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Adult Coloring Book Inspired Arm Design!

Last week was the first time I had set foot in a real bookstore in a long time.  Since I moved 5 years ago from living 5 minutes from a Barnes and Noble to 30 minutes away, I just haven’t browsed book stores like I used to.  Nowadays I’m either at the library, or ordering books on Amazon which arrive for free within 2 days.

I have of course seen the adult coloring book craze spread across social and traditional media, but had no idea how huge it has become until I went to a book store.  The amount of shelf space dedicated to adult coloring books was staggering to me!  There was more than one separate rows of them, there were at least 3 stand-alone kiosks full of them, and a huge section of the bargain books was nothing but adult coloring books.  This doesn’t even count the racks and racks of colored pencils and markers!  I have yet to purchase an adult coloring book, but I must admit I was a little tempted.  I bought a new blank sketchbook instead, and decided to paint this arm design, inspired by the current adult coloring book craze!


Here are a couple photos of it in progress, below.  I started with a generous coat of Wolfe white where I knew I wanted the design to be left un-colored.  I then went over the entire arm and hand creating the line art, using Wolfe black and a #1 or #2 round Loew-Cornell brush:

I filled in the design next, using my wide range of other brands and colors.  This was a different process for me, because I always save my outlining for last when painting.  So, it was interesting to create the design in outlines first, and then go in and fill everything in.  It reminded me why I outline last…it makes for much cleaner color separations and speeds things up a LOT. But the point of adult coloring books is not to be fast, but to relax and enjoy the process, right?
  
I used my Global pearl blue for the background which I think gave it a nice contrast, not only in the color, but in the sheen.  Below you can see my finished hand, next to the original sketch in my new sketchbook!

This was a fun little painting exercise…thanks so much for stopping by, and happy painting!! 🙂