Let’s be honest: telling your story through art sounds great… until you sit in front of a blank canvas and start spiraling.
“What’s my story, really?”
“How am I supposed to paint my trauma??”
“Why did I even buy this entire set of oil pastels??”
Before you abandon the whole idea and binge a show instead, hear us out.
Art doesn’t have to be this grand, dramatic retelling of your life. Sometimes the quietest, strangest, or silliest things say the most. So here are five not-so-obvious, low-pressure and actually fun ways to tell your story through art; even if you don’t consider yourself “an artist.”
1. Tell the Story of Your Hands
This sounds weird, but stick with us. Think about everything your hands have touched – People, places, bags of chin-chin, heartbreaks, love notes, steering wheels, glasses of cocktails.
Try this: Trace your hands. Fill the outlines with tiny images, words, textures, or even random objects that represent moments in your life. Could be your mom’s perfume, your first heartbreak, or the jollof that changed your life in 2017.
Your hands have been through things. Let them tell the story.
2. Make a Messy Map (That Doesn’t Lead Anywhere Logical)
Draw a map, but not of a real place. Create a landscape of your feelings or memories. “The Land of Things I Pretend Don’t Bother Me.” “Mount Overthinking.” “River of Exes I Still Think About at 2 a.m.”
Add strange roads, dead ends, pit stops, shortcuts. No rules. No directions.
It’s a map only you will understand, which kind of makes it even more powerful.
3. Use Colour Like a Mood Ring
Ever thought of assigning colours to seasons of your life? Not the weather kind, like life seasons. That friendship that ended without closure? Maybe it’s murky green. The week you thought you were in love but it was just boredom? Bright red. That season of healing where you started dancing in your living room again? Soft yellow.
Create an abstract piece using those colours. People will see “pretty art.” You’ll know it’s your emotional timeline.
4. Paint the Stuff You’ve Left Behind
Draw your old phone. The one you lost in 2019 that had all those cringey voice notes. Sketch your childhood bedsheet pattern, or the slippers that never survived NYSC camp.
They seem random, but these objects carry so much of who you used to be. Sometimes telling your story isn’t about capturing the big moments, it’s about honouring the small, forgotten ones.
5. Let Your Future Self Direct an Artwork
Imagine Future You, the person you’re becoming. Confident, unbothered, weird in a good way. Ask: “If my future self created a piece of art right now, what would it look like?”
Then create that.
Use colours you don’t normally pick. Try a style you’ve never attempted. Don’t plan it, just channel it. It might be awkward or chaotic. But so is growth, right?
Final Thoughts:
The truth? Most of us are just trying to make sense of our own lives… one weird doodle, broken crayon, or overly ambitious art project at a time.
You don’t need your work to “mean something deep” to anyone else. If it reminds you of who you are, where you’ve been, or who you’re becoming, that’s enough. Maybe even more than enough.
So forget perfection. Forget trying to impress. Just start. Let your art hold the parts of you that don’t quite fit in words yet.
And if all you end up with is a strangely emotional collage of buttons, receipts and orange paint… you’re welcome. You’re doing it right.
