Hello There, and Welcome to Calm Lines.

I’m Carissa, an artist/illustrator in love with drawing, drinking tea, pottering in my garden and making films for Frankie Off Grid. Originally from beautiful North Wales, I now live in Central Portugal with my partner Iwan and a growing family of furry and feathered friends.

As an occasionally anxious human, with a predisposition to worrying, calm lines grew from my own attempts to find a calm space for my mind to settle. My main practice is drawing, especially patterns and line work, which I find, through its repetitive nature, often leads me to a calmer meditative state.

Calm Lines is a space to share these drawings. Firstly through the shop, where you can buy some of my drawings which I hope will act as small reminders to you to take some time to do whatever brings you calm.

But I would like to offer something more too, a way to share this practice, so that you yourself can find calm in drawing lines.

Secondly, I would like to offer the act of drawing as a practice you can do yourself to find calm. There is the growing pattern collective where I’m sharing all the patterns that I work with. The original idea is a coffee table book (one day!), but for now I have added them here so that you can utilise them as inspiration for drawing. Patterns are a really accessible way to get lines on paper, even if you think you “can’t draw”, they are very freeing as our minds are less likely to get caught up in thinking our drawings have to be perfect or to look like something realistic.

And if you’d like to learn to draw with me, then I am one of the co-founders of drawingXpressions, and you can find my classes (amongst other incredible art teachers) on our YouTube channel.

To keep up to date you can sign up to my substack where I (very) sporadically share any updates.

Wishing you many calm moments.

C.