A teen sits across from you, shoulders tense, words stuck.
You slide over paper and colored pencils and ask, “Show me what anxiety looks like.”
Right then, jagged reds soften into blue waves and the room exhales.
That’s the promise of art therapy in clinical work: it gives clients a creative outlet to express emotions that are hard to say aloud, then use the image as a bridge into the therapeutic process.
This guide curates 25 art therapy exercises for use across ages and settings. They are organized by treatment goals and paired with quick how-tos, documentation tips, and common pitfalls to avoid.
What is Art Therapy?
Art therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach that combines creative expression (drawing, painting, collage, sculpture) with psychological theory to help clients explore emotions, process emotions, and develop coping and problem-solving skills. Here, clients don’t need to “be artistic.” The aim here is self-expression and self-awareness, not aesthetics.
How does it work?
The creative process activates sensory, symbolic, and narrative pathways that language alone often can’t reach. Through color, texture, and form, clients can access memories and complex emotions stored beneath conscious awareness - creating a bridge between what’s felt and what can finally be understood.
When facilitated with intention, art therapy sessions combine structure and safety as clients are guided to explore, express, and then re-ground.
Clear consent, pacing, and debriefing ensure that creative expression remains stabilizing rather than overwhelming, helping clients leave sessions centered in the present moment.
A Quick Note for Clinicians
These art therapy activities are designed to complement your existing therapeutic framework, not replace specialized training.
Therefore, its important to stay within your professional scope and use creative work as a bridge to insight, not as diagnostic interpretation. When clients’ artwork reveals deeper symbolic themes or trauma material, consider consulting or referring to a credentialed art therapist (ATR-BC) for specialized art therapy techniques and supervision.
Why These Exercises Matter in Therapy
When clients find it difficult to verbalize their experiences, art therapy exercises offer a parallel language - one that helps them express emotions, regulate arousal, and reconnect with their inner world safely.
The act of creating art is more than a distraction; it’s an intentional, embodied way to translate complex feelings into form and color.
Here’s why integrating these art therapy activities can make a meaningful difference in your therapy sessions:
- Emotional Regulation: Drawing, painting, or sculpting transforms intense emotions into a visual representation, helping clients name, label, and manage their inner experiences. Over time, this builds self-awareness and tolerance for difficult emotions.
- Trauma-Responsive Care: Art creates a safe space for clients to approach distress at their own pace. Through mandala drawing, collage making, or gentle finger painting, the creative process supports regulation before verbal processing begins.
- Engagement and Accessibility: For clients who struggle to put feelings verbally, art therapy offers a tangible and sensory bridge - especially useful with children, adolescents, or neurodivergent clients who benefit from multisensory expression.
- Skill Generalization: When clients create visual representations of coping or healing, they externalize strengths they can return to later. This reinforces coping skills between sessions and encourages reflection.
- Developmental Flexibility: Whether supporting a child’s fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, or helping adults deepen reflection and insight, art therapy meets clients where they are developmentally.
- Embodied Healing: Unlike purely cognitive work, the creative process involves both the mind and body, integrating sensory, emotional, and symbolic systems for more holistic change.
In practice, these exercises function as both therapeutic tools and creative outlets, promoting emotional safety, personal growth, and engagement in the therapeutic process- no matter the client’s age, background, or artistic ability.
How to Integrate Art Therapy Exercises into Practice
You don’t need to be a trained art therapist to bring creative expression into your sessions - you just need to facilitate with curiosity, containment, and purpose. Here’s how to do it ethically and effectively within your therapeutic scope:
1. Start with Intention
Before introducing an activity, clarify why you’re using it. Is it for grounding, emotional expression, or insight?
Framing the exercise helps clients connect their creative process to a therapeutic goal rather than focusing on artistic skill.
2. Offer Choice, Not Instruction
Invite clients to choose materials that feel comfortable - colored pencils, markers, or collage supplies.
Giving them agency over how they create art builds self-expression and supports autonomy, especially for clients with trauma histories or low self-esteem.
3. Normalize the Process (Not the Product)
Remind clients that the goal isn’t to produce “good art.”
In art therapy, meaning emerges through visual representation, not aesthetics. Encourage them to notice sensations, emotions, and memories that arise during the creative process.
4. Debrief Gently
After the exercise, invite reflection through open prompts:
- “What was it like to express that through color or shape?”
- “Did anything surprise you as you worked?”
- “Where do you feel that emotion in your body now?”
This bridges self-awareness from art back into verbal processing, helping clients develop coping skills and emotional integration.
5. Store or Release
Let clients decide what happens to their art - keep it, display it, or ritualize letting it go.
This step can serve as a visual reminder of progress, or as a symbolic release of negative emotions.
25 Art Therapy Exercises for Emotional Healing and Self-Expression
Below are 25 art therapy exercises organized by therapeutic goal - from emotional regulation and mindfulness to trauma recovery and identity work.
These exercises are designed for therapists, counselors, educators, and anyone looking to use creative methods for emotional healing- whether in private practice, group settings, or self-reflection.
Each exercise includes a quick how-to, clinical focus, and documentation tip for easy integration into your sessions.
Emotional Regulation & Expression
When clients experience emotional flooding or suppression, art therapy techniques provide a tangible way to externalize and modulate feeling states.
1. Emotion Wheel Drawing
Goal: Build emotional awareness and vocabulary.
How to: Draw a wheel divided into emotion categories (anger, sadness, joy, fear, calm). Invite clients to fill each section with colors or symbols that represent how those emotions feel in their body.
Clinical tip: Note emotional range, tone, and color associations - useful for documenting affect identification and regulation progress.
2. Mood Collage Journal
Goal: Track emotional patterns over time.
How to: Each day, clients create collages from magazines or sketches that reflect their mood. At week’s end, discuss patterns and triggers.
Documentation: Summarize affect variability, insight, and use of creative coping.
3. Feelings Thermometer
Goal: Teach clients to identify the intensity of affect.
How to: Draw a thermometer from 0–10 and use colored pencils to shade emotion levels (e.g., blue = calm, red = distress). Discuss regulation strategies for each range.
Tip: Link to DBT distress tolerance or CBT thought-challenging notes.
4. Scribble Out Stress
Goal: Relieve stress through spontaneous creative expression.
How to: Encourage clients to “scribble out” tension using bold lines and colors. Afterward, observe emerging shapes or metaphors.
Clinical tip: Useful for clients with low self-esteem or perfectionism; reinforces non-judgmental creation.
5. Paint Your Feelings
Goal: Translate complex emotions into color and movement.
How to: With art materials like paint or pastels, clients paint what sadness, anger, or peace “looks like.”
Note: Document sensory engagement and insight statements (e.g., “My sadness looks heavy and blue”).
Mindfulness & Grounding
Art therapy offers a visual and sensory way to bring clients into the present moment - supporting grounding, body awareness, and parasympathetic activation.
6. Mandala Drawing
Goal: Promote calm through repetitive nature and focus.
How to: Invite clients to draw a circular mandala starting from the center and expanding outward with intricate patterns.
Tip: Encourage attention to breath and motion; note observable relaxation cues in documentation.
7. Mindful Coloring
Goal: Strengthen focus and sensory regulation.
How to: Provide coloring sheets or blank pages; instruct clients to notice each stroke and color choice.
Clinical use: Especially effective in group sessions or with clients managing anxiety or ADHD.
8. Nature Collage
Goal: Connect body and environment for grounding.
How to: Use found objects (leaves, stones, paper textures) to create a grounding image or safe space collage.
Tip: Ideal for trauma work or telehealth sessions- uses tactile connection and creative process to anchor in safety.
9. Sensory Mandala (Eyes Closed)
Goal: Deepen embodiment and self-awareness.
How to: Clients draw with eyes closed, focusing on movement and physical sensations rather than outcome.
Note: Observe non-verbal emotion release; document somatic regulation signs.
10. The 5-Minute Art Therapy Activity
Goal: Quick reset during sessions or crises.
How to: Give clients 5 minutes to draw or doodle whatever comes to mind without judgment.
Why it works: Encourages immediate emotional discharge and self-regulation through creative outlet and present-moment focus.
Self-Discovery & Identity
These art therapy ideas help clients explore their sense of self, strengths, and personal narratives - powerful for insight, self-expression, and personal growth.
11. Self-Portrait (Past and Present)
Goal: Enhance self-awareness and track change.
How to: On a split page, draw the “then” and “now” selves. Reflect on what has changed, healed, or persisted.
Tip: Note shifts in tone, self-concept, and symbolic imagery for progress tracking.
12. Gratitude Tree
Goal: Increase positive psychology and emotional resilience.
How to: Draw or collage a tree, writing gratitudes on its branches or leaves.
Note: Reflect on growth, support systems, or social skills development.
13. “My Safe Space” Drawing
Goal: Visualize calm and security.
How to: Clients create art that depicts a physical or imagined safe place using color, texture, or images.
Tip: Especially useful for trauma survivors; document sensory descriptors of safety (light, sound, color).
14. Vision Board Creation
Goal: Support goal-setting and motivation.
How to: Encourage clients to design a vision board using images and words representing future hopes or self-care.
Clinical focus: Observe themes of empowerment, agency, and life direction.
15. Identity Collage
Goal: Explore values, roles, and cultural identity.
How to: Use photos, text, or drawing to represent “Who am I?” in different contexts.
Tip: Review for self-esteem themes or cognitive distortions about identity.
Trauma & Resilience
Trauma-informed art therapy practice helps externalize painful memories, build tolerance, and restore control through structured art therapy techniques.
16. Butterfly Dream and Nightmare Exercise
Goal: Integrate light and shadow experiences.
How to: Draw a butterfly; fill one wing with an image from a positive dream, and the other with a recurring fear or nightmare.
Why it works: Allows clients to process emotions safely and symbolically, building resilience through dual awareness.
17. The Unsent Postcard
Goal: Release negative emotions toward unresolved relationships or events.
How to: Create a postcard with images and words expressing what remains unsaid - but don’t send it.
Tip: Debrief intentionally; note emotional tone and boundary insight.
18. From Illness to Art
Goal: Reframe pain into empowerment.
How to: Invite clients managing chronic illness to depict their experience as color or shape, then reimagine it transformed.
Clinical note: Observe shifts in self-image, meaning-making, and inner peace indicators.
19. Torn Drawing Reconstruction
Goal: Build resilience and reparation.
How to: Clients tear an old drawing and create collages from the pieces- symbolizing integration after rupture.
Tip: Excellent for trauma or grief work; document emotional tolerance and narrative coherence.
20. Safe Box or Container Art
Goal: Contain intrusive memories or distressing emotions.
How to: Decorate a box to hold symbolic items or notes.
Clinical use: Promotes grounding and emotional safety; note ability to regulate affect during activity.
Connection & Communication
These art therapy activities enhance interpersonal awareness, empathy, and authenticity- especially in group sessions or family therapy.
21. Communication Mask
Goal: Explore inner versus outer self.
How to: Decorate a mask - one side shows what’s presented to the world, the other reveals inner truth.
Tip: Facilitates discussion around vulnerability and interpersonal relationships.
22. Boundaries Shield
Goal: Visualize and strengthen boundaries.
How to: Divide a shield into four parts (physical, emotional, time, mental). Represent each boundary visually.
Documentation: Note insight statements about needs, limits, and assertiveness.
23. Relationship Circles
Goal: Map emotional closeness.
How to: Draw concentric circles and place relationships within each layer.
Tip: Discuss balance, support, and emotional energy; good for couples or family sessions.
24. Mirror Drawing
Goal: Encourage self-compassion and reflection.
How to: Have clients draw themselves as they are seen by someone who loves them.
Clinical use: Supports low self-esteem and reframes negative self-image.
25. Collaborative Abstract Painting
Goal: Strengthen connection and co-regulation.
How to: Two or more clients create a shared abstract art piece using shared colors or brushstrokes.
Tip: Observe cooperation, boundaries, and emotional expression in interaction.
Common Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
Even experienced clinicians may inadvertently misuse art therapy techniques when structure or boundaries are unclear. Here are the most frequent pitfalls- and how to keep your practice both creative and clinically sound.
1. Interpreting Instead of Exploring
Mistake: Treating artwork as diagnostic evidence (“the blue means sadness”).
Instead: Invite reflection - “What does that color feel like to you?” The creative process belongs to the client; your role is to facilitate curiosity, not assign meaning.
2. Skipping Grounding and Closure
Mistake: Ending sessions immediately after deep emotional expression.
Instead: Always include a present-moment debrief - a few minutes for sensory grounding, breathwork, or a simple verbal summary of what felt safe or intense. This ensures clients leave centered, not raw.
3. Overfocusing on Product Over Process
Mistake: Praising “beautiful” artwork or focusing on aesthetics.
Instead: Reinforce engagement, not skill. Healing happens in the process of creation, not the product.
4. Using Creative Tasks Beyond Your Scope
Mistake: Employing complex trauma interventions (e.g., symbolic re-enactment, deep image analysis) without specialized art therapy training.
Instead: Keep within your license. Use these art therapy activities as adjunctive tools for expression and regulation, and refer to credentialed art therapists (ATR-BC) for advanced interpretation.
5. Ignoring Cultural and Sensory Differences
Mistake: Assuming all clients experience materials the same way.
Instead: Offer choice in art supplies - texture, medium, and color - especially for neurodivergent clients or those with sensory sensitivities.
Documentation Tips for Art Therapy Activities
Integrating art therapy sessions into your notes can strengthen clinical clarity and insurance compliance. Here’s how to document effectively:
Note Section | What to Include | Example Language |
|---|---|---|
Intervention | Describe the art therapy technique used and its goal. | “Client engaged in mandala drawing to enhance emotional regulation.” |
Client Response | Capture observable affect, participation, and insight. | “Client used warm tones; noted feeling calmer and more focused.” |
Clinical Impression | Link the creative process to treatment objectives. | “Activity supported emotional awareness and improved distress tolerance.” |
Plan | Identify continuity or homework. | “Client will continue art journaling for self-expression between sessions.” |
Pro Tip: Upload or scan the artwork (with consent) as a visual reminder in your records- helpful for tracking themes and progress over time.
Therapist’s Toolkit: Essentials for Integrating Art Therapy into Sessions
Before trying these creative exercises, it helps to have a few foundational tools ready. This ensures that each session remains structured, ethical, and emotionally safe for your clients.
1. Consent & Safety
- Obtain clear consent for using creative methods and clarify how artwork will be handled or stored.
- Set boundaries: explain that the art is for exploration, not diagnosis.
2. Materials List
- Core supplies: Paper, colored pencils, markers, paint, glue sticks, collage magazines.
- Optional additions: Clay, fabric scraps, natural materials (leaves, stones), or digital drawing tools for telehealth.
- Choose textures and mediums based on client comfort and sensory needs.
3. Grounding Scripts
- Begin with a short centering exercise (breathwork, body awareness, or a “check-in color” prompt).
- End with grounding: “Notice your feet on the floor,” “Take three deep breaths,” or “Name one thing you see, hear, and feel.”
4. Post-Session Reflection Prompts
Encourage clients to journal or discuss:
- What did you notice during this activity?
- What emotions or memories surfaced?
- How might this art connect to your current goals or coping skills?
5. Documentation Reminders
- Record intervention, response, and clinical impression briefly in your session note.
- Optionally, upload a scanned copy (with consent) for progress tracking.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1. What is the 5-minute art therapy activity?
A: It’s a brief art therapy exercise used for quick grounding or emotional reset. Clients spend five minutes creating any spontaneous image - a doodle, pattern, or abstract shape - to externalize emotion. It encourages focus on the present moment, self-regulation, and creative expression without judgment.
Q2. What is the butterfly dream and nightmare exercise?
A: This art therapy activity involves drawing a butterfly and filling one wing with imagery from a positive dream, and the other with a nightmare or fear. It helps clients process emotions, balance light and dark experiences, and build emotional resilience- particularly in trauma-focused therapy.
Q3. Can I do art therapy by myself?
A: Yes. You can practice art therapy exercises independently for self-expression and reflection. Simple activities like mandala drawing, art journaling, or vision board creation can promote calm and self-awareness. However, for deeper symbolic or trauma work, guided art therapy sessions with a credentialed art therapist (ATR-BC) are recommended.
Q4. What is an art therapy activity for trauma?
A: Grounding-focused activities such as safe space drawing, collage making, or finger painting are ideal for trauma care. They help clients reconnect with safety and control through the creative process before exploring verbal trauma content. Avoid interpretive work without specialized art therapy training.
Q5. Do clients need artistic skill for art therapy?
A: Not at all. Art therapy focuses on meaning, not aesthetics. The act of creating art allows clients to express emotions and build self-awareness, regardless of skill. In fact, letting go of perfectionism often enhances personal growth and emotional regulation.
Q6. What are the best materials for beginners?
A: Start with basic art supplies - colored pencils, markers, paper, and collage materials. Add paint, clay, or mixed media as comfort increases. Choose materials that fit the goal: soft textures for grounding, clay for tactile regulation, or collage for problem-solving skills and perspective-taking.
Q7. How often should art therapy exercises be used in sessions?
A: Use art therapy activities as adjunctive tools- once per session or periodically. Even brief creative interventions strengthen coping skills, reinforce insight, and make sessions more engaging. Frequency depends on the client’s readiness, goals, and emotional stability.
Q8. Can art therapy be done virtually?
A: Yes. Many therapists integrate art therapy via telehealth platforms using drawing apps, digital whiteboards, or home art materials. Always check for privacy, emotional safety, and post-session grounding to ensure clients leave centered.
Q9. Is art therapy evidence-based?
A: Yes. Research supported by the American Art Therapy Association shows that art therapy techniques improve mental health, emotional regulation, and engagement. It’s used alongside traditional therapy for conditions like anxiety, depression, and trauma-related disorders.
Q10. What’s the difference between art therapy and creative journaling?
A: Creative journaling encourages open self-expression, while art therapy involves structured, goal-oriented work guided by trained professionals. Both can promote insight, but only art therapists are trained to interpret symbolic content within a psychotherapeutic framework safely.
Q11. How can I document art therapy in my notes?
A: Record the exercise, observed affect, and connection to treatment goals. For example:
Here's an example : “Client engaged in mandala drawing to enhance emotional regulation. Reported feeling calmer and more focused afterward.”
Avoid interpreting symbols; instead, document self-expression, insight, and progress toward coping skill development.
Q12. Are these activities suitable for groups?
A: Yes. Many art therapy exercises - such as collage making, vision board creation, or collaborative abstract painting - work well in group sessions. They promote social skills, empathy, and interpersonal relationships, while encouraging collective healing through the creative process.
