Colouring books for adults: therapeutic or ridiculous?

[dropcap]C[/dropcap]an colouring books for adults really be more than a gimmick? They certainly should be, and I’ll tell you why. In the modern world, a lot of us live very busy lives and never really have time to just stop and do nothing. Do you find yourself constantly rushing around? Are you wondering what you should be doing on that essay or lab report at eleven o’clock at night? Then for the love of God, stop and do some colouring in.

The labelling of something as ‘for adults’ tends to elicit three responses. The first is a supposition that, whatever the product is, will be incredibly serious and boring. If children colour in exciting pictures of dinosaurs, fire engines and superheroes, reflecting their own vivid imaginations, then won’t adults have to colour in office meetings, car parks, and home insurance documents? Accordingly, you could have a colouring book of typical scenes for Warwick students, such as an impressionistic sketch of the queue for Smack, a Lowry-esque depiction of a crowded U1 in rush hour, or a pop-art version of the mad scramble for reduced pizzas in the Co-Operative.

Secondly, people often seem to assume that an adults’ version of something that is normally for children is special pleading by grown-ups in denial, for example the scorn poured on those purchasing the more ‘mature’ looking editions of Harry Potter. It is easy to see how this could happen in the case of colouring books.

Shouldn’t adults be doing something more adult-like, such as watching late night-television, smoking, or having sex rather than reaching for the Crayola?

This brings me neatly onto my third common assumption: that ‘for adults’ means ‘adult’ in the top-shelf, high-numbers-on-the-Sky-Guide sense. In the case of colouring books, it does not. I mean, for goodness’ sake. No-one is selling colouring books full of artist’s impressions of people engaging in a spot of horizontal jogging. Not yet, anyway, although if anyone does know of such a thing do let me know in the comments (for research purposes. Honestly).

But to return to the matter at hand, I know colouring-in can be therapeutic because I have experienced its powers myself. Over the summer, I was working for a small charity and one of the things I had to do was supervise a children’s outreach activity day. After three exhausting days of this (working for children is really hard work) visitor numbers had dropped off a bit, so my colleagues and I engaged in a bit of colouring in. Thinking about the colours the dinosaur and his surroundings would be, and how I could render this a reality using only a handful of half-eaten crayons, was a welcome distraction from the trials and tribulations of everyday life.

Really concentrating on one thing makes you feel a lot better

So as with bull-running, cross-dressing and buying meat from Spicy Bites, don’t knock colouring in until you’ve tried it. Disclaimer: I’ve never done any of those things and don’t intend to, although I disapprove of the former and would not recommend the latter. Cross-dress to your heart’s content though. But seriously, get yourself a colouring book for adults. Not only will it allow you to come to terms with the whole ‘being an adult’ thing, it will relax you no end. And with exam season fast approaching, what could be better?

Image Credits: Header (albastrica mititica), Image 1 (Will Tucker), Image 2 (Calsidyrose/Flickr)