When I was a little girl, I had a Barbie coloring book.  

It was a typical coloring book.  Cheap paper, simple designs.  It probably cost my mom 25 cents.  Yes, I'm SO old that coloring books cost next to nothing.  About the same price as a gallon of gas in those days.  

TRUTH BOMB INCOMING:

Shh.  Don't tell anyone.  I didn't actually like Barbies.  I much preferred my brother's Roy Rogers coloring book. 

I know.  Most of you are wondering who Roy Rogers is.  THIS is Roy Rogers and his beautiful golden palomino, Trigger...

TRUTH BOMB INCOMING: 

It wasn't Roy I was in love with.  It was Trigger.  So I colored all the pages in that coloring book that included Trigger.  And all the pages in the Barbie coloring book that included her Barbie horse.  And pretty much nothing else.

Just me and my crayons and that coloring book.

I grew up and actually went to art school.  Much of what I produced during that time was small scale--like those coloring books.  Just me and my charcoals and oil paints and paper and canvases.  

But on occasion, we, as art students, had an opportunity to collaborate on a larger project.  One in particular involved the creation of a series of sculptures produced with plaster bandages applied to live dummies.  (Those dummies WERE actually pretty dumb to volunteer for it.  We went through a lot of bandages and a LOT of Vaseline and lost a lot of body hair!). 

We worked for weeks, then participated in a show to celebrate the opening of a new gallery in our town. 

Our collaborative effort was a huge hit at the gallery opening and we, as a group, came out of it with new respect for one another.

The lesson?  Creating together can be massively rewarding, and a whole lot of fun.

But my Barbie coloring book could never accomplish that.  Not even if all my friends were gathered around a table, each of us coloring in our own Barbie coloring books--or The Jetsons coloring book, or The Flintstones coloring book, or--for my grandson--a Bluey coloring book.  

While coloring in a quiet corner can be cathartic, even therapeutic, there can also be something isolating about one person, one book, one box of crayons.

In order to give coloring the power to connect, size matters.

Giant coloring posters are designed for collaboration, for gathering, for connecting, for socializing over a wall-sized or table-sized piece of paper.  It's an invitation!:  

"Here!  Paper!  Crayons!  Markers!  Colored Pencils!  Watercolor Paints!  Come, color with us!"

Yes, come, color with us. 

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Artistic Chaos Ink