Forget colouring pages

Do all grown-ups want to colour something once in a while?

Probably not. But I know there are some who do. And I’m one of them.

I bet someone somewhere did a study exploring multiple benefits that colouring can bestow on a grown-up brain. I’m sure it explains it all – how colouring stimulates the right side of the brain, how it gets you more creative, how it heals you with the very essence of colour itself (chromotherapy is the word)… I’m sure it has all been done and I would love to provide you with the link. Only I don’t have the slightest idea who, where and when did this study, so if you are really interested, you will have to do your own digging.

Or has it only been done for children?

Anyway, if you are an adult and suddenly you feel like colouring something – it’s ok. You’re running a risk of your family looking strangely at you, but hey, if they love you, they will let you colour in peace.

Sales assistants in bookshops can always be told it’s for your nephew.

Or, if you have enough guts, you can say – grown-up, colouring and proud. Why the hell not.

Photo source

Once you’ve made the decision to start colouring, the world is your oyster. But you still need to get some supplies.

You need something to colour (and here’s where I encountered problems – I’ll explain later on).

You need something to colour with.

Markets are bursting with all sorts of colouring devices. Crayons. Coloured pencils. Gel pens. Felt tip pens. Even acrylic paints, if you’re feeling ambitious. I could spend hours in craft supply shops just making my choice.

On this particular adventure, I ended up with a box of coloured pencils. When I was a child, I had this big (I mean BIG) plastic box full of coloured pencils from various sets and of various lengths that I inherited from my grown-up sisters and loved dearly. There must have been thousands pencils in there, although some were no longer than an inch.

I’m still some 976 pencils short of a thousand, but I’m getting there!

Photo source

You’ve got the pencils, great. Now you need to get the colouring book. Or a page.

Here’s where I encountered problems.

Call me a picky bastard, but I noticed that most of the colouring books available on the market are so UGLY!

I searched and searched through Amazon in hope of digging out something visually nice but no joy. Well, I’m not telling the whole truth here, there were decent enough books – but all waaay outside my price range. I can’t spend thirty bucks to doodle.

I would print a free pattern off the Web, but most of those are no better than the books and anyway my printer refused to cooperate just now. I swear, it has mind of its own!

A quick tour of local bookshops almost brought me to tears. Here’s me, my fragile inner child nearly outside my skin, and all I can find are some monstrosities with more black ink than empty space or plastic Disney princesses. Fighting with terrible traffic jams and crowded shopping centres are trying in the best of times, and my disappointment was overwhelming. No colouring book for this child.

Imagine me, sad as hell, sitting in my car on the way home. A sorry sight, believe me.

Then I thought – hey, I still have those funky pencils, right? I’m totally no good at drawing, but I can at least examine them…

I grapped a scrap of paper and started doodling. I doodled on the way home. I doodled back in my room. I doodled for two days straight and simply couldn’t get enough of it. Who the hell needs the black contour to fill in if you have your imagination to play with?

I just made a colour stain on paper. Then another. And one more. Suddenly I started seeing some shapes in those colour swirls and two minutes later I was already designing some logos for my Tiggered empire. See how you like them?

Image by Tiggered

It didn’t take me long to declare – how lucky I was not to find the colouring book to my liking!

If I did, I would just copy blindly somebody else’s work instead of creating something totally mine. Plus, I can use whatever I draw. Even if it’s a few colour stains. I actually spent nearly a full day just covering a page with colourful blobs (looks like I was seriously starved off colours) and you wouldn’t believe how much fun it was.

I know it’s not art or anything as fancy – so what? Who says I have to be a second Picasso? Or another Frida Kahlo? I played with coloured pencils and the least I got was some graphics to cheer up this page.

The whole point of this article is to tell you that you can do exactly the same!

As simple as that.

Grab a note pad and a few coloured pencils and start putting colour stains onto the paper. You never know what you may end up with. In the worst case scenario you will end up with something that resembles completely nothing, but at least is very colourful :)

PS. If you are an artist proper, please disregard this page. It’s addressed to a very specific group of people – to all those who swear they can’t draw. I’ve made it my mission to prove that they are wrong.
And even if they aren’t, they can still have fun playing with crayons.

Image by Tiggered