November's FreeColoring Page & A Request for Some Feminist Coloring Enthusiasts!
*Any links to supplies found on Amazon are affiliate links. Should you decide to bring home an art tool I’m talking about and purchase it through the links found here, a few pennies of that purchase are distributed to me. It isn’t much, but it (slowly) adds up—it’s a lovely way to support the content that I create, and it comes at no cost to you, which is awesome, too. Thanks, in advance, to anyone who supports my art in this way; I really appreciate it!
 |
| Click HERE to get started on Have Color Will Travel's free-coloring-of-the-month page for November! |
Well, "new" may not be the right word to describe November's free Have Color Will Travel digital download IF you have been following/reading my blog for a while. For those who have only recently started following my work, I was commissioned by the Texas Lutheran University Women's Studies Program in February 2017 to create this drawing as the centerpiece of their Feminist Coloring Party event held March 21, 2017 in Seguin, Texas (to read all about that momentous event click HERE). The resulting page, your November free-coloring-of-the-month, was also the catalyst for the project that I have been devoting most of my creative energies towards, my next full-sized coloring experience, Feminism Is For Everyone: A Feminist Coloring Book of the Signs from the 2017 Women's March.
My work on my new project has been slow going in comparison to Doodled Blooms, my first full-sized coloring book, but as of this blog post I am about halfway finished with the 25 original drawings I have planned for this book. All of which has me thinking about the most difficult part of creating a book: the cover.
As I have been drawing the images for Feminism Is For Everyone this past year, always in the back of my mind are ideas about what the cover of my book should look like, both the front and the back. While the front cover is still something I am thinking on, after much internal debate (I am a big fan of talking to myself, weighing pros & cons), I have decided, most definitely, that I need YOUR help, my readers, the folks coloring my drawings, to make the back cover of my dreams for this feminist coloring book.
The idea for Feminism Is For Everyone was born out of a gathering of all sorts of folks expressing their creativity and what feminism means to them, and that is what I would like the back cover of this coloring book to express. So, with this month's free-coloring-of-the-month page I am also putting out into the universe a hope that y'all will download this page, add your creativity to mine with all your gorgeous colors, and also make your mark on this new chapter in the history of feminism we are experiencing right now by creating a sign of your very own in the middle of the page (I would love it if you added your city, state, and first name at the bottom, too!) and then send a high resolution photo or scan of your masterpiece back to me so that it can become a piece of the tapestry of creativity and feminist thought that I am envisioning the back cover of my coloring book to be.
If the idea for the back cover of my feminist coloring book sounds like the exact same idea that I used on the back cover of Doodled Blooms, well then you are understanding my vision completely! I tossed around a wide variety of alternative layout plans for the cover of Feminism Is For Everyone, but I kept coming back to what I love and am most proud of in the creation of Doodled Blooms - the back cover being a quilt-like tapestry showing the creativity of colorists of all ages (7 years to 77 years!) and backgrounds. I can think of no better idea for the cover of a feminist coloring book, can you??
So, this blog post and this free-coloring-of-the-month page is a call out for folks who would like to have their art, their ideas be a part of my feminist coloring book, Feminism Is For Everyone. If you have colored this image before back when I released this page as a free download in March of 2017, I would love it if you submitted your work for the cover! If you have only just discovered Have Color Will Travel and my illustrations and would like to be a part of my feminist project, I would love for you to bring your creativity to mine and submit your finished coloring to be a part of the back cover, too! Please email high resolution scans and/or photos to mjflowergirl@gmail.com or if you are local, I would love to scan your original with my scanner (and I will of course give your coloring masterpiece back to you once I've got it in 1200dpi - I promise!).
From my previous publishing experience I know that I will be able to include 20 full color submissions. That being said, I am a little nervous about even receiving enough submissions to create the cover of my dreams for this coloring book. This illustration is very dense, will probably take folks some time to color, AND the ideas within feminism are very personal, political issues - folks may not want to share in the creation of this coloring book's back cover with the same enthusiasm that they did Doodled Blooms and its back cover tapestry of creativity.
But, the possibility of folks shying away from this project is a risk I am willing to take in order for this to become the coloring book I want to make - a book full of hope, color, determination, doggedness, resilience, and creativity. I've got my fingers crossed that I can find 20 willing, creative and colorful folks to join me in some feminist coloring. But, even if being a part of Feminism Is For Everyone's cover is not for you, please download this page, color something for free and give yourself the gift of some no-rules creative time. This page is my gift to all for the month of November, regardless; thank you for your readership and for your creative contributions to the world:)
 |
| A work-in-progress pic I took at the Texas Lutheran University Women's Studies' Feminist Coloring Party on March 21, 2017. Colorist: Kelsey Cooper rocking a Tombow Dual Brush Pens rose palette! |
Comments
Post a Comment