You can do a lot more with watercolor then paint pretty pictures. Although there is nothing wrong with painting pretty pictures I have discovered how to use watercolor painting to reduce your stress. Of the several factors involved in my stress reduction paintings, the important thingsto keep in mind are that your painting is for painted just for you. You won’t be graded on it, you don’t have to show it to anyone, you won’t get a grade on it, it won’t hang on your wall (unless you want it to) and you are the boss of your painting.

What does you are the boss of your painting actually mean? It means that you choose the colors, you choose the subject, the style, the message and the techniques. Making your own choices gives you more control and all of the experts say if we feel more in control, it reduces our stress.

This week I taught a class about how to paint colorful expressive faces. It only involved drawing an egg shape for a face and some simple features to give your face the expression of your choice. I made a Youtube video about it that you can watch. I recommended looking in a mirror or having someone model a mood or feeling like boredom or anger and then studying and drawing how the features look with each different mood.

You can also refer to the charts below that show how the features change with different moods. The top chart is from a wonderful book by Andrew Loomis called Figure Drawing For What It’s Worth.