Colouring in

I am looking forward to getting back into sketching and drawing and creating some original artwork in the near future. I have the challenge of tidying the whole house first, excavating through the detritus of the summer holidays! I thought I would start my artistic journey off gently with a little bit of colouring in.

I bought this beautiful book called the Secret Garden by Johanna Basford. The illustrations are lovely and so detailed. I was a little concerned about the quality of the paper as it's not the thick white paper that Usborne use in their kids colouring books, but actually it works really nicely. I'm using my favourite Staedtler Triplus fineliners to colour. The pictures are so detailed that the colouring you can see above has taken me a couple of hours already. It is very therapeutic to sit and colour in.

Needless to say, all three of my kids have decided they need new colouring books ("Detailed ones Mummy, like yours") but I would rather they were colouring in than playing on the computer or watching the TV so I think the new books will be a good investment - particularly if it means they let me colour in my book without asking if they can "help"!