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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Creating A Coloring Book from Scribbles

For fun, I created a very simply coloring book for some of my family members from several of my recent scribbles.

For the last several weeks or so, I've scribbled a lot of quick pen and ink pieces as I've studied paintings and drawings by Van Gogh.  I'm trying to learn by "copying" him.  Though I'm not really copying, since I'm using a completely different medium. And I'm scribbling quickly, practicing line and shape.

I did these quick scribbles in a tiny book, about 4x6.  And I rather liked them!

So I decided, for fun, to print them off and put together a quick coloring book.

It wasn't hard!  I used Picasa (aka Google Photos), which is how I organize and back-up all of my scans of my art.  I picked a half dozen scribbles to include and printed them on 8 x 5.5 pieces of paper (so, basically, two per 8.5 x 11 sheet of standard copy paper, in my home printer).  This actually made the line art bigger than the original drawings.  They looked pretty good!

Then, because I really was just doing this for fun and wasn't in for making a big fuss, I cut some cardstock for front and back covers and stapled the few pages together.

It only too a few minutes to put together a fun, unique gift.  And, as I told one of the recipients when she opened it, "This isn't too precious to play with!  I can print you more!"  I want folks to color away, play, take risks, and if they don't like what they do, I'm happy to print another copy.  It doesn't take that long!

Here are the images--my scribbles after Van Gogh-- which I included in the little coloring book.

















Seeing how well this came out--and experiencing how fun it was to make such a simple coloring book--has inspired me to purposefully do more pen and ink scribbles in the coming year with just this purpose in mind!

What art has inspired you to make new and different art of your own this past year?

What art have you created this past year that might inspire others to make art of their own?




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