Why I Love Adult Colouring Books

When we were children, we loved to draw on paper or we had all these colouring books.

I had a lot of colouring books when I was a kid. But at that age, my skills at staying within the lines or filling in every space wasn’t the greatest. It started with general themes kids would like like the circus, zoo, etc. Then when I got a little older I had several Star Wars colouring books, and at that time they were all from either The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones since around that time the prequel trilogy was big so growing up with it made it my favourite era of the Star Wars universe along with the Clone Wars.

I never finished colouring any of those books, but by the time I was twelve, I started drawing more. It began with cartoons, most notably Star Wars ones of Emi Takori (although I didn’t give my OC that name until a few years back) but when I did have colouring books, I took great joy in the creativity they offer.

In 2016 I heard of adult colouring books back when I volunteered at a LTC home running a small tuck shop. They sold a few adult colouring books with general themes like flowers. One of them even had a CD with relaxing music on it which you could listen to while colouring if you wanted. Then around Christmas in 2017 I was looking to buy some Dragon Age merchandise and saw there was an adult colouring book at the BioWare store so I bought it.

It has at least one picture of each iconic character and other ones with certain scenes like the fight with the Archdemon from the first game and I can easily tell the difference in style from each illustrator.

Sometime later, I had to go to Michael’s to get some things for my aunt’s wedding the following summer and saw another adult colouring book that caught my eye. I didn’t get a chance to buy it, so a few weeks later when I came back to the same plaza with my mom, I hopped back into the store and bought it while my mom was in Bed Bath & Beyond. This particular book is themed for Disney Villains and it’s a lot more detailed requiring immense focus if you want to stay inside the lines.

I’m glad that with this book, they include some of the darker or underrated villains along with the most popular quirky ones. Like there’s even a picture of Rourke from Atlantis in this book and he’s extremely underrated!

Due to the massive detailed sections, I’ve only finished two pages in this book and am currently working on Dr. Facilier which I should finish up in the morning instead of gaming all the time!

Then, by last summer I was doing another run of the Mass Effect trilogy so I was thrilled to learn that there was an adult colouring book for that series too, also by Dark Horse.

Right now I’ve only coloured Aria in this one since I got it last year and the Disney villain pictures take a lot longer to finish, but once I finish Dr. Facilier, I’ll do another one from this book. There’s one picture in this book that has everyone together on one page before it goes on to the images from Andromeda that I like, that ones definitely going to be interesting to do.

Honestly, I find these colouring books to be such a meditative activity that I should to them more often. I hear raves about some colour-by-number app and all I can say is that I feel that devalues the work I put into these pieces so far.

Why do you ask? Well, colouring in a picture takes effort and skill. You want to be able to stay inside the lines and fill it in without missing any spots, whereas an app where you can just simply tap the colour, tap the spot to fill in and voila, the work is already done for you. I don’t like that.

Advances and technology provide convenience, but in this case they can sacrifice the need for skill and focus when you’re colouring. It’s a very calming hobby to do instead of just watching TV all the time and I like to do hobbies that require focus.

Anyway, I heard there’s also a Witcher adult colouring book so I think I’m going to get that one next!

👽Emily