Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Another Cat Painting and a Defense of Coloring Books

Here is another new old painting! It's probably four months old.

This is one I did when I first got my watercolor crayons and colored pencils. I was experimenting with the new media.

I have a couple of different techniques and styles of painting. This is one of my standard ones. I draw an outline with pencil, then color it in. Then I add details.

I have not thought about this for a long time, but when I was a child I used to really like coloring books, crayons and watercolors. I liked having outlines and coloring them in and experimenting with different color combinations. I think doing that a lot helped me as an artist.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I also had those paint by water books - where you would have a picture that was colored in by all these dots, and when you applied water with a brush it would turn into watercolor paint. I loved these!

I have heard from a couple of places that coloring books are bad for children and they stifle creativity. I don't think that's true - for me they helped me learn the use of color and how to use a brush. I learned how to stay in the lines! You don't have to always stay in the lines but it's good to be able to do it when you want to. They taught me the skills I needed to do my own art.


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