May 8, 2020

Stay-at-Home Activities 1: Coloring

        In this world of sheltering at home, some people are finding themselves sapped of energy by stress, anxiety, and having to juggle too many things all happening at home, while others are finding themselves (or their children) bored and bouncing off the walls in the absence of their usual activities.  For the sake of both those groups I would like to offer some easy do-at-home art projects to provide entertainment and/or stress-relief and creative refreshment.  There will be several in the next few weeks.
        First in the series, today I give you a selection of coloring pages.  Whether these will be for your own use, or given to your children in the hope of keeping them constructively occupied for a while, they can be downloaded and printed, and colored with the art supplies of your choice.  The buttons to download are at the bottom of the post.  Some are straight-up coloring, such as the pinwheel “mandala” and the dragon, and some - the hedge of thorns and the city - invite you to add a little creativity of your own if you’re the type who rejects merely “coloring inside the lines.”  (Of course you’re more than welcome to add whatever extra creativity you wish to any of these designs!)  They are all based on
my block prints, and if you’re curious to see the originals you can find links down below near the download buttons.  The exception is number 5, which is based on a paper collage that I made as part of a unit on Matisse, years ago (1994!) while teaching middle school art.  I am currently working on turning the design into a stencil print.  This is an experimental technique I have devised which, if it is successful, I will link later when it’s finished.
        I hope that you and/or your kids can spend a little Happy Time chilling out with the markers or colored pencils.  Let me know in the comments if you’ve enjoyed these coloring pages.

Cities coloring page: DOWNLOAD HERE, based on City I and City II, rubber block prints by AEGN, 2019;
Pinwheel Mandala coloring page: DOWNLOAD HERE, based on Pinwheel I, rubber block print by AEGN, 2020;
Dragon coloring page: DOWNLOAD HERE, based on Dracophytum Folium, rubber block print by AEGN, 2020 (sold out);
Beyond the Thorns coloring page: DOWNLOAD HERE, based on Beyond the Thorns, rubber block print by AEGN, 2017;
Matisse-style coloring page: DOWNLOAD HERE, based on Dancing, stencil print by AEGN, 2020.

5 comments:

Kristin said...

I will download these for my daughter, who is no kid, but enjoys coloring.

Anne E.G. Nydam said...

Great! I hope she has fun with them.

Pax said...

What a lovely idea! Thanks for offering your talent and creativity to help the rest of us through these weird times. I look forward to learning about the stencil print technique.

Anonymous said...

North Hill (a CCRC in Needham, MA) made copies of the City I and City II and put them out for residents to color. I picked one up and have been making it quite psychedelic. Thanks for the fun.

Anne E.G. Nydam said...

What fun that North Hill shared this coloring page. I'd love to see what you've done with it. Thanks for sharing!