Exhibition of Colouring

This was part of yesterday’s Colouring exhibition. The work is from an adult colouring course, all done using ordinary coloured pencils. The photo doesn’t show a lot of the work clearly because the glass frames took away the contrast and detail.

Most of the work is on postcard size card. The tutor designed most of the cards, based on plant forms, and used them to teach different colouring techniques. She says there are 22 different ways to colour. It’s interesting to see several identical designs which have been coloured in different ways.

One of the glass framed set - the last one on the right -has different designs invented by the students. There were two strong themes on the course - colouring techniques plus close study of plants. Several sessions took place at Eden - the ideal place to study plants. After that the course sessions took place in the village hall, which is why we had our exhibition there.

We had also set up a table and chairs and some starting points so that people visiting could have a go at colouring. This backfired on us a bit because adults with children would come in, and the children instantly gravitated towards the colouring table and got busy. Their parents couldn’t drag them away so left them there and said they would come back later. We really didn’t want people to have the attitude ‘coloured pencils are only for children’, but anyone coming into the room and seeing only children colouring would think that! We managed to lose the children eventually and got three adults colouring. It was interesting to see how confident the children were to colour, and how nervous the adults were. But we really didn’t want yo be in a ‘crèche’ situation, and it was disappointing how some parents ‘used’ us as a free childminding service!