Watch a video of Aletta during her appearance on KPSP Channel 2 as she talks about Drawing A Life That Matters. Click here!
If you would like us to conduct a workshop for you and a group of friends, please email to inquire.
Who: Any adult. No drawing experience past kindergarten required!
If you are an artist, allow your skills to take you into your future.
Cost: $65, all materials provided.
Create a picture of the life that you really want to live.
Internationally-known Art Business Coach, Aletta de Wal created her 2-hour groundbreaking class, Drawing a Life that Matters! in 1998. Hundreds of people have participated in this popular and enjoyable class in Toronto, Canada; Houston, Texas and Honolulu, HI.
Aletta will guide you through a series of drawing meditations. As you listen to brief instructions, you make marks on paper with watercolor pens. Silence the voices that say "no," and say "yes" to the things you want to create in your life.
No drawing experience past kindergarten required!
If you “can’t draw a straight line with a ruler” that is okay.
If you are an artist, relax and use your skills to compose a
picture of your future.
Create a picture of the life that you really want to live.
Aletta will guide you through a series of drawing meditations. As
you listen to brief instructions, you make marks on paper with
watercolor pens. Silence the voices that say "no" to your ideal
life. Say "yes" to the things you want to create in your life.
How this course came about:
My first memory of art was finger painting in grade 2. Coming from a pristine home where everything so neat you could eat off the floors, I found this a wonderful new experience. I had never liked having sticky hands but this was different – I loved the feel of my fingers moving the paint around on the special paper.
There were no rules.
Grade 3 introduced “assignments” to replicate objects. We began by recreating an image projected on the wall. Next, we used grid lines to reproduce an image we brought from home. (I brought a 3 Little Pigs comic.) I worked hard to get each curve exactly right. – or as close as possible without tracing it. It was satisfying but no longer fun.
Grade 4 art class killed my joy in making art for the next 30 years. I was happily drawing my favorite backyard tree – a Linden tree. The art teacher, Mrs. Ferguson, came along to check each student’s progress. It was the 50’s so imagine a buxom woman wearing a cotton print dress with matching cloth belt. The rollers had been carefully removed from her hair to preserve the “do” for a week. She asked me “What is that?” It was obvious to me if was the tree I loved. She grabbed the pencil from my hand and firmly told me that that was wrong ‘ “this is the way you draw a tree.”
After that, for many years, my only art was “paint by numbers” so I could be sure to get it right. I still loved the painting process, but I was following someone else’s idea of “right.”
In 1989, I discovered that some persistent health problems I had been having were from NSLE (Neuro Systemic Lupus
Eurythematosis). I had 2 strokes that left me without the ability to use my head to make my way in the world, and with mobility damage. It was a devastating time. Every waking moment I worked on regaining my health.
One day I was in the offices of NOW magazine waiting for a friend to drive me home after some medical treatments nearby.
On the board was an ad for a class called “Drawing for the Absolute Beginner” led by two very generous teachers Ose and Zeisha. That experience led to a series of classes with other women who had chronic or terminal illnesses. To make a long story short, drawing saved my life.
Fast forward to 1993 when I decided that art would become the core of my life’s activities. I created my own art, used art activities to teach executives about creativity and sold my art in alternative spaces and The Loft Gallery.
In 1995, I had registered for a class with Gigi Sage called ”The Maui Modeling Academy: aka Boot Camp for Babes” (At first, I was horrified by the title but it was a great course for women on leadership and presence.) I had a busy consulting practice helping others be their best but I was personally in need of restoration and rejuvenation. The preparation assignment was to create a 45- minute class on a topic we chose from a list provided by the course leader. I chose “The Art of Cooking.” Because I was an artist, and a gourmet cook and figured I could pull something together quickly.
Work demands left me no time to create the course until the flight – but I had 11 hours to come up with something. By good fortune, in the airport book store, I discovered a small paper back book about Zen practice. I read it several times on the flight, made notes and had the skeleton of the course ready.
All I needed to complete the design was some experience of the audience, so I could adjust the design to them. I expected a group of Americans and instead met a wonderful group of 13 German women with varying degrees of skill in English, one bilingual Swedish woman, and an American from Texas. The language skills prompted me to change the way I wanted to deliver the course – and turned out to be the magic element that has made the class so popular and successful. Instead of talking or writing about cooking an ideal life, I asked the women to draw a picture – the universal language. I also cut down the instructions to the fewest possible, making the experience more Zen.
During the class, I played Monroe Music, with sound patterns designed to have participants enter the Theta state, where they are most creative.
At the end of the class, I asked them to write a few notes on the back of their drawing to remind them of what it meant and how they felt while they were creating it.
Unlike art courses, there were no critiques at the end by other participants. That would have denied the validity of the drawing being by them and for them. Some of them did choose to talk about it and many were moved to tears of relief and joy by what they created.
The beauty of a drawing was that they could hang it even in a public place, like an office cubicle or the family refrigerator and only they would know what it meant.
I returned to Toronto and continued to deliver the class that way to over 300 people from all walks of life. I have also delivered the course in Houston and Honolulu. Most of them were not artists and came in saying they had no art skills. All of them left with drawings that moved them and me.
The most moving story was a woman who had a very challenging life and was ambivalent when she came into the class about whether this was a good thing for her to do, and if it would make any difference. She produced a drawing that included all the things she wanted but had been afraid to pursue. Weeks later she called me and said that she had made a copy of the drawing on her kitchen table so that she could start every day by looking at what she really wanted to create.