Coloring appeals to almost every age. It can be intensely creative and also relaxing: two of my boys can spend whole afternoons drawing and coloring masterpiece after masterpiece; I have a 40-something friend who colors elaborate “stained glass” pages to relax after work; and I once read of a creative father who made a delightful hobby of coloring his daughter’s drawings, transforming them into Caldecott-worthy illustrations. That last example carries coloring right over into the realm of quality time with your kids–I am certain she will never forget this collaboration with her daddy.
Most of the time, my kids are free-drawing, developing intricate story lines that began with a blank page. But sometimes they just want a coloring sheet to give form to their creativity, and though we have stacks of coloring books they often want particular pictures. Every now and then I will oblige their requests and draw them something brand-new. They love it when I make them a custom coloring page. Their favorite is this totem pole I designed a couple of years ago; Child 2 found the one I saved of his coloring recently, and has been after me now to create more totems.
I do have an idea for doing an Adirondack totems coloring book, but today I will take my cue from that Caldecott-colorer of a dad and show you the process in “reverse,” so to speak. Child 1 drew a page full of monsters, and requested that I turn it into a coloring sheet. All that really means, of course, is that instead of him drawing and then coloring his monsters once, I digitize it so that on any given day, any given kid could ask me to print this off for him to color all over again.
So, my tools: for several weeks now I’ve been using this light tablet. It plugs into the USB drive of my laptop, and is super thin. That allows me to store it in the file basket on my desk, and fold my drawing notebook around it instead of requiring me to draw on an individual sheet of paper.
I really like its simplicity. It’s a bit of a mystery to me how the LEDs work, since there is no place for light bulbs. One thing you need to know about this nifty tool–when I set it up straight out of the package, I plugged it into my laptop and it did…nothing. I sadly chalked it up to Chinese Cheapo engineering, but asked my hubby if he could figure it out.
He opened my laptop, so the power was activated. <Smack my head.>
Before I had a light pad, I used a window. You don’t need to be fancy about it.
Here is Child 1’s original artwork.
I don’t know how he comes up with such variety. He just goes for it! It makes me think, actually, of the creatures in George MacDonald’s The Princess and Curdie–“animal forms wilder and more grotesque than ever ramped in nightmare dream.” If you haven’t read it, go get it. What an incredible, beautiful fairy tale, chock full of my favorite (book) thing: fiction that helps me understand Truth more fully.
I taped the original to the back of a notebook page, and tucked the light pad under it. Using a Sharpie pen, I traced. (I hear great things about those Microns. I’ll put them on my Christmas list.) I chose a few minor edits, repositioning a few of the smaller creatures to spread them more evenly across the page.
Once that was finished, I scanned the page so we have a saved file on the computer. Ta da! Custom coloring page accomplished. Now all that’s needed is to do the coloring.
Here’s what Lincoln created before bedtime last night. For the next sheet, I think, we need to sit down together and both of us get to coloring. He is a quality time kid, after all–and he got it from his mama.
