Picture Me on A Good Day

This tool was developed as part of Cultural Cwtsh, which was an online creative wellbeing hub for the health and care workforce in Wales, created by the Arts Council of Wales in collaboration with artists across the country.

In partnership with the Arts Council of Wales, we’re excited to share this mental wellbeing tool, alongside with many other creative resources, with everyone in Wales!

A creative guide in three parts from making your own sketch books to your first masterpiece.

I am Bill Taylor-Beales, a socially engaged artist from Carmarthenshire with over 30 years’ experience of working with all ages and abilities – using visual art, film, music and storytelling.

Picture Me On A Good Day is a simple process to get you started on the journey of exploring the creative arts through some very basic activities.

There are three videos to guide you over six steps from making a sketch book to painting a masterpiece.

Equipment needed

A selection of the following:

• A4 paper or old envelopes
• Cardboard
• Pens
• Pencils
• Soft pastels
• Watercolour set
• Old magazines
• Glue

The materials will cost just a few pounds each and the exercises only take a few minutes each.

The aim is to have a lot of fun exploring ideas, colour, shapes, and textures and bring them all together for a final piece that represents a positive memory.

There are additional resources with the videos, and I invite you to submit any art that you create as part of this journey.

So put the smart device away grab your smart sketch book and let your imagination loose. Good luck!

The key thing here is that you can add to your art kit over time as you explore how you work and what appeals to you. All the materials in the video are around £2 to £3 each and are easy to carry around with you.

As you engage more with the process of making art, you can investigate further into more expensive materials and how to use them. The ones I have listed provide a wonderful basic kit that will allow you to explore a wide variety of techniques and styles.

An essential part of any creative journey is to find out what is possible with the materials you are using.

YouTube is full of wonderful instructional videos of how use oil paints, etc, and I often look at these for ideas and foundational mechanics of a medium – but do not let this be the end of your exploration.

The greatest painters in history are those that pushed their medium into new areas – there is no wrong or right – explore and play!

This is an area I particularly love and spend a great deal of time exploring and never ever getting bored as each new face opens up a new world of possible ways to express it through visual art.

Additional information

The smart sketch book: Take it with you everywhere

One of the hardest things to do is break old habits. The aim of making these sketch books is to keep them small and easily accessible and not to be too precious with them.

They are there to be your emotional/visual sponges to absorb the world around you – whether this is through mark making, sketching, collage, writing, etc, the choice is yours – but the more you can make that choice to grab the sketch book instead of the smartphone, the more you will be able to become lost in another world, to disengage and find some genuine mindfulness.

These little sketch books used often really do help to destress and help to create new imaginative ways of being and seeing.

The fragile line: A creative warm up

This is an exercise that I do frequently to stop me getting into a creative rut. It really helps to get rid of some frustrations and also to allow my mind to take a bit of time out and just play.

I mention play a lot in the videos as it is vital to be able to re-learn how to do this, as this is key to your creative journey and exploration of what art can be and do for you. Once you have flattened out the paper from its scrunching, it really is up to you what you do with all those wonderful lines and creases. I would love to see any inspiring art from these.

The memory: Preparing our picture

Finally bringing all the elements together to create a piece of stand-alone artwork. The small sketch books are ideal to fill with explorations and ideas as you journey towards an outcome. I hope that you can build up a collection of those little books and I encourage you to keep on popping back and looking at them, as they will be evolving all the time and you will keep on discovering new things in them.

I tend to paint on timber, as I like to use oil paints, and this allows for lots of scraping and readjustment. I hope you can put aside some time and budget to try out some canvas on an easel, maybe, and see how hours and even days disappear as you get lost in the relationship between you and the artwork.