Last year I had the pleasure of collaborating with the Santa Barbara Wellness Connection Council. Our mission was to create a piece of art to display at the annual Mental Health Arts Festival. I was called upon to design a experience for the 9-12 grade kids from SB High, San Marcos, and Dos Pueblos schools to turn inward and contribute to the piece of art by answering the question “What Gives You Hope?”
The Mental wellness Center of Santa Barbara has many programs that target local youth and adults in order to spread mental health awareness. Their Mental Health First Aid program gives the local community the tools necessary to help people having a mental health crisis. The Mental Health Matters program visits local 6-9 grade schools to help educate kids on the importance of mental health and give them the tools to identify mental health issues happening to their friends, family and classmates. The Wellness Connection Council program is a student run leadership program where the students raise awareness and reduce stigma around mental health by promoting self-care, connection, kindness, education, prevention, and outreach amongst their peers.
When I was asked to participate in their end of year celebration I jumped to the opportunity to give something back to these kids that are having a monumental impact on our community. I was asked the day of and so I naturally had a very short amount of time to put something together. Let me walk you through my process and share some awesome photos from this celebration
First I needed a basis for the painting so I jumped in to illustrator and combined a nice line drawing I found for Mental Health with the Wellness Connection logo. I later replaced “Mental Health” with “Wellness Connection” to make it more fitting.
After setting up the canvas with a basic wash of blue and purple, I used a computer and a projector to project the outline of the image onto the canvas.
A word of caution: Since projectors are not capable of producing as much contrast as your computer screen, you might have issues like I did with making the rendering lines too thin. In my example, I added a grid to my render but since the lines were so small, it was impossible to see with the projector. Luckily my image was thick enough to see on the projection.
Next comes the fun part. After a brief explanation, the kids were excited to jump in! At first they were a little nervous about perfecting their contributions, but after a little encouragement and fun, they had a blast making the piece of art their own. It was such an incredible time.
