We need to color more like the Japanese.
I just found out that adult coloring is a thing now. I haven’t been this excited since I learned we can still be in spelling bees and take tap.
All this time, I thought my love of coloring was just me being childish. I don’t think I ever got over snapping Periwinkle in half while coloring Joseph’s coat of many colors, and I’ve been searching for that perfect shade of lilacish-blue ever since.
But now I’m to learn that coloring is OK for adults. Socially acceptable. Nothing to be embarrassed about. Therapeutic even.
I didn’t realize how much I loved coloring until my kids all graduated and stopped doing projects that I could help with. When my youngest went to college, I kept asking her if any of her college classes required posters, dioramas, illustrated poetry collections or illustrated anythings. As it turns out, social work majors live in a very black and white world.
That’s when I realized that I had been coloring since I picked up my first Magenta and I really hadn’t ever taken a break. I colored in school, I colored with my neighborhood friends, I talked my older sisters into coloring with me. My admiration and awe of my sister Reenie was solidified when she announced she was changing her coloring style from “light” – barely grazing the crayon across Barbie’s prom gown – to “dark” – making all 64 colors in the big box stand out like mod 1960s wallpaper.
Then I became a parent and colored with my own kids. When I was a new stay-at-home mom, my 5-year-old and I sat at the kitchen table and I drew big, fat, empty letters that spelled out words. He and I would color them in with crayons.
So what’s a grown woman supposed to do with a basket full of markers, Crayolas and colored pencils, but no valid excuse to use them? You look for an excuse, of course.
Thus, I found this article on Huffington Post that quotes a real psychologist saying this:
“(Coloring) generates wellness, quietness and also stimulates brain areas related to motor skills, the senses and creativity.”
I suspect psychology majors didn’t have much use for color, either, and somebody’s mother had quite an influence.
Thank goodness someone else read the same philosophy and started producing adult coloring books and coloring pages you can print off the Internet. You can color a stage full of strippers, recreational drug use, or your favorite scenes from Breaking Bad. Or you can color this:
or this:
There are more. Lots more. But I’m not sure they’d interest you. I’m passing on them, because they require too much Flesh and I’m low on that color.
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Read more of Diane’s Just Humor Me columns here. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter to get new blog post notifications. And if you like her blog, you’ll love her book, Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.
