Sugar Skull Coloring

I recently went to an adult coloring book party, which is a fantastic idea by the way.  I believe the general consensus was that coloring is relaxing and fun, but non us would take the time to do it on our own. Making it a social activity is brilliant.  For an introvert like me, I loved the fact that I could bounce between socializing and being anti-social with no one being the wiser because everyone was busy coloring.

I have had Marty Noble's Sugar Skull coloring book for over a year and never touched it. Not all coloring books are equal, and in my opinion coloring books geared towards those with eclectic interests seem to have a higher percentage of poorly done pages seemingly churned out just to fill a niche.  That is not the case here.  Beautiful pictures, professional quality, I can honestly recommend this book if you like skulls and coloring.

Right before leaving for the party I had an idea.  I copied some of the pages onto watercolor paper.

I now have a laserjet after having a inkjet for many years.  I love it. Printing artsy stuff in color requires tweaking the settings to get close to inkjet quality, and the toner is expensive.  On the plus side the toner seems to last forever, and as infrequently as I printed in color my ink cartridges were always drying up anyway.  And now I can use wet mediums on images without the colors smearing.

I trimmed the watercolor paper to fit my printer tray.  Printing on watercolor paper was a little messy, the next image I copied had print from the previous page on the backside.  Maybe I could fix that by fiddling with the settings, but I just alternated printing on regular paper with the watercolor paper.  It only took running one sheet of printer paper after the watercolor to clean things up.

I started one picture with watercolor pencils, but I got tired of pressing really hard and even then the colors weren't that vibrant.  I did this one in Sharpie and Bic permanent markers . I was sure how much white space to leave or how the colors would blend. 

This is what it looks like after spraying it with rubbing alcohol. Some colors seem to spread more than others. Not surprising fine point markers spread more than ultra fine point ones. I sprayed the alcohol on by flicking it off a stiff paint brush. I think I'll get a small spray bottle for a finer even mist for next time. Also I wish I would have slowed down a bit and started with less alcohol and patiently waited for the colors to spread. Then I could have added more alcohol a little at a time as needed. After it dried I colored the eye sockets and outlines black.

Next on my list is to try the kids washable markers and see how they react with water. 

All in all a very fun little experiment, that if not for a party invite, I would never have thought of.