Cool Coloring

We have not outgrown coloring books at our house. I find that there is much you can learn artistically by coloring. You can practice shading, using color throughout the picture, contrast, monochromatics, neatness, (small muscle motor development, stress reduction), etc.

My friend Ana, who also teaches art in our co-op (and has a Masters degree, I am proud to say) is a fan of coloring, too. Last year she taught several of the classes "advanced coloring" with Prismacolor colored pencils. These are blendable (by layering) colored pencils and so important to a quality finished product. You do need to look for them on sale (sometimes found on e-bay!) or get ready to take out a small loan to buy them! Some art/crafts stores do sell individual colors, so you can inexpensively replace much-used colors without buying a whole new batch. For older kids, they are worth the cost. Our oldest daughter colored right through high school and did some beautiful things.

My girls all love to color while we do our (semi)daily read-alouds of literature. Our favorite coloring books are Ruth Heller's Designs For Coloring. Right now we own Geometrics, Snowflakes and Cats. Heller also has picture books on grammar. The pictures at the top of this post have a photo of the Cats coloring book and three of the pictures that our Daughter L (13) colored.

Other coloring books that we love are the very reasonably priced Dover Coloring Books, Historical Archives series and Dover Stained Glass Coloring books. Markers used on the stained glass vellum paper makes them beautiful to hang in a window. Use care when coloring these-it takes the markers some time to dry and they smear easily. Artist Friend Ana says that you can layer markers while still wet on the stained glass book for shading. We have not had a chance to try this yet.

A new favorite coloring series is Perplexing Picture Mazes-Conceptis Puzzles by Sterling Publishers. sterlingpublishing.com/kids These mazes create a picture when you have finished the maze. This type of maze was invented in Japan over 20 years ago. We only have one book of this series, and would like to find more. We found ours at Barnes, but have not ever found them again anywhere, so you may have to order online. Our 13-year-old loves these. She enjoys the maze, then enjoys coloring the picture the maze makes. All of these resources (except maybe the Stained Glass books and markers) are also great for car time.