ADULT COLOURING
Never in my wildest dreams would it ever have entered my head to spend a single bit of my adult hood colouring...But they are so very good at marketing these colouring books for adults...they make you want to stop and skim through all of the beautiful images they want you to colour. You can buy colouring books of all different sizes and prices, and now they have monthly colouring magazines, I have seen them at my work, and on the shelves of every where else I go!
I wonder if the person who even thought of bringing back colouring for adults is even making any money out there for all of the books being designed and sold at not just Michaels Craft Stores, but there are other stores like DeSerras Art Stores, and not to mention all of the scrap book stores that might sell them online or have classes to teach colouring, even all of the different art stores in the USA...and not just art stores, what about Art Designers alike and selling their creations on their own websites, or even on Etsy or other sites like it?
I have to admit though, I had taken some rubber stamping classes with my Mentor, back when I first got involved in making ATCs...(Artist Trading Cards...if you don't know that acronym by now and your an Artist, learn it...lol) I am now celebrating 7 years of being creative. Anyway. She is a Art Designer/Teacher who originally taught me how to use Copics. I LOVED the classes and acquired enough of these amazing pens to get me by for a while. I took a class with her whenever I could but she taught more than Copics, she also taught multi media altering ATCs, like embossing, etc.
Last Christmas when my parents were up, we went to the local Walmart store in Huntsville for some shopping and my Mom and I actually sat and coloured together. That was weird, I tell you. I coloured a few but never really got into it, and never really finished any pages. It took me a while to decide that I really enjoy colouring, i bought a few books and a couple of magazines and even got a christmassy one from Abby, (my spouse) However it was never these particular books that mage me get interested in colouring, it was a new Sister in Art friend, Karen Lukens who got me into colouring. Her pages just make me smile, and I am sure that when I was a little girl and colouring there were absolutely NO colouring pages even close to Karen's wonderful work. It was actually one of her pages that she very generously forwarded to me. And it was a very Whimsical type of drawing. In fact, here she is.....Steampunk Girl, I am very proud of this one because its the very first official page I have ever finished colouring in its full entirety! She is who got me to get serious about colouring.
I met Karen in an ATC Trading group, and we have actually traded ATCs, I am proud to say that I even have a couple of her originals on an ATC! I am also very proud to say that she has been officially a member of my extended sister in art family! She has since changed her focus and has been spending her time putting together her own Adult Colouring Book to sell. Thank you Karen for the amazing inspiration!!!
My friend Nat who is an amazingly talented artist, and I call her my art mentor; asked me to check out her post over at High Hopes Stamps. They currently have a colouring contest going on, so I thought I would put in an entry or two. Here is the first one I coloured, this one is using good old fashioned wax crayons, I think they are slightly different, well maybe more than slightly from when I was a kid. They not only seem to have a different feel in the hand but the wax even feels quite weird on the paper. Go ahead, try it, and tell me I am not imagining this. Anyway, it was fun to try this again which was actually the very first time I picked up a crayon to use it for what it was initially intended to be used for.
This was actually the last one I coloured out of 7...as you can see I grew a bit tired after while so I got so that I couldn't just go one way. The green in the top I used was quite a smooth crayon.the rest of them were ok, but the purple background was very difficult to manoeuvre on the page because it was kind of sticky or something....it just didn't seem to have the same texture throughout. I think with crayons, its wise to use crayons all from the same box, as opposed to having them all mixed up. I am going to have to try using crayons again on something a bit bigger and see what happens.
This one here, I used a plethora of pencil crayons. Again, they were all mixed up and just in a bundle in my basket. There were some erasable pencil crayons, and some old old pencil crayons that never got al used up or thrown out. These were all a lot smoother than using a crayon, or even a cheap marker.
For this one, I used a mix of Gellie Roll Pens and gel pens and metallic pens. This one doesn't look too bad, but again, many of my collection of these are drying up. I am going to have to see if there is a trick to get them working again because some of them have stopped and are not fully empty.
I have purchased a set of Bic pens, and I LOVE LOVE LOVE them as much as I love my copics. They are fine, but they are awesome on the page and in your fingers to hold. It does take a while to fill in each of the spaces but they cheap and they are quite a step up from using the crayola or dollar store markers.
Now for my final and most favourite colouring tools the Copics. If you a colourist at heart, and have never ever even held a copic in your hands, this is a must add to your bucket list. Sure these markers are expensive but if your taught how to use them properly they will last you forever. I absolutely LOVE how you can blend blend blend these colours together, they are alcohol based and if used correctly they will not bleed...unless you want them to.
Many thanks to my mentor Nat, and Karen Lukens for giving my creativity a boost. I look forward to many more hours of colouring in the future.....
cheers to all and thank you for reading.
All of the above mentioned are strictly my thoughts, and experience on the topic. If anything has been considered a copyright breech, it was certainly not intended...
Dar Bassie-Cripps.
