I've enjoyed coloring since I was a child. As an adult, it's taken on a different feel and purpose. When I scroll through my old blog, there are intermittent posts of completed coloring pages, filled in at night at the kitchen table, waiting for Baby N to wake up for a feeding or some comfort, until I could finally go to bed. Now, N is a tween who needs different things from me, and I find myself again at the kitchen table coloring.
canvas coloring board, Sept. 2018
I color to soothe my nerves and clear my head after a day at the office and the commuter traffic. I color because I enjoy the final product. But there's something else easing its way into my little hobby. I color to restore some of my own vibrancy. I'm re-membering my creativity.
Granted, filling in a pre-printed page with markers isn't a unique expression of self or anything. But it does offer some foundational elements for developing creativity. I mean both concrete things like choosing colors, establishing patterns, practicing technique with a tool, and intangibles like getting into the “zone,” perceiving something familiar from a different perspective, and engaging imagination and ideation parts of the brain. I’ve missed these parts of myself during these seasons of personal drought.
Coloring again feels to me like planting and tending my creativity. Coaxing it out of dormancy. Bringing it up into my life.
June Moon Visionary Art free online coloring book
Dover Publications offers a diverse array of coloring books
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