Discussion

{DISCUSSION} Adult Coloring Books

Melanie Noell Bernard

Why do these things stress me out?!

This is kind of an old trend now (I mean, it became popular a couple years ago), but like all popular things I ignored it. (I’m such a hipster! HAhaha!) But after a while, I caved. I mean, I used to love coloring and I suck at drawing, so why not? And everyone said it’s so relaxing and it’s a great way to clear your head and what not. So, I was like, okay. I’ll buy one. When I finish, I’ll buy another.

That was over 2 years ago. -.-

I bought one adult coloring book that was like… magical forest or something. So it’s all nature-based and there’s some magical creatures and what not. It’s really beautiful and I even had a whole set of colored pencils to make sure I could have lots of variation. I was all set!

And I hated it!

Adult coloring books are SO FREAKIN’ STRESSFUL!!!!! I don’t know how ANYONE can consider this to be a fun, relaxing task because this is my line of thoughts while I’m coloring:

“This needs to be this color. And that will be that color. But there are so many plants. I’ll need like… 12 different colors of green. What?! I only have 3 shades?! But they’re obviously different leaf types! How can they be the same shade of green?! You’ll never be able to tell them apart and everyone will just see a bunch of the same green all over the page! And it’ll be ugly! And I can’t use that green for that leaf because that’s not biologically correct!”

OR

“Wow. This is a large space. It’ll take forever to color. Okay, I’ll just broaden my stroke a little bit to speed it up. *hand slips* NO!!!! NO!!!! NO! I ruined the whole thing! I colored outside the lines! How did I even pass kindergarten if I can’t color inside the lines?! Now anyone who sees my coloring book is going to think I’m such a fraud! It’s going to be so ugly! God and I’m never going to be able to NOT see that I colored outside the lines and it’ll never be perfect! WHY DID I THINK I COULD DO THIS?! I’m not artsy! I can’t even color inside the lines!”

OR

“Okay. So, this line goes this way, which means it connects to this line and that means it’ll also be this color. And that line goes… nowhere. Wait, what? That can’t be right. No, for sure. Those lines don’t match up. But if they don’t match up, then what is that? What does it belong to? What am I supposed to color it now?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? It’s supposed to belong to that?! Well, fuck! I just colored it the wrong color! What am I going to do now?! It’s all ruined! I just made that plant the totally wrong color and it doesn’t work! And the page is symmetrical so now I have to screw up the OTHER side of the picture, too! WHY DIDN’T THE ARTIST NOTICE WHERE THEIR LINES WERE GOING?!”

See?! Adult coloring is sooooo stressful. I really do not understand how anyone thought this would be a good idea because all I do the entire time is remember how much of a perfectionist I really am and then freak out because my picture will never be perfect. And someone else’s picture will always be ten times better than mine because of the ‘artist sight’ and can like see something before they start and they know how much pressure to apply when coloring to make one colored pencil now look like they used six colored pencils! And mine looks like a freakin’ child colored it!

RAWR!

But what do you think?
Are adult coloring books fun? Or insane?
Leave your thoughts below!

And check out my discussion from last week:
“Artificial Intelligence“

44 thoughts on “{DISCUSSION} Adult Coloring Books”

  2. Ugh adult colouring books. I bought some at a particularly tough time in my life and they managed to make life TOUGHER, if that was even possible. I think we’re being trolled…

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Hahahaha! Sounds like me, Ali. I have definitely ruined a few of the pages in my coloring book by being massively impatient and overly perfectionist. But I also don’t like staring at a white page. (I think that gives the writer in me anxiety or something. :p )

      Like

      Reply

    1. That would be a fun idea, Craig. I know a book launch did that (Roar by Cora Carmack) and it was a huge hit. Mine of course looked AWFUL, but I got to skype a friend while we both colored our own and it was tons of fun and brought lots of promo. 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  5. hahaha, you made my day! 😀 😀 😀 i loved how you ranted about the coloring books! 😀
    i have one at home but maybe finished three or four colorings. i think it’s ok if you want to do anything while listening to an audiobook. but my problem is more, that my hand starts to hurt from pressing down the pens haha! so no, i don’t do it often. i think it’s ok, when you have nothing else to do, but i don’t think they work as stress relievers 😀

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Hahahaha! I aim to please, Alex. 😉 And I’m just really ranty in general. :p

      Seriously. I have super weak, tiny hands is such a freak :p And coloring makes my hands hurt. Also, I was that child that broke ALL the crayons because I never learned to color lightly. I was always worried about blank spots so I pressed REALLY hard and now I’m not allowed near mechanical pencils (or even regular pencils for that matter. Pens are my friend and my math teacher’s worst enemy. MWAHAHAHAHA!) :p

      Like

      Reply

  6. HAHAHAHA omg this was fantastic to read! But I completely understand. I bought one of those adult coloring books like a year ago and have still only colored one page because it took me FOREVER to get that one damn page colored! AND YES ABOUT THE GREEN. WHAT THE HECK. I’ve never been so stressed out about plant life.

    Eventually I went on Amazon and found an easier coloring book that looked cool and I colored in five of those pages haha. MUCH more enjoyable but yeahhhhh overall coloring is not super relaxing for me anymore (oh the good ol’ childhood days). Maybe it would be if I was a born artíst but instead I’m an anxiety-ridden perfectionist who almost passes out from a combo of boredom and stress when attempting an adult coloring book. And it’s so annoying because even though I get fed up with it or my eyes are bleeding from staring at the page so long I just can’t STOP. I have to keep going until I’ve finished! WHY?? No no, NO adult coloring books for me thanks!

    OMG and once some idiot (a.k.a. a friend) had the bright idea of SHARING a page in her adult coloring book so there were four of us coloring one of those two-page pictures with a random assortment of colored pencils of different brands and shades and HOLY SNAP I WAS GOING TO DIE FROM THE NON-UNIFORMITY OF THE COLORING. Haha I guess I’m crazy. 😜 LOL

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Yaaas! I’m hilarious. 😎 And also yes because someone understand my green issue! 😀 I swear no one gets it, but like… a maple has different colors from an oak for goodness sakes! And pines come in a variety of colors, not just ‘pine.’ Rawr! GIVE ME MORE GREEN!

      Hahahaha! I’m a total non-artistic perfectionist, too! I don’t think my parents kept ANY of my artwork from when I was a child because it was soooo awful. The only things they ended up keep were NOT drawings. :p I can’t blame them. I did not get that ability. Hee hee! And the perfectionist just makes it that much worse because I’d probably just be erasing all the time and never actually finish a drawing. :p

      Duuuude! you’re not crazy. While I was traveling, I was hanging out with some guy I met and he saw my coloring book and was all: “Mind if I color a page?” And internally I was screaming: “NOOO NOOO NOO!” But of course I didn’t want to be an asshole so I was like: “okay.” And he picked the most AWFUL COLOR ON THE PLANET TO START COLORING WITH AND I WAS JUST DYING ON THE INSIDE!!!!! o.o cough

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  7. Personally, I LOVE adult coloring books! I have one that has random abstract patterns to color, so no worries about accuracy or anything silly like that. 😛 I also have some nice markers to color with, so it’s definitely a fun activity for me. Too bad I don’t get to color as often as I like due to a little thing called WORK that takes up my time!

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Oh, man! Work. It’s so awful! I honestly don’t know who ever invited such a horrible torture device. :p

      Ah. See I bought the nice foresty/magical one thinking it would appeal to my fantasy nature, except… that I’m a scientist who follows logic and perfectionism. Aka, I was screwed. I also care WAAAY too much about symmetry. 😦

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  8. i have an anxiety disorder that largely causes me to be a perfectionist and feel like a total failure if i don’t do things 100% perfect and OMG COLORING USED TO STRESS ME THE FCK OUT SO MUCH!!! i feel like most people i’ve talked to with actual anxiety disorders feel similarly to me too. the thing i started doing was instead of looking at coloring as “a way to zone out and escape and relax and calm down,” i reframed my mindset. now, i look at coloring as a rehabilitation exercise–one which can teach me that it’s *okay to make mistakes and that in the big picture (pun totally intended), mistakes a) can be fixed and/or b) don’t really matter because often c) they make the picture more beautiful and unique. so i think if we reframe the way we think about the tool of coloring books, they can be really useful. but telling people with an anxiety disorder to relax by coloring mindlessly? that’s bullcrap that definitely won’t work and generally ends with the person who has an anxiety disorder in tears.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. What I think is that adult coloring books are NOT for people with OCD. Or perfectionists of any sort.

    Me? Never tried. Why not? I like to draw my own pictures to color. Coloring someone else’s picture seems boring and totally takes the point away (for me). I also don’t mid coloring outside of the lines 😉

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. Hahahaha! So… I should never have bought a coloring book, is what you’re saying because I am definitely a perfectionist. :p

      And I can’t draw to save my life. Which is why I am stuck with other people’s overly intricate pictures that have lines that go to NOWHERE! RAWR!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. As far as drawing, I think there must be a totally different mindset to draw something that other people are going to color. I draw a lot of lines to now where for shading or whatever that I’d have to totally rethink if I wanted someone else to add color.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  10. I’m with you, way too stressful for something designed to get rid of stress. I’d screw the first one up for sure, and then freak over the next one. Lots of better ways to de-stress – knitting, for example.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

      1. Sometimes I think it is going to be calming, but every time after 5 minutes I am like “What the hell I am doing?”
        It is just going to hurt my hand, coloring carefully and end with a thing which is not even close to the real 😁😁😁

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

  15. I COMPLETELY agree! I got a few coloring books when the trend really took off, and ended up thumbing through them and only half coloring one or two pages. I even went out and got the special huge box of colored pencils (because lets face it, crayons are WAY too thick for those little spaces), but I would get so overwhelmed that I put the book away.
    I would much rather get a children’s coloring book because they have larger spaces and are much less confusing.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    1. Exactly! The spaces are waaaay too small to color in and I would need a box of like… 600 colors to feel like I’m not just repeating colors over and over again. And just one page takes like… 3 or more hours. Who’s got that kind of time? Honestly!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  16. Okay, so I like the idea of adult coloring books, and I own several, but like they aren’t as fun as children’s coloring books. I find it more enjoyable to color in books targeted to elementary school children than adults. There are too many small pieces and I’m not an artistic person. It’s too much.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    1. Hahaha! Really? I haven’t looked at a children’s coloring book in ages, but I imagine it would be a lot less stressful because adult coloring books are sooooo intense! They’re super time consuming and intricate. That’s not relaxing for me. That’s just triggering my perfectionism. Rawr! :p

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

Leave a reply to Candy Lebby Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.