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Gather together all the drawing materials that happen to be in your home:
crayons, pencils, magic markers, paints. Lay them out in front of you. If you have no colors, use pen and/or pencil, and try this again after you've bought some colored pencils or crayons. Take two sheets of blank paper.
On the first sheet, allow your dominant hand to choose any color or colors and then draw
in succession a circle, crescent, triangle, square, heart, cross, star, stick figure, stick plant or tree, stick animal, reptile, fish, insect or any other image you like.
Notice how your body feels as you do this. Is it tense? Relaxed? Excited?
Notice any emotions that come up.  Now, let your hand doodle freely as you might when you talk on the telephone or are in a boring meeting. Turn the page in various directions and examine the doodlings from each of those angles. If you see the beginnings of any recognizable image, outline it to bring out the image further. Again, notice how your body feels.
Was this easy or difficult for you?
Now draw the same images and then doodle on a new piece of paper, this time using your non-dominant hand. Use the same or different colors. Notice how this experience differs with your non-dominant hand.
How does your body feel?
What, if any, emotions come up?
Notice how this experience parallels a universal and profound play experience, like the very first time you as a child took up a pencil or crayon to draw.  Do you remember?
How has that first childhood experience affected you today?
Notice if this was easy or hard.  Were you stretching your ability to play?
Notice what colors you were drawn to, repelled by and how they made you feel. Notice which color you choose for each symbol and image. Notice how you felt when you drew each basic shape and image, this universal nonverbal alphabet. Did you like some better than others? Did you feel a desire to put anything inside the circle?
In this exercise know it or not, you just tapped into a universal nonverbal alphabet, the world of archetypes and collective unconscious. When you drew the stick figure symbol, did yours have any distinguishing characteristics? Did it seem more like an imp, or an angel, old woman or devil? Which animal did you think of for your stick animal? Did you notice differences in using your dominant hand and non-dominant hands? More spontaneous? More resistant, uncomfortable, less assured? Each hand roughly corresponds to a different side of your brain. Non dominant corresponds to the more emotional and intuitive side. the dominant hand to the more intellectual and logical. Being creative requires both sides of the brain and thus balances the brain for all tasks of life.
As you can see from this brief and simple exercise, there are many ways your body and brain, the intuitive genetic animal in you will be involved and affected in the Source Painting Journey. Notice what, if anything has been awakened and shifted within you.

Power of Image and Collective Unconscious

There are many reasons known and unknown, as to why doing the above exercises can be a deeply moving and compelling experience. When you draw this way, you deal with a primary language of the psyche and Source image. Jung once stated that psyche is image, and imagination (making images) is the primary activity of the psyche. Nothing exists that is not initially imagistic, and the power of the image cannot be undervalued. Scientific journals and popular magazines record numerous instances in which people have healed from serious diseases simply by focusing on images of healing. This imagistic world is neither literal nor abstract, yet it is entirely real, with it's own laws and intentions. Therefore, we appreciate the integrity and self-determination of the images in our dreams and paintings. The images in our Source paintings are at once literal and symbolic, and painting in this way is non-verbal, body-connected, and unpredictable. It connects us to the primal energy and creativity, and affects us profoundly. For these reasons, it is also a powerful and speedy process of personal transformation.

In my Painting from the Source workshops, many symbol themes such as circles, crosses, crescents and stars as well as animals, primitive dark beings, angels, monoliths, and ancient-seeming landscapes appear frequently in drawing and paintings. Our souls bear residues of our pre-verbal, pre-logical existence, of images that predate language. Language and early writings (pictographs, hieroglyphs, etc.) evolved from these primordial images and pictures that have never left us and are embedded deep within each of our beings. Beneath each social personality and personal unconscious lies this array of images that is part of what Jung termed the collective unconscious. This common pool of imagistic symbols is the source of mankind's image-making poetic mind. The psyche spins out these collective images, along with our personal symbols, through our dreams and creative process.

Whenever we create we tap into this repository of collective universal energy along with our own individual variations, needs, personal themes, images, colors and experiences. Inhibiting this natural soul expression can make us sick. Allowing this expression can keep us well.

Check this site in coming months for additional exercises and essays.