This mindful umbrella pattern exercise is meant to help you come up with your own patterns.
Pattern drawing is a relaxing and focused activity that can help you get into a flow and help your mind relax. Because of the repetitive motion, pattern drawing is almost meditative.
You can just copy patterns that you find on the internet or somewhere else (as long as it’s for your own personal use of course), but wouldn’t it be fun to create your own?
In this mindful umbrella exercise, I will take you by the hand and give you guidance on how to start with this. We will start with a few boundaries or “rules” per umbrella. This will limit the possibilities and makes sure you will not get overwhelmed.
Remember this exercise is supposed to be relaxing and only for you. There is no pressure to come up with amazing patterns, just have fun and experiment.
Please let me know if this exercise helped you relax, I’d love to know.
You can find a small video of this exercise on my Instagram @thecreativecooldown
Supplies used:
Bristol paper (Winsor & Newton), alcohol markers (Winsor & Newton), fineliner no. 0.3 (Copic).
Alternative supply suggestions:
For this exercise, you can use a regular pen or a pencil to draw the umbrella and your patterns as well. If you want to add color, use whatever you have, such as crayons, markers, watercolor. You can even use a pencil to color your umbrellas and just add various shades of grey. Make sure it’s not too dark and you are still able to see your patterns.
Instructions
1. Draw four simple umbrellas. You can make them as detailed as you’d like. A semi-circle divided into three parts with a handle is enough to get you started.
2. Now it’s time to color them. I used alcohol markers, but feel free to use whatever you have. Make sure the colors are not too dark, you need to be able to draw your patterns over them. I like to make the borders a little darker and keep the middle a bit lighter, this will help to give some depth to your patterns.
3. In order to make it easier to come up with your own patterns, I will give you some guidelines or “rules” for each umbrella. This will help to limit the scope of your pattern and help to prevent overwhelm because there are so many possibilities. I always start experimenting on a separate piece of paper. For this umbrella, the guideline is: only draw patterns with lines and dots. So get out your pencil and paper and start experimenting with patterns that have those. Draw some lines for example and add some dots. You can play with the direction, the width, and length of the lines, the size of the dots, the number of lines and dots, etc. Just start doodling. Pick your three favorites and draw them in your first umbrella.
4. Do the same for the next one. The guideline here is: draw patterns with triangles. Let your mind wander and just draw and see what you can come up with. Again, add your three favorites to your umbrella.
5. It’s time for the next umbrella. This time the guideline is a pattern with circles. Experiment as much as you like and add three of them to your third umbrella.
6. The guideline for our last umbrella is a pattern with wavy lines. Add your three favorite patterns to the fourth umbrella.
7. Now it’s time for our last pattern: raindrops. Add some raindrops around your umbrellas. I used three tones of blue to create those.
When you’re satisfied with your raindrops, you’ve completed this mindful umbrella pattern exercise!
If you liked this exercise, you might like my Mindful chameleon pattern exercise as well.
