I was given pencils, pens, paints, scissors, tape and paper to create my world as a kid. Cartoons never spoke reality to me because the best cartoons to watch were all colors and nonscene. My parents gave me the choice what to watch on TV, just as long as I don't repeat anything inappropriate. "Blue's Clues" must've been the first show where it became so clear to me that cartoons were all rooted from playful ideas drawn onto paper. Having everything drawn from school to be hanged on the kitchen fridge has always been an achievement for me. Granted, I had to take kindergarten twice. It was because I needed to achieve more verbal since more of my artistic skills were non-verbal. As a kid growing up with a learning disability, drawing privately and following through art projects in school has always calmed me down and helped me to worry less about making mistakes.

Art therapy has the ability of emotional expression through non-verbal communication. It allows clients the choice of media to resolve relationship conflicts, manage behavior, reduce stress, increases self-esteem and insight into finding the right words to say to an art educator or a psychotherapist. Once that the thoughts and feelings are revealed through the visual imagery, they surprisingly provide the benefits for many settings of treatment. They include clients in rehabilitation facilities, wellness centers, correctional institutions, and schools.

I recruited myself as a subject for effectiveness by booking two one-hour sessions with certified art therapist Narae "Young" Kim. She currently teaches in the Art Therapy graduate program in the University of Wisconsin- Superior while offering individual sessions on campus, local elementary schools and hospitals. Her office has a wall of past artwork as her own reflections of emotion. Young used many inexpensive materials: Magazine collages, watercolors, acrylic paints, markers, color pencils, clay modeling and oil pastels. As I looked into Young's own artwork, her color usage must serve a great element in therapy. According to Carey Jolliffe Graphic Arts, Pantone Matching System is the usage of colors to products or any materials of sale to attract more people when associating the perception of color into setting moods. Many colors may serve to invoke someone's physiological reactions. For instance, Young painted a vibrant orange ring circling around an apple and an open book to represent a glowing energy around a favorite snack and activity. She also painted a hand wearing many rings with the skin having an amber color which was so ideal to represent jewelry and multicultural.

Young invited me to the first session by drawing on a white sheet of paper with a mechanical pencil. She asked me to follow the House-Tree-Person technique. The three main objects of the technique focus on the drawing as a combination of the person's unconscious and subconscious parts of self. It helps the therapist to show how the client sees themselves in the world depending on either past or present experiences. My drawing had a scene of a boy leaning onto a tree across the street from his house. I made that boy as myself as a teenager thinking through things away from the house. Young had the assumption of me having oppressed feelings of the past. I made the boy as a lonely subject centered on the page, distancing away from the house representing my homesickness and tree's many branches representing achieving many future goals. Another drawing followed that scene when I tried drawing my father at work as a welder. It helped me explain how times use to be more stressful between living separate homes of divorced parents, and the scene could be about me needing time for myself to think after a fight with one of my parents. The details of my drawing could interpret so much more than they could be discussed within an hour.

Things got more colorful in my second session with Young. She instructed me to make a collage about a sad experience out of a few images cut out of magazines. I scanned a couple of pages from some cooking and lifestyle magazines until I cut out four pictures with a pair of scissors. I glued them onto a white piece of construction paper. Then, I utilized with watercolor paints and crayons to fill in the whole page into a nature scene. It led towards me making another piece of just watercolors and crayons because the collage reminded me of my last fun experience with an old childhood friend before losing touch with him as we got older. It also led up to me having poison ivy rash for the rest of that summer.

My second piece of artwork with the watercolor paints and colors was made into my bicycle sitting next to a poison ivy bush. It became more challenging to make as many shades of red leaves to resemble poison ivy. The shades of red reflect so well in a range of feelings from what makes it whether being refining, earthy, warm and dramatic. I found closure from that humiliating summer of getting a rash from that poison ivy by making something so beautiful. As long as my rash is all gone, that bush can be acknowledged with a little distance and a little paint.

Is art therapy effective? Trying out some painting sessions with yourself or making an appointment with an art therapist would be the first step into finding that out. It's an enjoyable activity to chose as a coping skill for daily stress. Working with any color that speaks to you may put the mind at ease.