The Magical Forest

Hello Dazzle! Thanks for coming and hanging out with me today, I’m glad that you are here. Today I just wanted to tell you guys about an unexpected art project I ended up making. It was a coloring book titled The Magical Forest.

Back when I was working as a psych nurse, I was taking care of both adults and children. The place that I was working would admit children as young as five. Oftentimes these kiddos would need help finding ways to calm their emotions and regulate their feelings. I personally used art because it was something that I was familiar with and could share that sense of wonder and excitement with them. 

When I first started, I would try to get the kids to draw things and they would, most of the time. But they never got very excited about that. They always ended up asking me to draw things. Overtime, that just became the thing that I did. I would sit down with a kid and I would tell them that there is another place, far away from this one. Within that place, there is a magical forest. The things that we dream and imagine here can sometimes come to life and live within this forest. Then I’d ask them to imagine what kinds of things would be living in that forest and I would do my best to draw the things that they came up with. 

Most of the time they were pretty mundane things like animals and plants. But every now and again, they would want a dragon or a unicorn or a mouse with wings or something that they would just describe to me part by part. Sometimes they didn’t want to talk at all and would just want me to fill in the whole picture. In those cases, I would do my best to fill it in with a random variety of creatures and plants that made the magical forest look like it would be a fun and interesting place to explore.

Once I had drawn enough things to completely fill up the page, I would ask the child to color the picture for me. It was always really fun to see how they chose to color it. They always chose really bright and unexpected colors for everything. The grass might be purple and the frogs might be red. Anything was possible because it was a magical forest.

After I had been doing this for a while I ended up having a style that developed. Now whenever I sit to draw something for the magical forest that style just comes out naturally. There are some characters that are always present in the pictures like the little people that are the forest spirits and the snakes. While drawing these pictures, I would tell the children stories about the magical forest and would encourage them to make up their own stories about the place.

The forest spirits are the caretakers of the magical forest and it is their job to make sure that all the new dreams coming into the forest find themselves a home. The snakes are the nightmare eaters. It is their job to eat all the dark and scary creatures that arrive in the magical forest. They make sure that the forest remains a place of brightness and joy. All of the little flying bugs are the forgotten dreams that we wish we could remember but have faded too quickly to recall more than wisps or impressions. The lady bugs are lady bugs. One boy informed me that every forest would have bugs and ladybugs are the best of them, so they would be there in the magical forest. 

It became a habit to photocopy these pictures so that more than one child could color the same picture. By the time I left there, I had drawn over a hundred pictures for these children. They had them all collected into a folder that was labeled “magical forest coloring book.” Each one of these pictures represented a time that a child had been struggling and I was able to help them get through that time. For me, the magical forest will always be a bittersweet place because I will always wish that it had never been needed in the first place. It was a project that I never planned on creating but ended up being one of the most fulfilling art projects that I’ve ever worked on. 

For every creative person out there that wonders if what you are doing is important enough to keep going, I want to know that it is. When we humans are in our darkness hours and are struggling with our most difficult demons, we always turn to creative works for comfort. We listen to music, watch shows, play video games, look at art, dance and tell each other stories as ways to help us process and cope with everything that is difficult in our lives. 

If you’re a creative person and you are thinking about giving up on it, I want you to draw a magical forest for someone. Doesn’t have to literally be drawing or a magical forest, but the next time you are supporting a friend who is struggling with something to offer to make them something. It is in those difficult times that we can truly understand the power and gift of our creativity. When we are creative, we have the power of lifting people up. 

This version of the magical forest is available in my discord server in the artist alley channel. It is a copy of the uncolored line art. It is free to download and I would love to see how you choose to color it.

Well, that’s about it for my rambling today. Thanks for coming and spending some time with me. If you like my rambling then click on that like button. It really does help! Until we talk again, you take care of yourselves!