Bad Portraits: Your Monthly Reflections Guide

Celebrating Our Quirks and Flaws in a New Form

We’ve spent a lot of time this month talking about perfectionism and its perils.

So, our monthly reflection guide will take it one step further to add some fun, humor and drawing to really lighten up your perspective on perfection versus imperfection.

In this drawing exercise, we'll craft unique portraits of ourselves that represent our individual quirks and flaws.

It doesn't require any special materials beyond paper and your favorite drawing tools:

1. Drawing paper or sketchbook.

2. Your favorite drawing tools (pencils, colored pencils, markers, or whatever you prefer).

3. A quiet and comfortable workspace.

You also don’t need to be good at drawing. These are BAD portraits!

The worse they are the more enjoyable they will become. There’s no right or wrong here. There’s no perfect way to do this. Try things out with no editing or judgement.

Later, when you look at your bad portrait, you may laugh, but you won’t take your flaws so seriously. Bad portraits make you appreciate your bad self.

And we know your bad self is where it’s at, after all our work together to combat perfectionism this month.

Get to it!

1. Set the Mood: Find a quiet and comfortable space where you can let your creativity flow. Play some fun music, take a moment to dance or stretch, light a candle, or set the ambiance in some other way that inspires joy, free thought, and relaxation.

2. Imperfection Exploration: Take a few moments to reflect on the quirks, traits, and unique aspects of yourself that you might not always celebrate. Consider your idiosyncrasies, habits, or traits that make you wonderfully human.

   1. Did any of our journaling exercises from this month bring new threads to light for you? Perhaps last week’s exercise in finding joy in our imperfections turned up some useful traits. Or our earlier exercise in showing up authentically?

   2. Choose some key traits you’d like to draw: traits you’ve often seen as flaws or imperfections.

   3. Think about ways to depict these traits. Maybe it’s drawing the action involved in a behavioral quirk or a habit. Maybe it’s exaggerating a physical feature. Maybe it’s thinking only in color and shape. There are no rules.