can eyeball it. Color the fields of the heart in different colors and name each field after something you love
Letting go balloons
Worries, regrets, and other burdens you carry will never let you be the best that you can be. Letting them go allows you to fly freely and reach all the heights you want to reach. Burdens waste so much of your energy that if made available would allow you to do everything you want to do. Draw balloons in different shapes, sizes, and colors, and allow your intuition to guide your hand while decorating balloons with patterns or symbols. While drawing balloons and naming them accept what needs to be accepted, forgive what needs to be forgiven, and then let go.
Directions
Draw colorful balloons that represent thoughts, regrets, and other burdens you want to let go. Draw balloons in different shapes and colors, and decorate them with symbols and patterns.
Love from head to toes
If you wait to be “perfect” to love yourself, you’ll never get there. Building a healthy loving relationship with yourself starts with accepting yourself as you are and giving special attention to what you love about yourself. List all your favorite attributes, give them a place on your body, and love the whole self.
Directions
Draw a silhouette of your body, then section it into many different parts, and color, or doodle each part. Give each part a name after something you love about yourself, be it a physical attribute or a personality trait.
Achievements
People who struggle with self-esteem often minimize the significance or completely overlook their accomplishments. Counting your accomplishments, considering the struggles you went through to achieve them, and honoring them is the way to build up your belief in yourself. Celebrate yourself by celebrating your achievements
Directions
Draw sketches and symbols that represent your achievements, as well as the struggles you had and the sacrifices you had to make along the way. Draw it with a mountain symbolism. For each achievement draw the shape of a mountain, on its top draw/write your achievement, and on the slopes draw/write your struggles and sacrifices.
Balancing self-esteem
Build your self-esteem by acknowledging your capabilities. Your sense of self-worth is related to your belief in your capabilities. Drawing stones dedicated to your capabilities allows you to see yourself as a balanced person with many qualities.
Directions
Draw balancing stones, on each stone write a short positive description of your qualities, strengths, skills, achievements, and talents. Color and decorate the stones to celebrate your positive attributes.
Superhero flaws
In life, everything is about perception. You have the power to choose how you perceive something. This activity will make you reimagine your view on one of your “flaws” and get you to think about it in a more constructive way. Choose one thing about yourself that you consider a flaw and imagine a superhero whose superpower is said flaw.
Directions
Think about your flaw and try to imagine a situation in which that flaw would be useful or even lifesaving. Draw a scene of a superhero in action whose superpower is one of your “flaws”.
Materials you’ll find useful for therapeutic drawing activities
Keep your drawings as simple or as elaborate as you wish. You can use high-quality materials or random scraps of paper and whichever writing tool you have on hand. Most of the work is done in your mind anyway.