A daughter who colors

"It takes a good while to color one of these things in completely—a few hours, I’d say—and there’s something very satisfying about watching the color slowly spread across the page, about seeing your thought and effort create a tangible, pretty thing at a reasonable, predictable pace. This rarely happens in life." - Julie Beck in "The Zen of Adult Coloring Books," www.atlantic.com

The daughter who turns child again when faced with adult coloring books is out of the house, out of town and won't be back until the weekend. That is when she resumes her coloring pace, her months-old hobby that took off at about the same time when these books became the hottest things in bookstores and online auctions.

I guiltily riffled through her collection of coloring materials (pencils, crayons, markers) and books to take some shots because I admire how she chooses her colors and puts them together to create jewels for the eyes. Hmmm...written like a proud mama. My favorite of the lot is how she "solved" the coloring scheme for the outline of Sherlock Holmes.

Keep on coloring, Kimi, as a way out of stress and humdrum routine and into something relaxing and enriching to your inner life.

I would've killed to own art materials like these in my youth.

It's also nice to leave an area uncolored (see baby owl at bottom) for contrast.

Mr. Holmes at his address on Baker Street Photos by Babeth Lolarga

A discovery on Pioneer Street

The lady at the counter of this cafe said they've been around for over a year, but I who lives nearby, how come I never noticed it? Perhaps I've been more concerned with getting home in one piece after going through the occasional Pioneer St. traffic to even note how a new hangout had risen beside a small National Bookstore branch inside the Quad Alpha building.

Before the rains we've been experiencing this weekend came, it felt like summer had changed its mind and decided to return, with its heat affecting people who are already natural hotheads. Ice coffee for me was called for with passable ensaymada (is it brioche in English? someone help me on this one). There were tables with a view of the street, and the decorator chose well to have amber bottles lined up, a touch of green and some pebbles in a tray.

No, I haven't been bitten by the adult coloring book addiction that afflicts my eldest daughter. I bought this at the cafe's mother company, National Bookstore. This is meant as a gift to my husband Rolly who's turning 65 in less than a month and who has found new fulfillment in tending a pocket garden that has remained a work in progress. Pretty much like our marriage, I hasten to add. Photos by Babeth Lolarga

Coloring is for all

This “Peter Pan market” has roots in publishing, beyond coloring books (the growth in sales of children’s and young-adult books to much older readers has been well documented), but it is far from confined to that arena.

Summer camps for adults, for example, have also gone from curiosity to viable enterprise. Following a near-death experience, Fidget Wigglesworth (birth name: Levi Felix), then the vice-president of a successful dot-com, turned off his phone and went backpacking for two and a half years with his partner, Brooke Dean; when they returned, in 2012, they founded Camp Grounded, a “Digital Detox” experience for which campers relinquish their electronic devices and engage instead in stargazing and sing-alongs...
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“Coloring is so accessible,” she told me. “It unleashes the creativity we all have in a way that’s quite safe.” - Adrienne Raphel, "Why Adults Are Buying Coloring Books (for Themselves)" found in today's www.newyorker.com

Kimi's "book" and her tentative strokes

By coincidence, my eldest child Kimi (no longer a child, really, she's 30) Kimi came home a few hours ago from National Bookstore with something that would "chillax" her from her online work: a coloring book. Her fear is she might get addicted to coloring books and not get any official work finished. Nah, Kimi has a Kai to support so she has to balance work and play.

Curly Kai wasn't going to be outdone. I pulled out a "spoiled" rubbercut print that I had done when I went to art school at the University of the Philippines Baguio and a tin box full of broken or used oil pastels and pencils, still not all dried up (keep 'em sealed always). One of our electives in the Fine Arts program was printmaking (then taught by Manolo Sicat).

Like I wrote in an earlier blog, I like partnering with Kai--this time I gave the given (not a blank canvas paper as I did over a month ago) and it's her turn to fill up the places and spaces with colors.

When I left her less than 30 minutes ago, she was still at it.

God bless James Barrie's eternal boy Peter Pan and whoever invented the adult coloring book. Also grandmas who don't immediately throw old works away. My rubbercut that has lemons and strawberries for its subject now has a life of its own, and it isn't wholly mine but Kai's, too.

Our curly-haired colorist giving life to an old black and white print Photos by Babeth Lolarga