March Colouring In

Almost at the end of March and I’ve not done much colouring in this month – but yesterday the mood took me so I sat and completed this one, done in coloured pencil 🙂

Escapist Coloring Club

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Mermaids

A different kind of colouring in design for me yesterday – no kaleidoscopic mandala, and no clearly demarcated shapes of straightforward single colour either, just three simply drawn mermaids swimming in the sea with their long hair fanning out and floating around them.

So I used coloured pencils rather than gel pens to be able to layer and shade and blend the colours together in a more pleasing way to suit the style of the drawing. I took pics as I went along to show the different stages, and I was surprisingly happy with how they turned out 🙂

Escapist Colouring Club

January Colouring in: Take II

And another mandala coloured in…

I find it so calming to colour in these circular designs, just beginning in the centre and slowly working outwards, deciding one colour at a time and only seeing at the end exactly what my colour choices have created. It’s not difficult to do, only time consuming, and time is something I certainly have an abundance of right now during our second national Covid lockdown. So I think colouring in as an enjoyable and engrossing creative pastime is my Weekly Smile this week…

How do other people choose to spend their leisure time while staying indoors during a winter lockdown? 🙂

Escapist Colouring Club

The Art of Patience

I really love colouring in, but occasionally I’ll find a design in one of my many colouring books and think – nope, I just don’t have the patience for that.

This is one such design, made up of myriad tiny shell shapes, and although I first started it ages ago all I managed to complete was a small three inch square in the top corner before giving up.

So here I am in a winter Covid mini-lockdown, and I decided to give it another go – I’ve still got a long way to go but I’m finally getting somewhere… 🙂

Escapist Colouring Club

On the Hunt for Joy: Play

When it comes to hobbies to help me relax in life, I enjoy walking, reading, crochet, and photography, but I must admit the pastime that feels most like play to me has to be colouring-in. Everything else can potentially be bracketed under ‘responsible adulting’ – walking is good for my health, reading broadens my mind, crochet creates a useful end product, and photography has a technical element and of course the end results can be kept for posterity to be shown and shared with others.

But colouring-in remains something left over from childhood that is done purely for fun, done for no other reason than because I enjoy it! It is not a means to an end but instead is an end in itself. I find I easily become absorbed in the process of choosing a medium and colours and designs, and apart from the few I photograph to share on my blog the majority of my completed colouring-in sits squirrelled away in closed books in a closed cupboard, effectively for my eyes only. It’s my secret stash of indulgent escapism, page upon page of playing just for the sake of it, and I absolutely love it 🙂

On the Hunt for Joy: Play

Escapist Colouring Club

Coloured Pencils At Work

I like using different colouring in techniques depending on the subject – usually I use coloured pencils for simpler designs made up of larger blocks of colour, and keep my finer-pointed gel pens for smaller, more fiddly designs. And sometimes I even mix and match both on the same page.

Today I’ve got a really bad headache so am sitting on the sofa resting, and I chose to stick to my coloured pencils and simple designs on an A4-size page to keep me company – and overall I’m happy enough with the finished results! 🙂

Escapist Colouring Club