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A coloring book (British English: colouring-in book, colouring book, or colouring page) is a type of book containing line art to which people are intended to add color using , , , paint or other artistic media. Traditional coloring books and coloring pages are printed on paper or card. Some coloring books have Perforation so their pages can be removed from the books and used as individual sheets. Others may include a Narrative line and so are intended to be left intact. Today, many children's coloring books feature popular characters. They are often used as promotional materials for motion pictures and television. Coloring books may also incorporate other activities such as connect the dots, and other . Some also incorporate the use of stickers.
Early examples include Der Kleine Zeichner und Maler by publisher Carl August Friese in 1811,Rickards, Maurice (2000) Colouring book Encyclopedia of Ephemera Routledge p102 Ziehnert, Widar (c. 1835) Neues Bilder-Allerlei für gute Kinder, The Young Artist’s Coloring Guide series The Young Artist’s Coloring Guide (c. 1850) NY: Chs. Magnus and Couleru (1856) Nouveau Cours élémentaire de Coloris et d'Aquarelle. Paintbooks and Color Dr. Andreas Schwarz Nouveau Cours élémentaire europeana.eu The McLoughlin Brothers popularized the coloring book in the 1880s when they produced The Little Folks' Painting Book, in collaboration with Kate Greenaway. They continued to publish coloring books until the 1920s, when the McLoughlin Brothers became part of the Milton Bradley Company.
Other pioneers in the genre include Louis Prang Prang's Outline Pictures with Directions for Coloring, L. Prang & Co. 1888 and Richard F. Outcault. Outcault authored Buster's Paint Book in 1907, featuring his character of Buster Brown, which launched a trend to use coloring books to advertise a wide variety of products, including coffee and pianos. Until the 1930s, books were designed with the intent for them to be painted instead of colored. Even when came into wide use in the 1930s, books were still designed so that they could be painted or colored.
As a predominantly non-verbal medium, coloring books have also seen wide applications in education where a target group does not speak and understand the primary language of instruction or communication. Examples of this include the use of coloring books in Guatemala to teach children about hieroglyphs and Mayan artist patterns, and the production of coloring books to educate the children of farm workers about "the pathway by which agricultural pesticides are transferred from work to home." Coloring books are also said to help to motivate students' understanding of concepts that they would otherwise be uninterested in.
They have been used as teaching aids for developing creativity and knowledge of geometry, such as in Roger Burrows' Altair Designs.
Since the 1980s, several publishers have produced educational coloring books intended for studying graduate-level topics such as anatomy and physiology, where color-coding of many detailed diagrams are used as a learning aid. Examples include The Anatomy Coloring Book and subsequent book series, by Wynn Kapit and Lawrence Elson, published by HarperCollins (1990s) and Benjamin Cummings (2000s). The Anatomy Coloring Book, Wynn Kapit and Lawrence M. Elson. HarperCollins, 1993, second revised and expanded edition, There are some examples of educators using coloring books to better explain complicated topics, like programming.
Some publishers have specialized in coloring books with an explicit educational purpose, both for children and for adults. The books often have extensive text accompanying each image. These publishers include Dover Books, Really Big Coloring Books, Running Press, and Troubador Press.
In 1968 the Black Panther Coloring Book began circulating in the United States; the book features black men and children killing pigs dressed as police officers. It was argued to have been made not by the Black Panther Party but by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's COINTELPRO program to discredit the organization, a claim which other sources dispute.Some commentators have alleged that the book was a piece of FBI agitprop. See Others accept the text as genuine. See
The term and concept of the "coloring book" was adopted by the feminism artist Tee Corinne as a tool of female empowerment. Corinne made pencil sketches of female genitalia, which she then inked and printed on card stock. She published a collection of them in 1975 as The Cunt Coloring Book.
In August 2011, American publisher Really Big Coloring Books released We Shall Never Forget: The Kids Book of Freedom detailing specific drawings in the accounting of SEAL Team 6 shooting Osama bin Laden in his home. The book was criticized by some for portraying Muslims in a negative manner. The company has also published The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids, Ted Cruz To The Future (2013) and a book about President Barack Obama's first inauguration (2008).
While coloring books for adults were popular in the early 1960s, those were satirical works rather than the therapeutic works that define the adult coloring book form today. The first commercially successful adult coloring books were published in 2012 and 2013, and began increasing in popularity in 2015. In April of that year, Johanna Basford brought out two coloring books titled Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest, which became the top sellers at Amazon. By November it was reported by Amazon.ca that the books were the most top wished for items with nine of the top ten consisting of such books. Also that month Crayola began offering its own line of adult coloring books. Publishers also began packaging some of their colouring books with pencils and CDs to support the enjoyment of this activity. Sales in the US continued to grow in early 2016, but began to fall by the end of the year, with fewer newcomers trying this pastime.
Adult coloring books are offered digitally, via ebooks, digital apps, and coloring pages that can be colored online or downloaded. Users' digital work-products can be saved and shared. Dominic Bulsuto theorized that the trend of digital purchasing helped the spread of the genre, noting that the relative anonymous nature of the act allowed customers to feel more secure perusing books they would be embarrassed to buy in real life.
By 2016, Faber-Castell, a worldwide color pencil supplier, was reported to have trouble keeping up with demand for their products due to the craze, while Blue Star Coloring sold over a million titles in one year.
Criticism
Author Susan Jacoby has criticized adult coloring books, along with the popularity among adults of young adult fiction, as "an artifact of a broader cultural shift. And that cultural shift is a bad thing". She believes the Great Recession has contributed to this shift, as adults unable to find employment have moved home to live with their parents. New York City futurist and blogger Dominic Basulto describes adult coloring book fans as "stuck in The Shallows, mindfully coloring books to counter the existential angst of living in a digital society". He goes on to say that "...the endless Internet parade of silly cat photos, infantile comments and adolescent Internet meme has dumbed us down". However, Basulto ultimately sees the trend as a good thing, noting that adults are increasingly buying books they want to buy, rather than books they are supposed to buy.
Coloring book software
Coloring books can also be found digitally in the form of coloring book websites and applications. Coloring book software often has features such as color mixing, , and paintbrush tools that allow for more accurate and detailed drawings than regular coloring books.
Notable artists
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