Dealing with Depression by Adding Color

What a roller coaster week of weather! From heavy jacket weather to “the less the better!” It was over 90 degrees yesterday and my poor porch plants are suffering from the extreme heat of the past few days. I need to be more diligent in watering them. I didn’t spend any time sitting outdoors last week. I did attend the funeral of a sweet lady I know who turned 100 on January 1 of this year. I celebrated her arrival in Heaven, where she was reunited with her beloved husband, her precious sister, and many other of her loved ones who arrived before her. I can’t help smiling when I think of how happy she is now.

This past week has been one where dealt with a bit of depression. June affects me this way every year. It’s the month my beloved hubby’s health deteriorated drastically and on the 26th he took his journey to Heaven. Even though 8 years have come and gone, the pain is still sharp at times. We learn to move on and a healing scar occurs with time, but the empty place in the heart remains. Like my 100 year old friend, I will take my journey to heaven with a happy and hopeful heart when God calls me home.

So before I will have too many tears to continue, let me show you the pages I colored last week. Coloring has helped me with the healing from grief, and I thank God for giving me a gift to create through words and color. The first two pictures below were completed with gel pens. This is a media I choose when I need to just relax. Usually I choose mandalas to color with these, but this week I also chose one from a book gifted in a drawing from a lady whose channel I follow on YouTube. This book I can’t tell you the title of, nor the illustrator’s name, because it is (I believe) from Korea. It is a book of what appear to be princesses. The paper doesn’t take pencil media well, and because markers will bleed through to the back of a page and these books are double-sided pictures, I chose to try the gel pens. The mandala is from Kingdom of Coloring’s Flower Mandalas.

I also did some work on the puzzle that might not be finished before I die! Why? Well, look at what I managed to do in about 5 hours time! See how the pieces are shaped and fit together? It took me a couple of weeks to put the border together on this 1000 piece 26″ by 26″ puzzle.

I did use markers to do a picture in the Fantasy Fairy Portraits book illustrated by Derya Cakirsoy.

The next two pictures are also from the same Derya Cakirsoy book. I decided to try using my Prismacolor Premier pencils and they worked great. I really like coloring with them on this particular paper. And I love the cute pictures to color as well.

And that concludes the colors I added to my life during this past week. I did complete the swatching of color blends and plan to create more this week. It helps a lot to look at these blends when I color so I can get ideas of colors to use for flowers, leaves, etc.

May your life be filled with many joyful colors as you venture on your path this week. I pray good health and love go be with you. Until next time…