Welcome to our sketching community! This is an exciting endeavor to sketch our honest reactions to our emotions, past experiences, and dreams for the future. I hope you will enjoy this experience and implement some of the strategies into your daily practice. This is not for your job, role, or students. This is for you to see the beauty within and celebrate your authentic self. Take a moment to search for what you want to get out of this upcoming year.
Big Question: How is this different than Sketchnotes?
The key difference is that we are not using the tool to take notes and synthesize big ideas. Rather, we are sketching to show our feelings and connections. Some might argue that it's the same thing, but I don't think this has anything to do with academics or work. It's all about you.
Sketch Club
Join our new sketch club! Fill out this survey and you are ready to go!
We will get together every couple weeks to explore sketching and reflecting in a new way. Complete this survey and you will be sent
June 3 May 20 May 6 April 15
Intro to Sketching Sketching with simple cards Sketching with advanced cards Sketching with book
We will meet: Sat 8:00pm EST/Sun 6:30am IST/12:00pm AEDT
How it Began
My best friend Anthony could sense that my creativity was quite drained due to overworking and giving my energy to other people, instead of myself. As a Christmas present, he gifted a set of spirituality cards, goal-setting cards, and a drawing pad.
As part of my daily practice, I was advised to shuffle each deck separately and choose one card that spoke to me. Then, I read both cards to discern their meaning and created a drawing on my pad.
Just like you, I was skeptical about this process, because I wondered how drawing pictures would help me on a daily basis. Little did I know that it would heal old wounds, help me to recognize my truth, and inspire me to make changes.
Everyday like clockwork, I reflected using my card sets and my drawings. It's hard to explain, but I read the words and let the pictures come together in my mind. I begin drawing and the next thing I know, I've created an entire image. It's kind of like driving home from work and pulling into your driveway a few minutes later, but you don't remember the journey.
The most surprising thing was the amount of visuals that came about about my childhood, past relationships, my regrets, my challenges, and my greatest accomplishments. In some way, it became like therapy for me.
I travel a lot for my work as an educational consultant and I started to travel with the cards and journal. I found that it recharged me after a long day of training teachers and sparked new ideas for the next day.
After some time, I needed a wider variety of cards to choose from to round out my reflection process and to keep the process fresh in my mind. Here are the cards that I have.
Mystic Mondays
The Mystic Mondays card deck is one of the original decks given to me as a gift. For someone who is religious, this might be an instant turn-off. I totally understand. I want to you look beyond the card deck being used and consider how you might use the strategy with other cards that provide enlightenment to you.
I use my tarot deck as a mindfulness tool to examine all parts of my life, behavior, and thinking. These cards help me to see beyond the immediacy of my actions, but long-term effects. The deck comes with a magical little book that tells you what each card means when it is facing right side up and upside down.
Crush Your Goals
As it sounds, the Crush Your Goals cards are focused on developing your goals and not giving up when it gets tough. These cards really helped me to get out of my funk and to see beyond my current moment. We all need this at various times in our lives. We do not judge ourselves, because we aren't motivated to go for our dreams. Dreams change.
Mindful Messages
My Mindful Messages cards are similar to my tarot cards. They provide different messages about where I am in my journey and possible things I can do to grow. We all need sizeable action steps to help us to get from one place to another. These cards are my go to when I want to think deeper and make and action plan.
Happier Me
The Happier Me deck is self-explanatory. It explores different ways to be happier with ourselves, others, and living in the world. I really appreciate this deck, because there is a simple message on the front, which I often use to guide the big picture thinking. On the back side, there is a message that gets you thinking about your practices and provides a manageable action step.
The long-term effects from this reflection process has been a more centered spirit. I express my feelings, frustrations, accomplishments, and joy in pictures that make sense to me. Each drawing captures a moment in time and helps me to correct behaviors and patterns that I keep repeating. When it is in print, you can no longer deny its existence.
Join me as I begin a sketch club via Zoom. I will posting information shortly on social media. I hope to see you there!