National Colouring Day is a wonderful chance to embrace your creativity, and the joys of playing with colour. From colouring pages to sidewalk chalk art, painting to mosaics and murals, colouring can be a meditative stress relief. It’s an excellent way for families to bond and a delightful school activity.
Celebrated each September 14, National Colouring Day beckons people of all ages to break out the paints, crayons, gel pens, and coloured pencils and immerse in the calming world of colour and imagination.
Once considered mostly a childhood hobby, you’ll now find a plethora of adult colouring books out there. Colouring is a great form of meditative relaxation and self-care therapy. Many feature mandalas, elaborate designs based in Indian spirituality, though many in these books incorporate other themes such as Celtic or Navajo. Others, like the utterly charming ones by Kerby Rosanes, have intricate spreads featuring mythic scenes and cryptid critters.
I will say, while there are many wonderful colouring books on the market, it’s worth checking images within before purchase, if possible. I’ve gotten a few recently that turned out to be horribly obvious in that they were AI generated. I don’t find that to be intrinsically bad, but it takes little time to check things over and inpaint errors like extra limbs, bodies that make no sense, paths that go nowhere, mandala lines that are jarringly incongruous. I mean, I need to be able to figure out how to colour the picture.
Colouring provides the same benefits to adults as to kids. We, as a society, just had to find our way back to it. It narrows focus and attention, fostering calmness and relaxation, releasing feel-good hormones. Playing with colour allows for self-expression, which can be wonderfully freeing for adults whose creativity was stifled as a child. Colouring can even lead you back to your self-worth, and finding who you really are. What’s your style? Wild and bold? Subtle pastels? Complementary or clashing? There’s no wrong answer here. (Never let anyone tell you otherwise!)
It can even be an aid to make learning fun, no matter the subject. Aeons ago, whilst learning forensic anthology, this book was a wonderful asset. Today, some 25 years later, and attempting to learn Dutch, this one has been a fun tool. History, maths, literature, you name it, and there’s probably a colouring book aid for it these days.
Besides colouring in books or on pages, here are a few other fun ideas to explore on September 14!
***Sidewalk chalk art- grab some fat sticks of coloured chalk and take to your driveway or local sidewalk to create temporary art to delight passersby.
***Have a colour hunt- this works best with groups of kids. Create a list of colours. Either solo, or divided into pairs or teams, they must find objects outdoors, or indoors, that match the colours. The more creative, the better!
***Fingerpainting- grab some large sheets of thicker paper and a variety of non-toxic paints and go at it!
***Ceramics painting- a fun task for older kids (and adults), for this you may buy bulk ceramics and acrylic paints to do at home or in a class setting. Alternatively, a fun family outing could be visiting a place like Colour Me Mine
***Watercolours- gather up some brushes, watercolour paints, and watercolour paper and have fun. Try out different styles of painting, and blending.