How to Find the World’s Best Coloring Book

If you have children of a certain age, or if you just happen to enjoy the therapeutic action of colouring in a nice picture, then you’ve probably at some time bought a colouring book. The problem of course with colouring books is that they often contain simple line art created solely for the purpose of colouring in. Worse still, many of the colouring books you can buy contain licensed properties that have been ripped off and poorly traced by unscrupulous publishers trying to make a quick buck.

Instead of buying a book full of sub standard art, why not use the world’s biggest repository of art to pick some really great images to colour in? The Internet is full of websites that collect art, so instead of colouring in a shaky rip off of a Disney scene, why not colour in the original? Instead of letting someone else choose 100 pictures for your child to color in, why not spend half an hour picking out ones that specifically suit their likes and dislikes?

One of the best websites for finding original black and white line art is comicartfans.com, an online community where art collectors and artists share their original art. The great thing is that this often includes black and white versions of all sorts of comic, film and advertising images, so you can see the black and white version, and the colored version too, comparing the two and giving you a template to follow, inspire you or ignore as you feel fit. If you have a son or daughter that really wants to do some serious coloring in, while at the same time subconsciously learning a few things about composition, colour balance and drawing, then you could do a lot worse than let them loose on comicartfans, or choose a few pieces yourself each week to present to them as coloring challenges.

Why not give them the black and white version, let them colour it, then show them the colored version to see how theirs compares? If theirs is better, it’s time for them to get a job as a professional artist!

Under the search filters on the site, just choose Pen and Ink as media type and that eliminates the majority of full color pieces, leaving you with thousands of fascinating pages to explore.

[Image via Russ Payne]