Creativity: Coloring Books?

Loving this multi-colored horse and especially
how the brown mane becomes the brown cloud!

When I was getting my degree in Art Education, I was warned against the many evils of coloring books. Ha. No, seriously I was. Apparently they kill creativity because they tell a child the way something is supposed to look (instead of allowing them to come up with their own way of representing it) and teach them to color inside the lines "or else." I'm not entirely certain where the "or else" comes from but I suppose it means or they get in trouble or they'll disappoint or maybe it means or they will lose confidence because they'll recognize that they're bad at what they were supposed to do. I'm grasping at straws here honestly because after having kids, I discovered that coloring books are not in fact "evil." I resisted, as I had been brainwashed, I mean trained to do. I tried to refuse to allow them in my home but somehow they crept in. And I discovered that my 2 year-old loves scribbling all over Elsa's face (get free Elsa printables here). She gets so excited to have a piece of paper with her beloved princess on it, and that excitement moves her to pick up crayons and go to town. And she is thrilled with the results. Sometimes she pokes holes all over the page with a pencil. Sometimes she ends up ripping the center because she goes over the same spot so many times. Honestly, she's doing exactly what she should be doing in the manipulative stage of art development (usually in ages 2-4 or 5). Experimenting with art materials and making her mark on the world. I'd prefer she do it on a blank page so it's all her, but whatever gets her to start experimenting has got to have some good in it, doesn't it?

See how she even carved her name in the side?

Take my 4 year-old. She's currently making her mark everywhere - her bed cover, my wall, a
squash from the farm, whatever she can find. She scribbles, she creates, and she is so proud of everything she does. And she gets super excited to color in an outline of Tinkerbell I print out for her (find some here). Sometimes she tries to color inside the lines, developing her fine motor skills and sometimes she lets loose. Also, she often will bring a coloring book to me and ask me to color with her, on the same page. It is a fabulous bonding moment that always ends in giggles as our crayons collide. It's not about the end product, it's about the process. Is it promoting creativity? Perhaps not, and I guess that's where the supposed "evil" lies. But is it laying a foundation of art experimentation? A habit of adding color to the world? A love of adding their "mark?" Yeah, I think it does.

Grid drawing might not be the most creative way to
draw but super famous creators like Chuck Close 
have used it to create their paintings and it didn't
 keep my daughter from giving Iridessa her own flair! 

I do think there are situations in which coloring books can cause problems. Those would be ridiculous situations in which a child is marked down or criticized for not coloring inside the lines or for "doing a better job." Or when an adult or older child deflates their happiness by informing them that Elsa's skin is not supposed to be purple and that the sky should really be blue. Have you ever seen that happen, whether it's with a completed coloring page or a unique drawing? Oh it's so sad. So just as money is not the root of all evil, the love of it is, coloring books are not the problem, we are. Our response is key. Our attitude may just determine whether they pick that crayon up again or not. Coloring books can be a vehicle to get a child excited, especially one who lacks the confidence to confront a blank page because they don't yet have the skills to properly compose what they see in their heads. It would be a problem if coloring books were their only exposure to "art making" (And don't even get me started on adults calling their coloring in the recently trendy adult coloring books "art"). Coloring books can relieve tension and can be good-old-fashioned screen-free fun. In fact, I'd venture to say that coloring books only squash creativity when we take the creative part (i.e. purple-skinned Elsa) away as an option.