St. Charles Parish: Adults colorers make more than pretty pictures

Intent on filling in every spot and, of course, staying within the lines on images ranging from little bears to cosmic or intricate patterns, these artists at St. Charles Parish Library have joined a national craze.

It’s Zen and the art of crayoning for adults, allowing them to bring more calmness into their world by de-stressing from the rigors of today’s more pressured life juggling work and family life.

The color flows through pens or crayons, as well as each individual’s desire to make a unique piece of art.“It’s therapeutic,” said Rayna Sardegna of Destrehan, who has attended several of the library crayon sessions. “Some people enjoy exercising or yoga to meditate, and coloring is one of them for me.”

Crayoning also fits Sardegna’s love for artsy things.“I sing and loved music, and that’s how I calm down,” she said, which is important to the biology pre-medicine major. “I indulge my creativity. As a college student, life can get really chaotic and you need that.”

Sardegna is apparently not the only one dealing with daily stress, but she’s also not the only one having fun either.Every session she’s attended has been packed, which Lauren Campo Pitz, St. Charles Parish Library’s public relations and adult programming librarian, confirmed and more sessions are scheduled.Julie Cancienne, West Regional librarian and avid colorer, said the adult coloring craze has been growing in recent years and she attended the first local program at East Regional in Destrehan.

“It was a fun, relaxing hour spent coloring and visiting with other participants,” Cancienne said. “Coloring is a childhood activity that I’ve never stopped enjoying.”Crayola – known to just about everyone for its crayons and coloring books for children – wasn’t behind the trend, but it jumped in with its own line of adult coloring books called, “Color Escapes.” They’re tailored to the “grownup colorer” who tends to frame and hang their work so the coloring books have themes like “Whimsical Escapes” or “Folk Art Escapes.”

Admittedly, Sardegna was hesitant “because a bunch of adults in one room coloring kind of sounds weird.” But that was until she got to know the people and one in particular .“It was kind of strange in the beginning, but then you make friends,” she said. “I actually met my boyfriend, Nick, at a coloring session.”

Color her happy.

The two have been together five months and still coloring together.

“I’m going to keep him around if I don’t bug him too much with my colorful pictures,” she mused.For Sardegna, the calming effect of coloring is also a break from what she calls “adulting” or simply dealing with her world as an adult.

She’s a regular at the crayoning sessions and particularly after she discovered she can color inside the lines.“You can get really creative with patterns,” she said. “You see colors that go together, and the pictures to color can be simplistic or elaborate.”

She especially likes making something beautiful.One of them turned out to be her boyfriend of five months, the image in her life whom she met at one of these coloring sessions. He comes with her to the sessions, where Sardegna said he has gotten into intricate patterns and seriously chooses his color schemes, as well as decides if the outer colors will be lighter and get darker working toward the inside of the picture.

“All of our brains are uniquely made that way to see certain color preferences or designs,” she said. “Maybe I don’t like baby puke green. That’s makes us unique. We all like different things.”

As grownups are also recapturing their youth through crayoning, they’re also discovering Crayons are growing up, too.

Crayon’s “Name the New Color Contest” has resulted in the addition of more eclectic colors like in recent years like Mango Tango, Banana Mania, Macaroni and Cheese, Inch Worm, Wild Blue Yonder, Fuzzy Wuzzy Brown, Manatee and even Outer Space.

Three adult coloring events are scheduled: West Regional Library (105 Lakewood Dr. in Luling) at 2 p.m. Dec. 12 – theme of the coloring sheets is ugly Christmas sweaters, Christmas trees and winter scenes; the Paradis Branch, 307 Audubon St., at 11 a.m. Dec. 16; East Regional Library, 160 W. Campus Dr., at 6 p.m. Dec. 16. All materials will be provided.

 

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