**UPDATE: I’ve upped my game and am now producing this coloring book with a printing vendor! Entwined is now a self-published perfect-bound book printed on 60# paper, wrapped in a thick, glossy cover, and even has its own ISBN number! Oh you fancy, huh?! **
Big news! I’ve been working on this big baby for the past two months, and can finally show it to you! I’ve created a coloring book for adults, called Entwined! It’s available for sale in my Etsy shop and I’m so excited about it! You may have noticed some of the drawings on my Instagram photos or previous blog posts. Here’s the description from the Etsy listing, sprinkled with some photos of the book:
FACT: Coloring is not just for kids. Immersing yourself in a creative activity is good for your brain, and coloring gives you some much needed me-time to crawl inside your head and spend some time up there.
This coloring book contains 20 illustrations made specifically for coloring, and each page is printed one-sided to avoid bleeding between pages. The book is 8.5 x 11 inches, and is professionally printed and perfect-bound with a thick, glossy cover.
The artwork was all drawn by me on paper first, and then recreated digitally, and was inspired by vintage lace and hand-painted Turkish tiles.
The book is printed on thick 60# paper and can be used with a variety of coloring materials, though my personal favorite is Prismacolor coloring pencils!
Whether you’re an adult or a kid, a woman or a man, an artist or an engineer—whoever you are, I hope this coloring book brings you some relaxation and a creative outlet in a sometimes stressful life. So chill out, unwind, and relax with a coloring book!
If you’d like to share your work with me and your fellow colorists, post your snapshots on Instagram and include @might_could and the hashtag #entwinedcolor.
I hope you get a chance to check it out, and I’d love to send you one if you enjoy coloring or know someone who does! Each pattern in the book was first drawn freehand with pencil on paper, and then vectorized digitally in Illustrator for clean, crisp lines, and perfect symmetry. Here are a few of the original pencil pattern drawings:
And here’s a process shot of my artboards when I was redrawing the patterns digitally—you can see the paper sketches underlaid under some of the linework:
Once all the patterns were completed, I printed one of my favorites, and colored it in with Prismacolor colored pencils. Here’s that page that I used for the cover of the coloring book:
And that was the process! I’ll let you in on a teeny tiny secret… my next class is going to be on exactly how I made these patterns, from the initial pencil sketch, to specific Illustrator techniques for using geometry and angles to create symmetry. It sounds a little boring but BOY did it save me a lot of time and wasted effort once I figured these techniques out. And they can be applied to any type of illustration, not just patterns! I think it will be super helpful to anyone interested. Look for that in to come in May!
Until then, happy coloring!
