Pick One, No. 6

Question 499: Sketch pad or coloring book? (and why…)

I’ll begin with this photo of a shelf on my craft wall in the office. Everything on that shelf, whether upright or lying down, between the books with spiral binding, is a coloring book, except one (with green binding). The books with spiral binding are sketchbooks. One of those was begun by our late friend Steve R. One is Tom’s sketchbook. Several on the right contain coloring pages done by other people and by me. The rest of the sketchbooks except that one with the green binding are empty.

I think it’s clear that I love to color since I have far more coloring books than sketchbooks (and actually, those aren’t all of the coloring books. There are more in other parts of the house). I think coloring is creative, but only in the sense of picking colors and using them for contrast or for surprise or for shading. The picture being colored was created by someone else.

Like this unicorn. Drawn by someone else; colored by me.

I like to create from scratch when I write. I may do a lot of research, but my actual writing process is organic. I don’t struggle over plot or description or narrative or dialogue as I write. It flows, and when it stops flowing, I stop writing. The harder work comes in the editing, but the act of putting the story into words comes from some subconscious part of my brain.

Likewise, when I paint, it’s mostly about color and shape. I don’t think a lot or analyze it, I just do it. Here’s an example.

“Uplift,” from my One Word Art series. I understand perfectly why I picked these colors and painted it the way I did, and why that word is the one I chose for it. But I don’t think I could ever explain it in words that would make sense. Just as with the act of writing, how I put color on canvas is organic and intuitive.

I use that same intuitive process when I color, even though I didn’t create the picture. The HUGE difference between coloring and creating is that I think very little about the act of coloring before, during, or after I do it. When I color, my brain is completely free to go wherever it wants to. I could be making a grocery list, mentally replaying a conversation I had, thinking about what I’m writing and structuring a chapter or delving into the personality and motivation of a character, accessing a million memories of friends, events, family, the trajectory of my life… You get the idea. Coloring is relatively mindless and is therefore extremely calming, along with providing that head space.

Except for the little sketches I’ve done and shared here using the tag “wee sketches,” I’ve never used but one sketchbook for sketching (the one with the green binding), and that has almost all been celebrity faces that intrigued me. I’ve never done a still life or sketched a place–or anything like all those other people’s drawings in my coloring books. I’ve also tried to sketch some friends, but ultimately, I find sketching dissatisfying because not only is it hard for me, it requires so much concentration that I start feeling tense. I don’t see any life in the sketches I do (and whether I’m sketching celebrities or someone I know, I work from photographs. I’d never sketch anyone in person).

I posted a small detail once of someone I was sketching and people had good things to say about it. But I only posted the eyes, I think, because mouths seem to defy me. Plus the commenters didn’t know who the celebrity was I was drawing, so they had no idea if it was at all accurate.

I think I’ll continue to stick with writing for creating, coloring for relaxing, and hopefully more painting because it combines a little of both. Just for fun, here are three sketches from the book with the green binding. They were all done in the early 1990s, and I think my light touch with the sketch pencil is indicative of my lack of confidence in what I was doing.