Adult Coloring Book

First of all… yes, I’m at home. And yes, I’m procrastinating. I’m so sorry, dear work, research, and… similar stuff :(.

How am I procrastinating –besides writing a blog post, of course–? The answer is… coloring!

A friend *hi, Jen!* introduces me to this new addictive activity. It was addictive when I was a child, but then I moved on to drawing and painting, the more ‘grown-up’ stuff :p. The problem with drawing or painting is that sketching takes quite some time. Most of the time I abandoned my drawing project in the middle of the sketching stage.

I actually knew about the hype of coloring book for adults quite some time ago. I was like, “Awesome!” but didn’t really do anything about it. Just recently, my friend was really excited when she saw a huge collection of this kind of books in Kinokuniya, a bookstore, in Singapore. Hence, I was too :). I bought some and brought them back to home, introduced them to my family. Now they are also addicted :D.

I think –correct me if I’m wrong– it all started with Secret Garden by Johanna Basford. But then a lot of artists follow her suit. Including a local Indonesian artist who publishes a similar book with Balinese drawings/patterns. I bought Secret Garden (postcard edition) and Enchanted Forest, the sequel, at Kinokuniya in Singapore. We found the one with 70 designs full of cats at Kinokuniya in Jakarta, while the ‘local’ version, Bali, was found at Gramedia in Bogor.

Coloring. With patterns and drawings designed for adults. It’s advertised as something to help people de-stress, which I really need considering my line of work *research, people, is so stressful! ;)*. For me it’s a way to get my right brain to work, balancing it’s load with the left side, which works most of the time for my research activity. It’s also a nice activity for my family to spend some time together, while chatting and catching up stories.

So, without further ado, here are the results…

Can you guess which one is by whom –me, my sister or my mom–? 😉