The colouring poster is a personal project that was inspired by my friend Maja and her two lovely sons. The poster is a game that encourages parents to spend time together with their kids. It is full of stories and details to explore. The poster size is 100x60 cm, and here it is in full glory.
The idea of the giant colouring posters is not new: there are a variety of posters one can buy online. However, many of them tend to be enlarged versions of regular-sized colouring pages - easy to stay within the lines, but with not so much going on on them. On the contrary, I aimed to create a poster with a myriad of details: inhabited by many characters living their lives. I believe that children like to find and explore small details. They are curious and enjoy inventing stories behind the image they colour. Kids have fun even if, from the grown-ups’ point of view, the colouring result looks “not quite accurate”.
I aimed to make a poster about a city, so I started with its map. It was a puzzle: I wanted to bring up different aspects of urban life while keeping the area reasonable and safe. For example, it was unacceptable for me to show children playing near the railways - I took it quite seriously. The other task was to find the proper scale. So, I made some iterations - fortunately, my friend's sons were willing to test my hypotheses.
Once the city was built, it was time to inhabit it. It took a while, and I enjoyed the process. Here I would like to thank my friends and family for their brilliant ideas about what could happen on the streets.
Firstly I drew the buildings and people with a pencil on paper - to keep the scale consistent and to see how they work together in full size. And after that, I drew clean with all the small details digital.
Ta-da! The colouring poster is ready! It's priceless to see the result of your work in real life. And it's doubly rewarding to see how much children (and adults) enjoy it. Please, let me know if you also want to try colouring - I'll set it up : )
