Map of My Heart

Today I joined a free workshop by Rukmini Poddar on Zoom, ‘Mapping Your Heart’, where she encourages participants to explore their feelings and create a map or representation of their heart using whatever materials they choose.

The last time I did an art workshop was in August 2020, when I did a workshop held by London Drawing Group on working with paper to create cut-out art taking inspiration from Matisse.

Rukmini Poddar is known for creating art around her feelings and inner landscape, using words, colour, and mark making. She also holds workshops, courses, and sells her work online in various incarnations. I’d been following her for a while and noticed she was holding a free workshop, so asked if she would mind putting Zoom auto-captions on for me and other deaf attendees!

In case people aren’t aware, auto-captions now come built-in to Zoom and the host has to enable them. Any attendees can then click on ‘show captions’ on their end to make them visible.

The workshop itself was lovely – 400 people from over the world joined and it was great to see people creating together. There were two exercises – one was to draw/paint four different hearts associated with different feelings, and the final one was to create a map of our hearts.

Rukmini introduced us to an Emotion Wheel by Abby Vanmuijen, where colour theory is used to depict emotions. I used that in my map as it felt like a good starting point. It was emotional and gave me a chance to reflect on how I had been and was feeling.

I used acrylic paint from Pebeo (as I don’t currently have any watercolour paints!), some felt tips, and a Sharpie pen to write the map emotion labels. It was more about the process than the results, and connecting to yourself in the moment.

Map of My Heart

It definitely made me feel like creating more art and also taking up art journaling or taking some time each week to check in with myself.

Rukmini is also doing paid courses next month and in January if people are interested! You can find more details here.

I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend, or at least found some time to breathe and check in with yourself. Just three days left of Nano Poblano, I can hardly believe it!

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