5 Free Online Soothing Art Therapy Apps for Mental Peace and Stress Relief
Creating art or participating in an art exercise can help combat feeling overwhelmed or stressed. Try out some art therapy with these free apps and sites to find peace of mind.
While studies have found that making art can help reduce stress levels, it's not a substitute for medical advice from mental health professionals. However, art therapy can be soothing and relaxing nonetheless, when done in conjunction with other standard mental health practices. Think of it like meditation, a way to center yourself and find some peace.
1. Dot to Dot (Android, iOS): Connect the Dots Game for Relaxing Art
One of the first types of artwork we learn as children is through Connect-The-Dots. It looks like a series of numbers on a blank piece of paper, but when you draw lines between them, a picture emerges. Who would have thought the exercise would end up being therapeutic art once we grow older?
Dot to Dot is a wonderful virtual recreation of the classic exercise. Choose from multiple puzzles in any of the various free categories like animals, fashion, florals, nature, places, sport, vehicles, etc. The dots go from around 200 to over 600, depending on the complexity of the image.
Actually connecting the dots is simply about tapping the next point in the series. You can zoom in and out and scroll through the image like Google Maps. Dot to Dot saves your progress in case you want to abort and return to a piece later. Completed pieces transform into full artworks, and are saved to revisit.
Download: Dot to Dot for Android | iOS (Free)
2. Polygon and Unicorn Color by Number (Android, iOS): Peaceful Paint by Numbers Games
After connect-the-dots, one graduates to painting by numbers. This is an old exercise where a drawing is filled with smaller sections of different colors, and you have to fill those. There are two apps to recreate this in a fun way.
Polygon uses a low-poly art style for a paint-by-numbers game. Select one of the many free designs in the library to open it up, and then tap every section in the picture to fill it up. It's a calming, repetitive process. Polygon also offers a free new drawing everyday, so you'll never run out of art pieces. You can also share finished pieces with friends.
Unicorn Color by Number adopts an 8-bit pixel-art style, making it appealing to retro gamers. Again, select an image, and tap the appropriate boxes in the grid to start coloring the picture. As with Polygon, Unicorn will save any progress in an image so you can come back to it later. Unicorn uniquely lets you take a selfie and color that too.
Download: Polygon for Android | iOS
Download: Unicorn Color by Number for Android | iOS
3. Color Mandala (Web): Paint Mandalas Online With Unique Brushes
Mandala books are the hottest recent trend in art therapy. A mandala is a spiritual or ritual symbol of repetitive geometric shapes and patterns meant to mimic a sense of the universe. It's a meditative practice that many swear by.
Color Mandala is a free web app to practice painting mandalas online. You can register to save your progress, but the site works perfectly fine without sign-ups. It prompts you to select a mandala and then start filling in the colors.
The "brush" is unique in Color Mandala, as you can pick how many times the cursor will repeat in the repetitive patterns. You can see the positions live, and click to fill the color in that space. It's a lovely experience and one that needs a mouse or trackpad; Color Mandala doesn't work well on touchscreens.
You can also create your own mandalas on the website. It's a complicated process and there are better apps for this, so you might want to look elsewhere.
Color Mandala gives you the option to print any mandala if you'd prefer to do this exercise on physical paper with real colors. Of course, you can also buy a Mandala coloring book online or download free Mandala printable pages.
4. Staedtler's Mandala Creator (Web): Make Your Own Mandala for Calmness
Stationery giant Staedtler's tools are used so often for mandalas that the company developed the best web app to create your own custom mandala design. It's remarkably easy to use, and somehow creating the mandala is as soothing a process as filling it with colors.
The app gives you six layers to create your mandala. In each layer, you must first choose a pattern from an extensive library of shapes made by Staedtler or other users. Then, pick how many times the pattern will repeat, its size on the blank paper, and how you want to rotate the item.
Once the pattern is set, go to the layer settings to pick where on the paper it would appear, by adjusting size and rotation on a different plane. Do this with up to all six layers and finish your mandala. You can then download it as a PDF to print or fill in any photo editor app of your choice.
Staedtler's mandala creator isn't the only one out there. If you prefer to go freeform, check out Mandala Gaba. This free web app divides the canvas into multiple mirrors, so that any design in one is replicated in the others. It'll require a steady hand when you aren't using the Line tool, but it's kind of cool to put your own imagination into a mandala.
5. This Is Sand and Silk (Web, Mobile): Classic Interactive Art Apps for Relaxation
Two of the oldest interactive art apps online are known for helping people relax. This Is Sand and Weave Silk have since evolved into fantastic mobile apps as well.
This Is Sand lets you drop colorful sand from your cursor on desktops or by holding your finger on a touchscreen. The soothing sound and motion is cool enough already, but you can also turn it into art. Use different colors and the laws of physics to fill layers of colors in sand.
Silk (or Weave Silk) is a gorgeous app to create artworks with a click or a tap. It looks like glowing strands of silk, linking and overlapping. You can choose to mirror what you do on one side, leading to funky figures and imaginative art. The official version of Silk only supports a web app and an iOS app, but Android users can use Silk Art for the same experience.
Download: This Is Sand for Android | iOS (Free)
Download: Silk for iOS (Free)
Download: Silk Art Portrait and Landscape for Android (Free)
Art Can Be Relaxing Even Without Doing Anything
Try all of the art therapy practices mentioned in this article. You never know which one will work the best for you, and you can even switch between them depending on your mood. For example, creating your own mandala might be better as a distraction, while mindlessly filling colors by number could help slow down an overworked mind.
In fact, art therapy can go beyond actually creating something. Art can have an innate effect on us once we find something to connect with. Maybe you should try visiting virtual museums. And millions of people found it soothing to watch Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting, which you can view on YouTube in full. It's really up to you.
source https://www.makeuseof.com/free-online-soothing-art-therapy-apps-for-mental-peace-stress-relief/
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