#125 Draw your pain

Continuing the topic of visual imagery, to draw you pain may help you understand it better.
What does your pain look like? Is it sharp, blunt or crushing? Is it a throbbing and fiery orange or an icy crisp blue? Where in your body is it, how big is it, and how does it impact the rest of your body?
Drawing your pain can help you express it in a way that is more descriptive than words. I have sketches in my diaries from all the years since I broke my back, it's interesting to look at them now. This is a sketch of my pain last time I was in hospital;


On a slightly bigger scale, pain has been a powerful inspiration for art through all times. When nothing else works, we may find inspiration and solace from looking at art. This is how Frida Kahlo visualized her fractured spine in the famous painting "the broken column":


(I hardly dared to look at pictures painted by Kahlo after I learned that we had similar injuries, her descriptions were so graphic that it scared me...)

As with everything creative, don't bother comparing what you draw with how you think it's "supposed" to look, or how anyone else might draw... just let it out. If the lines are all wobbly and shaky, that's part of the expression.

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