On coloring books: Return to Never-never Land

I was in Singapore recently for the first time after years of just transiting through Changi Airport. I was thrilled to find out that my hotel was walking distance from Plaza Singapura—home to the stores Art Friend, Spotlight, and Paper Market. Despite having had no sleep the night before an early morning flight, and not having had any lunch yet, I dumped my luggage at the hotel, made my way to the stores, and happily spent three whole hours browsing through all the art materials, ignoring the occasional bouts of lightheadedness, and my tummy grumbling plaintively in the background. In Hong Kong the previous month, I walked the length of Nathan Road, taking nearly an hour to hunt down CN Square, that four-storied haven for lovers of all things art, craft, and office supplies.

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Did I actually buy anything in those stores? No. I sadly had to make do with caressing and surreptitiously sniffing rows upon rows of colored pencils, pastel blocks, fine line markers, and brush pens. For hours I roved around, reading about superior blendability of soft core pencils (fabulously easy to apply) and the glorious versatility of watercolor pencils (use wet or dry, with a different effect depending on how you use it) and the importance of a burnisher and blender (make the stroke marks disappear and add a gloss to your work). Never mind the fact that in a blind test I won’t be able to tell the difference between a Colleen and a Faber Castell, and that I often fumbled with the spelling of the elusive and expensive Caran d’Ache. Never mind that in terms of skills, I haven’t moved far past jumbo Crayola crayons. Welcome to the crazy world of the coloring addict.

Let it be known that long before this adult coloring became a trend, I was already giving out adult coloring books (the “adult” in this case refers to the not-Elmo-or-Dora kind, rather than the “bow-chicka-wow-wow” variety). Just ask my baffled friends who weren’t quite sure if I was joking when they got a coloring book and box of colored pencils from me. And back then, non-kiddie coloring books were pretty hard to come by (yes, I am publicly praising myself for being such a resourceful forward-thinker). Now, however, every bookstore, art store, and online retailer has a coloring book or two or twenty to offer. In fact, on Amazon’s list of top 20 bestselling books so far, three are adult coloring books, including #5 and #9, Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest, by coloring book queen Johanna Basford.

Now everyone suddenly has a metal tin of Prismacolor or Derwent pencils, and people have amazingly given up selfies in favor of pictures of their latest coloring tools, WIPs (works in progress), and, of course, their finished pictures. Colorista groups abound on Facebook, and there are groups that meet to color together. What gives?

People I’ve talked to all say that coloring is very relaxing. It gives them the feel of being artistic, creative, and productive. (Although seeing how some people post three to four colored pictures a day, each done so masterfully you’d think it was a photo printout, I wonder how productive they are with the rest of their lives. But I could just be envious.) It’s fun. And if the book publishers are to be believed, it’s therapeutic. Some have even gone as far as calling it a form of art therapy.

And while experts have debated on the truth of that last point, there’s some truth to the fact that coloring can be relaxing. The legendary psychiatrist Carl Jung—who came up with the psychological archetypes, dream analysis, and other staples of psych textbooks—is said to have prescribed coloring mandalas to his patients as a relaxing technique. The relaxation comes from having your brain focus on the task at hand—filling in a defined space with a selected color—and not on any other thoughts, such as your deadlines, the bills you have to pay, or that fight you had with your partner. The repetitive motion can lead to stillness, introspection, and, perhaps, self-discovery. Also, Basford suspects that having a ready image on the page makes it less intimidating than a blank sheet that of paper that requires that you start your creation from scratch.

There’s also the social aspect of it. In my coloring Facebook groups, people interact with strangers. They exchange praise and encouragement, offer sage advice and tips, and even volunteer to procure hard-to-find items when they have access to it. (Think about that: offering to buy expensive stuff for someone you have never met without the guarantee that they will really pay you for it; or the opposite—sending money to someone you’ve never met without the guarantee that they will send you the item you paid for.)  Then these virtual people sometimes become online buddies, willing to listen (read) to your non-coloring woes; and occasionally, they even turn into real world friends.

Some experts, on the other hand, feel that the coloring trend is part of a bigger trend that involves adults regressing into childhood activities. Regressing may be too harsh a word, but basically, more grownups are spending serious money doing stuff that they enjoyed or missed in their childhood. Cosplay, after all, could just be the acceptable adult version of raiding your parents’ closets and playing dress up. Then there are adult summer camps, doll/Lego/toy car collectibles, and now coloring. And I suppose you could lump these activities under the destressing umbrella—doing things that remind you of childhood, when all you had to worry about was whether you got picked first for the team, or if your crush liked you back.

As for me, I have finished a grand total of one coloring page. And that was with the help of my daughters. In my own journey to self-discovery (using the coloring justification terms here), I discovered that coloring is too “slow” for me, especially if the image is full of small details. I get stressed out deciding on color combinations. And I’m too lazy to watch YouTube videos on how to properly blend. I’m not much of a hoarder anyway. I have less than 10 coloring books, and just two sets of watercolors, and six sets of pencils—none of them overly expensive or artist-grade.

However, I still am thoroughly enjoying the coloring craze. I realize that, as with the rest of my crafting obsessions, I enjoy the hunting down, acquisition, and hoarding stages of coloring. Using the stuff I get? Not so much. So where does that put me in the grand scheme of all things coloring? I have no idea. But where I am is sure relaxing and fun.

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This article was first published in our December 2015 issue.