Colouring books for adults were a find for me. A way to keep on playing with colours and pencils. I always loved drawing. I just wasn’t very good at it. Still, it kept my mind steady while listening to long lectures and talking on the phone.
My skill didn’t improve much but a certain style started to emerge from my simple drawings a child could do better.
No matter the obstacles, if you keep at something things tend to form in some order, at least they did for me. That’s how I started painting and eventually even composing my own Colouring Books.
It seemed to me that my particular style of drawing might be reassuring and encouraging for us regular folks who aren’t gifted with great drawing skills.
Time went on and I discovered the root of my drawing limitations. It turned out I was left-handed the whole time but made to do things with my right hand. That caused many delays and restrictions in my expression.
Although I train my left hand to draw, write and paint, the end result is still far from perfect from the sheer lack of early training but we won’t let that kind of small obstacle discourage us.
My drawing is still better when I do it with the right hand since that one has more experience in handling pencils. Colouring is much better done with the left hand.
No matter the hardships and lacking skill set playing with colours brings me such joy that I feel others should be allowed to feel such joy too without the pressure of perfection. What better way to do that than to reach out for one of my imperfect creations and add your own beside it? Comparison won’t do harm to your confidence.
Hopefully, the lack of uniformity and precise lines won’t annoy you too much.
Surviving Lines
In Surviving Lines there are some drawings I’m truly satisfied with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the kind of person to be satisfied with any line put on the paper but some of these lines turned out just right.
Here, you’ll find that there are three pages with drawings on one page with words of wisdom that came out of my pen.
The type of paper used here is a bit thinner, I experimented a bit to reduce the price. Hopefully, that won’t take away from the experience of colouring. The downside is thickness. The upside is grain, the paper is rougher and less shiny. If you use crayons and dry pencils, it should be alright.
All text is unique to each of the books as are drawings.
Broken Patterns
Colouring Patterns are a bit lacking in filling. It’s what I consider Unfinished Scrolls. The patterns are set in it’s up to you to fill them in further or to colour them like it is.
Any pattern is finished when we stop working on it. That’s the beauty of patterns, they can be repeated ad infinity, or they can be a string of three repeating rows.
Each of them is fun in its own merit.
Some drawings are more finished, some less. Sometimes if find those that are just a few lines to be satisfying enough to leave them as they are and those that are complex and lacking in details.
In this installation, there is one page with words on two pages of drawings.
Words, of course, are also my own original creation, any likeness to someone else’s words is coincidental.
Inner Maze
The first one made in the row of Colouring Books and those like it. Since it is the first book I made, drawings are made with a bit less confidence than later installation but that too can have its charm so I decided to leave it as it is, a testament to the progress made on the journey of drawing.
Here you’ll find one page filled with words on one page with a drawing that waits to be coloured in. Both words and drawings are there to be coloured.
As a bonus, there are empty pages left for your own device. If you wish, they can remain empty but can also be filled with anything and everything. From notes to your own style Colouring Book.
I know I filled my copy to the brim and am quite satisfied with how it turned out.
Note that the type of paper is the thickest that Amazon KDP has to offer. On the bright side, after months of handling my copy, it didn’t fall apart (a problem that plagues many colouring books).
Stained Glass
What is different in this book, besides the font of the title that should urge you to pay closer attention, is that this isn’t a colouring book, it’s a Coloured Book. That means that I offered you here an outlook on how I colour some drawings from previous books.
(And, naturally, to brag a bit about my rapidly improving ability to colour evenly and stay within lines. A task that was quite impossible before I switched hands.)
There is one page with words on every four coloured pages. The pages were painted with watercolours.
As a bonus, I left you half of the book empty with only neat frames to place in them your own version of art.
After all, art is for everyone and all of us are born artists. Don’t let the world convince you otherwise.
The judgement of the universal quality of art is a completely another topic we won’t meddle in.
Abstract Curves
Roll your pen on the paper without fear and with determination. When you’re done, retrace those lines and then move away to see does anything coherent come to mind.
If not, do it again just to relax your mind while you’re thinking of something unrelated.
To do something low pressure and with no expectation might be rejuvenating in ways you’d never considered.
Ugly Faces
Our mind sees faces even in uneven surfaces of walls, tiles, and shadows. It’s a natural inclination of the mind.
To draw faces might be intimidating if we’re aiming for photo-realism, or ethereal beauty of symmetry but if we’re just there to capture fleeting fascination with variations of human expressions and features it’s easy, draw two eyes, a line for a nose, another for mouth and round it up.
If we draw it enough times, maybe it starts to resemble something like a human being.
Side Stories
Those drawings that don’t belong yet they seem to be telling a story that is almost within grasp.
Doodling and sketching isn’t a value in itself but sometimes is a necessary prelude to anything interesting.
Don’t be afraid to do something nonsensical. Some of the best ideas are born out of something we throw into the bin disposing it as irrelavant.
Watercolour World
All painted in, when your drawings are don and turned into paintings, there’s not much to do with them but to stare and admire.
Sure, if they are good-looking enough, you can dispose of them by selling, or, if they are so ugly to dishearten you, by tearing and throwing into the bin.
Some you might put in a frame and hang on the wall while others will lay in your drawer waiting for the judgement day which will decide are they for the bin, or for showcasing.
These coloured in books are the mid-path where they are displayed but hidden within a book and will be seen and judged only if picked up and opened.
Till the next chapter.
Enjoy.
To Do Bad Art seems contradictory in itself but to get to anything good a lot of things need to be tried out and discarded as not-worthy. Still, nothing that is thrown out is truly wasted. It’s a foundation for anything you might do in the future.
Remember, what we learn once is easier to re-learn than those things we never encountered before.
Doodle and you won’t do a master piece, but it might give you ideas in areas you wouldn’t expect to be influenced by a little time you invested in producing something of no value in itself.
Studying the world seems like a serious endavour. To pack some of those reflections in a form of a colouring book of letters might seem frivolous and contra-intuitive but some thoughts are too short to become books, too out there to be expanded on but just intriguing enough to let others ponder them as well.
Here you’ll find letters in various fonts to colour in. You may or may not choose to engage with words that they are shaping.
In the beginning, I just noticed how relaxing it is to colour letters in my colouring books. Naturally, I thought how some might like it as much as I do so I went to compose a colouring book populated only with letters. When at it, it was only natural for those letters to make some sense.
What came out was a bit of a surprise but a nice one so I decided to produce more of the same in various fonts.
For those like me, inclined to letters and pondering various topics, this will be a series of random thought experiments for colouring and, if you feel inclined to do so, pondering.
Enjoy at least half as I did creating it and you’ll have a blast. Cheers!
Limiting Capitalism
The book is filled to the brim with letters. Naturally, for me, those letters composed themselves into a sensible pattern of meaning. I do apologize for the heaviness of the subject; I found it fun to combine with various fonts of letters.
The series is called Sociology Fairy-Tales so to start with abstraction and creation of dots, go over lines to patterns which are then to mazes, it’s only natural to end up in the most complicated cultural pattern there is, capitalism.
I do hope you’ve enjoyed the journey enough to try something more.
Babylonian Language
More letters to colour in and more thoughts to consider. The creation of society is a myth worth of approaching from different angles.
After all those words leave you, what stays is hopefully a refreshed mind-set ready to conquer the world and make it a place you feel comfortable inhabiting.
As we exit the realm of potent words we enter the blank page. For those who don’t wish my intrusive art and thoughts into their lives, here is a book of the same format but completely void ready to take on whatever your mind might produce and mark for future to hold.
The dread of the empty paper is left for the end, although it might be placed at the beginning as well.
My logic is that some of us need to be encouraged to face off against the blank page.
After being encouraged by my efforts to entertain and, hopefully, trained to a certain way of perceiving patterns, you can make a colouring book of your own design.
Of course, you can make anything else with it.
That is the point of the blank page, the freedom of it enticed imagination but also it freezes the mind from time to time.
Frames placed upon pages might offer some guidance of where to put your pen but if you object to them, there are those pages that are left completely empty.
I wish you luck on your arduous journey through the wilderness of emptiness.