Before penning this article (August 2015), a quarter of Amazon’s top twenty best-selling books are coloring in gossip columns. So what is an adult coloring book, and how is it that these are currently outselling top fiction authors with new releases like E.L. James and Paula Hawkins?
Adult coloring books are, plain and simply, coloring in gossip columns for grown ups. Like children’s coloring books, these are brimming with outline illustrations made to be completed with colored pencils, markers, crayons, or whatever other media you want to use.
What’s in an adult coloring in book?
The gap between adults’ and kids’ color books is the adult versions generally feature less juvenile images and designs. Rather than superheroes, barnyard animals, and tv characters, adult coloring in gossip columns tend to be more often filled up with:
elements of all-natural world, like trees, flowers, leaves, gardens, animals and insects;
geometric designs;
psychedelic patterns;
repetitive ‘wallpaper’ type patterns;
cities and buildings;
anatomical drawings;
goddesses, angels, and mermaids;
mandalas; and
celtic designs.
Additionally, there are many ‘theme’ specific books available, featuring diverse subjects like cars, steampunk designs, and Art Nouveau patterns.
What makes them very popular?
A Scottish illustrator named Johanna Basford published a coloring books for adults called Secret Garden in 2013, featuring pages of beautifully hand-illustrated ink drawings. The New York Times reported in March which a Korean pop star named Kim Ki-bum posted an image on Instagram of an ‘delicately colored-in floral pattern’ from Secret Garden. During the time, Ki-bum a massive 1.8 million Instagram followers. The post went viral and helped to ignite the fad.
The growth in rise in popularity of the books reportedly has much regarding adult relaxation and stress release. Many adults using the books state that they obtain the repetitive, low-stress nature of coloring directly into be soothing, relaxing, and a strategy for de-stressing away from the pressures of life and work.
Among the other great things about adult coloring in gossip columns, they also claim they can enjoy recapturing the nostalgia of childhood by doing an action usually available children. It requires people to an easier time, which enable it to also be an easy method for folks for connecting and bond making use of their children to take a seat down to color in with them. Of course, many parents are already happily coloring in kids’ books for years, however they have choices that aren’t limited to Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob SquarePants.
To sum up, coloring for adults definitely seems to be an expanding past-time that enables adults to relax and unplug through the stress in their lives, by doing a hands-on activity which involves minimal commitment and maximum nostalgia.
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