Thinking back on the many Christmases that I had as a kid, I particularly remember one, when my sister and I got, as a minor present from an aunt, a box of 64 color crayons to share and a coloring book each. We both loved to color and to get such a box of so many crayons thrilled me with joy. In the past we had gotten crayon boxes of 24 and 32, so we were really really excited to get a box with 64 different colored crayons. We couldn’t wait until all of the other present openings had ceased, so we could get down to using all those beautiful, pristine crayons in our coloring books.
Crayons and coloring books were our first introductions into doing art, of course once school started we no longer colored in coloring books, but continued to using crayons for drawing creations of our own. I really credit crayons for starting my lifelong love of art and color.
In university I majored in elementary education and in an education class about art, I was shocked when they heavily criticized coloring books, saying that they killed creativity in children. I still think that is horse shit. Not only does coloring help develop hand coordination in little kids, and even though they are supposed to “stay in the lines”, coloring is still creative in having kids choose what colors they want to use in the picture.
That reminds me of the old joke about the teacher who became worried about one of her students, who, no matter what the subject of the art drawing was, always just turned in assignments colored with black only. The teacher feared deep psychological problems in the child, so she had him sent to a counselor. When the counselor carefully questioned the child, the child told him, that black was the only crayon he had.
Anyway, crayons and coloring books didn’t stifle my creativity or that of Nancy my famous sister, who has become internationally famous with her creative knitting techniques (search: Nancy Marchant knitting).
View my paintings at: davidmarchant2.ca
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