Review: Colorfy Coloring In App Ups the Coloring Games

August 10, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

These days there’s an app for everything, so it was only a matter of time before iPhone and Android developers jumped onto the adult coloring in craze bandwagon. The most successful adult coloring in app so far was released just last month. It’s free to download, and it’s called Colorfy.

I saw my niece playing with similar coloring games on an iPad about a year ago. But while kids can use Colorfy too, it’s aimed squarely at the grown up colorists’ market.

My first Colorfy masterpiece, and the simplest image in the Colorfy coloring in app

At the time of writing this post, the Colorfy app has an average rating of 4.5 stars out of 5 in both the iTunes store and Google Play (from thousands of reviewers), so both iPhone and Android users appear to be pretty happy with it. Although it’s definitely popular with the majority of its users, I downloaded it because I’m curious as to whether it has much in common with the kind of pencil and paper, analogue coloring in that so many of us enjoy.

How to Download Colorfy

Colorfy is free to download from the iTunes store for iPhone users, or via Google Play for Android. The developers make their money from additional in-app purchases such as extra color palettes and coloring images, but you can use the app without spending any money.

How to Use Colorfy

From a usability perspective, Colorfy is simple and well laid out. It has a ‘Library’ of coloring images, divided into six sections which each feature different types of images. These are:

Florals
Animals
Famous (based on famous paintings by Munch, Van Gogh, Klimt, Monet)
Mandalas
Oriental
Exotic

Users may scroll through designs and select one that appeals to them. Those with a small padlock symbol next to them need to be purchased before you can color them in, but there are plenty of free images available too.

Screenshot – scrolling through the Colorfy libraries

After selecting an image by tapping on it, a palette of colors is revealed. To ‘color in’, users select a color from a palette by tapping on it, and then apply the color by zooming in and tapping on the area of the coloring in picture they want to apply it to. Then tap on another color, and tap on the image again to fill in another section, and so on until you’re done.

When you’re finished, with a single button click you can share your designs via Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Google Plus or Twitter. The image is exported with a white border and the Colorfy logo at the bottom, as shown on the images in this post.

Screenshot - the standard Colorfy color palette

Colorfy app Screenshot – the standard color palette

But is it really coloring in?

Good question. It’s certainly ‘filling in with color’. Imagine having a magic painting finger where you only need to point at the leaves on a tree and they all turn green, and that sums up the experience. Then you fine tune your magic finger, point to the sun and make it purple. Or teal. Or even conventional old yellow.

The Colorfy app has little to do with the action of coloring in, so if it’s the soothing shush of your shading pencil moving back and forth across soft paper that floats your boat, odds are that this app will not be your thing.

If, however, the thing that thrills you about coloring in is mainly playing with color combinations, or if you’re someone who buys more than one copy of a particular coloring book to try out different colors on the same image, then you might enjoy the flexibility of the app. Colorfy has an undo button, so color choices may be changed in an instant. If color commitment is not your thing, that could be quite an attractive feature.

Colorfy app Screenshot – Van Gogh in progress

Summary

What I like most about coloring in is that it’s quite relaxing. I didn’t find Colorfy to be particularly relaxing, and as I already spend way too many hours staring at various screens throughout my day it ended up straining my eyes after a while. This was probably because I ended up zooming in and out a lot to get to smaller coloring areas on detailed pictures such as the Van Gogh.

That said, it was definitely a little bit addictive, and once I started an image I wanted to finish it. There’s something quite satisfying about ‘magicking’ a large section of color in with just the touch of a finger – minimal work and a quick reward, which no doubt accounts for much of the app’s popularity.

Of course you need to pay to expand your color palette and the available designs if you really want to get more detailed shades and images, but although I enjoyed playing around with the app, I didn’t feel compelled to go that next step and pay up. All the images on this page are free, as are the color palettes that I used.

Colorfy app Mandala design

What I enjoyed most about the app was completing a design and then playing with the background, or changing just one or two larger areas of color to see how different the image looked. This is something that cannot be done easily on paper, so if you like to experiment in this way, the app is quite freeing. The images above and below are the same, except for two large areas that I changed to black. The effect is quite striking.

The same Mandala design, with two areas changed to black

The same Mandala design and color scheme, but with two areas changed to black

If you’re a coloring in purist who enjoys the relaxation factor of coloring and subtle nuances of pencil shading, I doubt you’ll be too impressed with the blocky cartoon colors produced in this app. But if you can accept that Colorfy is essentially a more elegant version of a kids’ coloring game app, and has little in common with actual pencil and paper coloring in, it’s not a bad way to spend a few minutes here and there, creating attractive images to easily share online. It certainly feels like a more productive use of screen time than crushing candy.

What do Ryan Gosling and Benedict Cumberbatch have in common? Adult coloring in books

August 8, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

Cover of the Color Me Good Benedict Cumberbatch coloring book, alongside the man himself (photo credit: touchedmuch on Flickr under CC BY 2.0)

What do Ryan Gosling and Benedict Cumberbatch have in common – aside from being genetically blessed in both the looks and acting departments?

The unlikely answer: they are each the subject of an entire adult coloring in book.

The very cool Color Me Good series of coloring books by funky independent label ‘I Love Mel’ feature a range of famous male faces to color in, including:

Jamie Dornan;
Eddie Redmayne;
James Franco;
Benedict Cumberbatch; and
Ryan Gosling.

There are also coloring in books of stylish females, for those who prefer to deal in fashionistas, including Taylor Swift, Kate Moss, and Cara Delevingne.

If you cannot commit yourself to just one man, or woman, then one of the Color Me Good collections may be for you.

Color Me Swoon is a single coloring book featuring a huge array of famous men, including Ryan Gosling, Aaron Paul, George Clooney, Ben Affleck, James Franco, Prince Harry, Zac Efron, Bradley Cooper, Javier Bardem, Channing Tatum, David Beckham, Gerard Butler, Jake Gyllenhaal, Pharrell Williams, Tom Hardy, Ryan Reynolds, Christian Bale, Alexander Skarsgard, Patrick Dempsey, Hugh Jackman, Damian Lewis, Brad Pitt, Justin Timberlake, Benedict Cumberbatch, Wentworth Miller, Jared Leto, One Direction, Hugh Grant, Joaquin Poenix, Gary Barlow, Daniel Craig, Henry Cavill, Colin Firth, Usher, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Idris Elba, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Kevin Bacon, Ralph Macchio, John Cusack, Michael J Fox, Tom Selleck, Matt Damon, Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr, Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Michael Cera, Afam Driver, Andrew Garfield, Jason Segel, Chris O’Dowd, Jon Hamm, Jim Morrison, Russell Brand, Richard Gere, Jude Law, Will Smith, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen (phew!).

With a list like that, I’m reasonably sure that most women will find someone they’d be quite happy to spend a few hours coloring in.

There’s also a Color Me Girl Crush book, featuring female film stars (Jennifer Lawrence, Natalie Portman, Keira Knightley), pop stars (Beyonce, Adele, Lana del Rey), fashion icons (Cara Delevingne, Alexa Chung), a special 90s section (Sherilyn Fenn, Winona Ryder, Naomi Campbell), as well as stars old (Audrey Hepburn) and new (Emma Stone).

On her website, Mel Simone Elliott, the Royal College of Art graduate behind the Color Me Good series of coloring in books, says:

My work has always been influenced by pop culture, celebrity, fame, glossy magazines and the aesthetic perfection that goes hand in hand with all that stuff. The colouring books … were developed when I realised that the things we enjoyed doing as young children, such as cutting out and colouring in, would still be enjoyed by adults, if only the activity books had ‘grown up’ with us.

These books are good fun and likely to make great gifts for colorists everywhere. The quality of the illustrations makes the famous faces instantly recognisable, yet they are not too intricate for beginner ‘color-inners’ (a great term used in these books) to tackle.

The Truth About ‘Mindfulness Coloring Books’

August 8, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

Coloring in books for adults have many benefits, but one that is being increasingly reported is ‘mindfulness’. It is being claimed that coloring in is a ‘mindful’ activity, and even a form of meditation.

So first of all, what is mindfulness?

I always go back to the definition given by my long-time yoga instructor. He said that mindfulness is about being fully present in this moment in time, and not ‘reversing or rehearsing’.

Reversing means thinking about the past, and going over previous events in your mind. It means you’re focusing on something that happened 5 minutes ago, or an hour ago, or yesterday, or even years ago.

Rehearsing refers to thinking about the future. What you’re going to do, planning on doing, wanting to do. It’s making to-do lists in your head and mentally running through them, what you’ll do, how you’ll do it, what might happen, what might not.

When we’re reversing or rehearsing, we’re mentally reliving the past or projecting onto the future. This means that our minds are not really present in the here and now. We’re focused elsewhere, and missing out on a lot of what’s happening in the present moment.

Being mindful is about actively being present in the here and now.

Coloring in does not equal Mindfulness

The act of coloring in is not necessarily mindful. Mindfulness is not a designated activity, but self-awareness.

If you’re shading in the leaves on a beautifully illustrated green tree whilst mentally rehashing the argument you had with a co-worker that afternoon – you’re not being mindful. You’re reversing.

If you’re coloring in the petals of a dahlia whilst worrying about how you’re going to get the house cleaned before your in-laws turn up on the weekend – you’re not being mindful. You’re rehearsing.

Being fully present in the moment you are living, and opening all your senses up to the world around you, is what mindfulness is all about. It takes practice and time to develop, and while coloring in can be relaxing, that does not equate to mindfulness (despite what all those media reports are currently claiming).

When you catch yourself mentally wandering off into the past or the future instead of focusing on what’s before you – a coloring page, a conversation with a friend, a domestic task, or even enjoying the afternoon sun on your face and the smells of a barbeque as you walk down your street – practicing mindfulness means developing the self-awareness you need to gently bring your mind back to the present moment.

So it is possible to be mindful when you’re coloring in a picture, but there is no such thing as a ‘mindfulness coloring book’. Mindfulness does not come in the form of a book, or an activity such as coloring. It is simply about living in the present moment (though it’s not always simple to do). You can be equally as mindful at a rock concert as sitting at the kitchen table coloring in – or not. It’s all in the mind.

What is an Adult Coloring Book?

August 7, 2015 by Admin Leave a Comment

The hand-illustrated cover of Johanna Basford’s Secret Garden, currently the most popular adult coloring book on Amazon

A quick glance at the current Amazon best-seller list reveals that at this moment, a quarter of the top twenty best-selling books are coloring in books for adults. That’s five out of twenty, a huge proportion considering that just a few years ago, coloring in books in best-seller lists were unheard of.

So, what is an adult coloring book, and why do you need to know about them? Adult coloring in books are exactly what they say they are – coloring in books designed specifically for grown ups. They often feature images and designs that are more intricate than kids’ versions, as well as subject matter that is less juvenile (think less superheroes and cartoon characters).

Why are Adult Coloring Books so Popular?

You may have had the pleasure of filling in coloring books with pencils, crayons, or textas as a child, or perhaps you’ve bought them for your own or other people’s kids. They’re generally cheap to buy and a good source of entertainment, a way to settle kids down for some quiet time to focus on a play-based task that requires some concentration and helps develop motor skills.

The cover of Balance by Angie Grace, an adult coloring book featuring mandala designs

Adults, too, are now rediscovering the enjoyment of coloring in. Coloring is seen as a great way to relieve stress and tension by slowing down to enjoy a no-pressure, repetitive, enjoyable past-time that often evokes more than a hint of childhood nostalgia (read more about the benefits of adult coloring in books).

Many grown ups are also finding that unplugging from technology to enjoy a practical, hands-on activity that doesn’t tax their brain, helps them to unwind and leave other life pressures at the door for a while. Unlike many other adult hobbies, all it will cost you is a few dollars for a book and a packet of pencils, textas, or crayons.

Variety of Adult Coloring Designs

The five adult coloring in books that currently (as of 7 August, 2015) feature in Amazon’s top twenty best-sellers are good examples of the diverse types of coloring designs that are available. They are, in order of popularity:

In 6th place: Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book by Johanna Basford

In 8th place: Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest & Coloring Book by Johanna Basford

In 10th place: Adult Coloring Book: Stress Relieving Patterns by Adult Coloring Book Artists

In 15th place: Creative Haven Creative Cats Coloring Book (Creative Haven Coloring Books) by Marjorie Samat

In 16th place: Balance (Angie’s Extreme Stress Menders Volume 1) by Angie Grace

Many of the books use digitally created designs, but Scottish artist’s Johanna Basford’s Secret Garden and Enchanted Forest feature hand-drawn illustrations, which probably has something to do with their immense popularity. The beautifully rendered trees, leaves, flowers, and motifs of nature are intricate and detailed. Some have argued that the designs are too lovely to sully by coloring in, but many have dived in with their textas and produced astounding results. Basford’s website even has a coloring gallery to showcase such work.

Pattern books, such as those by Angie Grace, are also very popular, and feature repetitive designs such as mandalas and geometric shapes. Other books follow particular themes, such as animal pictures, mermaids, stained glass, or kaleidoscopes.

The variety of adult coloring in books is growing along with the demand for them, so no matter what your preference in terms of design or complexity, it’s possible to find something to help you de-stress, unwind, and recapture the simple joy of playing around with pencil on paper.

The Benefits of Adult Coloring In Books

August 6, 2015 by Admin 1 Comment

It used to be that coloring in books were something you bought to keep kids occupied at the kitchen table or on road trips. Toddlers through to teenagers have long enjoyed the pleasures of scribbling over, painting on, coloring in, or painstakingly creating masterpieces of pink, green, and orange glory.

Now grown ups are getting in on the pencil and texta action, and discovering the benefits of coloring in that they’d long since forgotten. Here are some great reasons you might like to try adult coloring in books, too.

1. Stress Release

We all lead busy lives. The pace of contemporary society means that people are working longer hours, and our attachment to mobile devices stops us from unplugging even when we leave work. Coloring in books give us an opportunity to stop, sit down, and focus on a single, simple task that requires repetitive actions that do not tax our minds. The repetitious action of coloring in can be extremely soothing and provide us with a gentle way to release stress by taking pleasure in a no-pressure activity. No deadline, no demands. Just gentle play.

2. Nostalgia

Speaking of play, you may be surprised to find that coloring in makes you feel like a kid again. The first time I tried coloring in as an adult, I couldn’t believe how quickly I was transported back to my childhood bedroom desk, where I used to use pretty much every color crayon in my yellow Crayola Caddy to fill in my coloring in books (the silver and gold crayons were always my favourites). Give it a try and prepared to regress. Coloring in is a form of play, and play isn’t just for children. It has enormous mental health benefits for all ages, and helps us to relax in a creative, unstructured way.

3. The Pleasure of Making

As knitters, woodworkers, beaders, writers, and other creative types know, there’s an immense pleasure gained from making something new and unique in the world. Even if someone else is coloring in exactly the same picture as you, nobody else in the world is going to do it the way you do. Your unique choices of color, media (pencil? crayon? texta? pasta sauce?), coloring techniques, and approach mean that you’re making something new. Emotionally, it makes you feel good. Practically, it gives you something cool to stick on the fridge and smile about every time you get out the milk.

4. Sense of Accomplishment

This is another emotional one – when you finish coloring in a picture, you get that lovely buzz of ‘woohoo!’ that accompanies finishing a job done well. Coloring in does not have to take a lot of time (though some people love it so much they spend hours at it) and it doesn’t require a hard slog to achieve a warm, fuzzy, sense of accomplishment.

5. Bonding for Parents and Kids

If you have children, then sitting down with them and a couple of coloring in books can be a great way to spend time together. While they color in superheroes and television characters, you can lose yourself in the quiet intricacies of a secret garden or mandala patterns. Spending focused time with your kids when you’re not distracted by your phone, other people, household chores, or work, helps to build stronger relationships and open up communication between you. Research has shown that boys in particular are more likely to open up and chat with you if they are engaged in another activity at the time.

So enjoy your adult coloring in time and its many benefits, ranging from stress release, nostalgia trips, and the pleasurable act of making something, to a sense of achievement and even parent-child bonding time. Coloring in helps us to remember some of life’s simpler pleasures, and encourages us to slow down to enjoy them.