Jump to content

Confess. How Many Of You Colored Outside The Lines As A Child?


Recommended Posts

How many of you colored outside the lines in coloring books as kids?  Did you carefully stay in the lines and produce an exquisit crayon art piece or did you hate the constraints of the lines and color all over with inappropriate colors?   Just wondering what this question says about us as artists. ( I fell into category 2).  rakuku

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 51
  • Created
  • Last Reply

My parents bought me those Paint by Number sets with the little pots of paint, and the numbers for each colour. Couldn't do it. Too constricting. My mom ended up finishing the paintings for me. My mother used to sit and add up 3 columns of numbers to relax. We always told her that she was adopted.

I don't think we really had colouring books. I would have been able to stay in the lines, I think.

TJR.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I did them in the lines. Later when my girlfriend(future wife) was doing illustrations for in her classroom of cutesy kids, I did a lot of black outlined characters for her, splashing on watercolor/tempera then adding marker lines to define the image. Looked like I didn't know how to paint in the lines, but then it was really in reverse if you looked closely!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My fourth grade nun squashed any artistic ability I may have had.  She returned a landscape drawing with my clouds circled asking "What are these?" .  If she could not tell they were clouds then I obviously could not draw.  My entire life I said I had no artistic ability but flourished in math(she made us do long division problems on turned paper with the red line).  I have been potting about 3 yrs now and am enjoying every minute. Pottery has allowed me to explore my creative side.
Looking back I think I was drawing on white paper and made the clouds blue so you could see them.  Amazing how our interactions with others paints who we are.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As an Art teacher in school, it was heart breaking to hear the excuses, hurt and dismay that kids and adults would talk about when unable to participate in the early days of a class. Some, very few, art teachers had abused them early, but more often than not it was the well meaning or mean classroom teacher or parent trying to instill a certain amount of discipline in the student. It seemed that often my job was to reroute their lack of confidence to where they realized that yes they did have talent, but maybe not in flat drawing or painting, but maybe more in 3D  clay, sculpture, Jewelry or maybe unfound talent in drawing or painting. When you had someone come to that Ahaaaa moment, it is most gratifying. One of the main reasons I think it important to have Arts in the schools beyond just music, drama, and drawing and painting. Being able to explore a variety of art experiences allows one to discover their talent(s).

 

Access to materials, and new techniques is so easy today, that if someone has a need to create(which most of us do) they should be able to find an outlet for it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i remember trying to stay inside the lines to please the teacher. This seemed more important than artistic expression at the time.

Now, I seldom give coloring books as gifts to children ... Blank paper, lined paper, graph paper, tracing paper, colored paper, glue, scissors, paint, crayons ... and of course, the best stuff ever ...glitter glue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I noticed early on as a kid that there are no black outlines surrounding anything-natural or man-made. So I didn't understand why they were there in coloring templates and whatnot. My puzzlement and insisting on having that discussion usually sent the garden-variety public school "art" teachers away to bother some other poor kid and I was left to my own devices.  

 

There is value, if you value it, in the precision of staying inside the lines (even invisible lines, as simply the boundaries of whatever the image is. Also in being able to draw the lines, such as architecture images, realistic landscape, illustrations of birds, and so on. I have great respect for those who are disciplined and patient that way. I can do it if I make myself, and it becomes satisfying as a process when I can get into it, and see a gorgeous final product, but generally I go for free-form and "color outside the lines". I fear that may be a type of laziness, but I hope it is more about being congruent with my temperament, as an aspect of maintaining the integrity of personality (in the mental health sense).    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hated "colouring in" so just wouldn't do it at all.  Couldn't see the point.  Now, don't let me near a pencil and paper during a meeting as I will doodle all over.  Nothing specific, still can't draw or paint to save my life, but smudgy grey curly pencil lines, and then shading in, over, around, whatever.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hated "colouring in" so just wouldn't do it at all.  Couldn't see the point.  Now, don't let me near a pencil and paper during a meeting as I will doodle all over.  Nothing specific, still can't draw or paint to save my life, but smudgy grey curly pencil lines, and then shading in, over, around, whatever.

Some people make aliving out of this or one has, google Zentangles!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why would they put the lines there if they didn't want us to use them? I've read all of your posts and can relate to some of them. I was programmed and conditioned to stay in the lines and use the correct colors when appropriate. Everything I did was very precise and scientific until high school art classes where I was finally given permission to be free. Then I attended college to study to be a pharmacist and it was all precise and scientific again. Only recently has my inner artist re-emerged, mostly.

 

Paul

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the advantages of growing up with a musician/conductor/arranger dad was the ever present musician-artist-babysitter.  I remember being very careful to stay within the lines, one color at a time, until one of those baby-sitters (I was probably 7 years-old) started blending different colors while staying within the lines.  It was one of those Ah-Hah' moments that others have mentioned that started me down an path in the arts.  I had not thought about this for years, but realize that the whiteboard and markers that I use with the grand-kiddos never starts with a black outline.

 

-Paul

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting topic...early creative exploration. Inside the lines, of course. I needed to make it look like the picture, dammit! But the real question to consider is; who invented coloring books in the first place? Couldn't the crayon people just have stopped after creating the coloring stick? Or was the coloring book invented before the crayons? Is this an early example of control by commercial corporations to manipulate our collective behavior for the benefit of the few? (Tongue firmly in cheek)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Chinese brush teach I work with will often have us outline a drawing in light gray ink or just water, then go back and add the color.  We may do this a couple times before doing the drawing with the aid of the outline.  And, it helps -- at least it does for me -- to think about how to position the brush for the stroke, composition, etc. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My fourth grade nun squashed any artistic ability I may have had.  She returned a landscape drawing with my clouds circled asking "What are these?" .  If she could not tell they were clouds then I obviously could not draw.  My entire life I said I had no artistic ability but flourished in math(she made us do long division problems on turned paper with the red line).  I have been potting about 3 yrs now and am enjoying every minute. Pottery has allowed me to explore my creative side.

Looking back I think I was drawing on white paper and made the clouds blue so you could see them.  Amazing how our interactions with others paints who we are.

I didn't know you could become a nun in the fourth grade?!!? :unsure:

TJR.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had an early grade school encounter (1st or 2nd grade?) that affected me for YEARS. We were given a plain very simple bunny printout to color. I cut mine out glued it to colored construction paper, added a cotton ball tail, puffy clouds, flowers, grass. I gave it an environment to live in. Once done the teacher came by to collect them. She was furious with what I had done, I did not do as told and simply color the boring bunny. She made an example of me before the whole class. It was awful! From then on I did EXACTLY what the teachers said to do. For years I hid my "real" drawings. I knew I HAD to create but that fear of being ridiculed kept me hidden. It wasn't until my husband joked that the bed was getting higher on one side than the other because of all the art I kept shoving under there and that maybe I should dig out some and sell it did I even try.

 

All of this is one of the reasons why my signature almost always includes the quote, "The world is but a canvas to the imagination"

 

Embrace the world obliterate those lines and create what your soul tells you to.

 

T

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

My fourth grade nun squashed any artistic ability I may have had.  She returned a landscape drawing with my clouds circled asking "What are these?" .  If she could not tell they were clouds then I obviously could not draw.  My entire life I said I had no artistic ability but flourished in math(she made us do long division problems on turned paper with the red line).  I have been potting about 3 yrs now and am enjoying every minute. Pottery has allowed me to explore my creative side.

Looking back I think I was drawing on white paper and made the clouds blue so you could see them.  Amazing how our interactions with others paints who we are.

I didn't know you could become a nun in the fourth grade?!!? :unsure:

TJR.

 

Tom, you are incorrigible!  ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

''my paper didn't have lines.''    Marcia


 


''I had an early high school encounter ... that affected me for YEARS. .......she made an example of me before the whole class. It was awful! .... for years I hid my "real" drawings. I knew I HAD to create but that fear of being ridiculed kept me hidden.''    oldlady


 


''..... reroute their lack of confidence to where they realized that yes they did have talent, but maybe not in flat drawing or painting, but maybe more in 3D  clay, sculpture,''   Pres


 


Story of my creative life!


Irene


Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why would they put the lines there if they didn't want us to use them? I've read all of your posts and can relate to some of them. I was programmed and conditioned to stay in the lines and use the correct colors when appropriate. Everything I did was very precise and scientific until high school art classes where I was finally given permission to be free. Then I attended college to study to be a pharmacist and it was all precise and scientific again. Only recently has my inner artist re-emerged, mostly.

 

Paul

Yes, I can just imagine a pharmacist who gives free rein to imagination.  Or maybe that's how they develop new drugs?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had an early grade school encounter (1st or 2nd grade?) that affected me for YEARS. We were given a plain very simple bunny printout to color. I cut mine out glued it to colored construction paper, added a cotton ball tail, puffy clouds, flowers, grass. I gave it an environment to live in. Once done the teacher came by to collect them. She was furious with what I had done, I did not do as told and simply color the boring bunny. She made an example of me before the whole class. It was awful! From then on I did EXACTLY what the teachers said to do. For years I hid my "real" drawings. I knew I HAD to create but that fear of being ridiculed kept me hidden. It wasn't until my husband joked that the bed was getting higher on one side than the other because of all the art I kept shoving under there and that maybe I should dig out some and sell it did I even try.

 

All of this is one of the reasons why my signature almost always includes the quote, "The world is but a canvas to the imagination"

 

Embrace the world obliterate those lines and create what your soul tells you to.

 

T

 

That's an exact example of how children get bent to the ideas adults have of mediocrity. Pugaboo, take that Art out from under your bed!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.