Blog post from Art Relief International's outreach curriculum with Burmese migrant students
Creating An Original Coloring Book
"Yesterday, at Thai Freedom House, we started creating a coloring book! We have been inspired by the massive world trend of adult-level coloring books and want to help Thai Freedom House generate income with a project they have been wanting to create for a while. We conceived of this project with the direction of the Thai Freedom House founder, and are projecting a theme of "Freedom On My Mind" for this project. When people color in the final book, we want people to be able to relax and escape through coloring.
First, we had to finally vote on the title and cover design for our "Where I Am Now" zine, which we have spent the past 5 weeks working on. Everyone voted for the numbered title design and cover design they liked best. Everyone was very diplomatic and there were no hurt feelings when their design didn't win.
To start creating the pages and content for the coloring book, we needed to start learning some key aspects of visual language. We went through a drawing/line exploration exercise, where students had to fill boxes with lines, squares, circles, and triangles in different amount: 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32. The design elements had fit inside the small templates and meet the required number, to exercise the SPACE that needs to be around each line/object. The most important part of a coloring book is having the space to color.
We wanted the kids to move away from scribbling and using tone when drawing, because the coloring book needs only graphic lines to make an image. We will work up to what each person's page will hold--What image? What message? etc., next week. We're looking forward to making this second publication with TFH, and to mass printing our zine from the previous weeks soon!
Look out for both publications in the TFH Free Bird Cafe shop, and on the TFH and ARI blogs and websites. Please stay tuned!
art-relief.blogspot.com
-Hallie"