Colouring + drawing

For the Arts and Technology Festival at my school, I was asked to draw a number of illustrations that would be used for colouring competition.

When I was brainstorming ideas, I realised one thing that led the outcomes to a different direction; that I didn’t really like the concept of colouring for competition. I have seen many colouring books that have very detailed illustrations, but to be honest, I think just colouring in a provided image doesn’t make people imagine or come up with an original, distinctive works. However, handling a white blank paper and asking people to draw something with an imagination is not going to work. Also, there is no way of judging people’s colourings unless you assess the colouring techniques, which contradicts the main purpose of the competition – to encourage people in a wide range of age to participate.

So I decided to draw one figure on each paper, total 4 sheets of paper. Each figure represents an action or a catalyst that questions participants what is happening in the illustration. There is a blank space surrounding the figure, allowing participants to draw and colour in their own world. Through the study into design at school, I have learnt that human becomes active and motivated if there is a need to solve a problem – in this case, to make sense in the illustration by reasoning through drawing and colouring. This makes the judging in the competition easier, because the variety of ideas added to the identical initial illustration becomes a significant factor.