The Ten Steps to Create a Seasonal Colouring Page

Find out my ten steps to creating a seasonal colouring design full of November blooms and leaves.

‘Colour is a power which directly influences the soul’
Wassily Kandinsky

My Quest
Using colouring-in is a great way to fill screen breaks, be more mindful and look after your mental health, whatever your age. I’ll take you through my 10 steps to creating a glorious seasonal colouring sheet, to snuggle up with as our nights get longer in the northern hemisphere.

1. Decide on a theme
2. Find some images for reference and inspiration
3. Sketch the design
4. Start (harder than it sounds)
5. Finish (see above)
6. Test print
7. Amend
8. Print
9. Colour in
10. Enjoy

1. Decide on a theme

I love drawing flowers and leaves and watching how they change through the year. I decided I wanted to celebrate and study that by producing a design for every month of the year, with seasonal flowers and leaves that reflected the month. Now, it would be neat if I had that idea in January and the process would be more ‘straight’, but, as a recovering procrastinator, I knew if I added it to a project list to do later in January it would live there until the end of days. I often create botanical designs around funny quotes, so I wanted to make sure I drew the flowers individually so that I’d be able to reuse them for other designs.

2. Find some images for reference and inspiration

I googled ‘flowers November UK’ and ‘leaves November UK’ and looked through the list for the best, most interesting blooms that would convert well into my drawing style. For flowers I decided on Chrysanthemum, Hesperantha (which I’d never heard of but were pretty), Dahlia, and Viburnum ‘tinus’ (not ‘opulus’, which looks completely different, again, who knew!?). Then beech, oak and birch leaves.

3. Sketch

I had the layout of a small cascade around the word November in my head, so didn’t actually do a lot of sketching for this one. Although, as you can see above, my sketching is very much for my reference as I’m not sure you’d guess what the heck it was meant to be.

4. Start

Ah, starting. The hard part. Infinitely harder than coming up with the idea, moderately harder than actually finishing it—if you eventually get started, but not as hard as the chest crushing weight of feeling like I you’ve achieved nothing recently. My best advice is to start small. This helps get over the fear of failure or laziness (depending where my procrastination is coming from). I tell myself I’m only going to do something for 15 minutes, set a timer and start. It’s easy to convince myself I can’t mess it up in 15 minutes. It’s only 15 minutes!? If it’s nowhere near perfect, that’s understandable. I then usually want to continue when the time is up, or schedule in another time to continue it. It has to go in the calendar. If I had £1 for every time I convinced myself I’d remember something in my head, then forgot it, I’d be a trillionaire.

I use Adobe Fresco on my Surface Book and use my surface pen to draw directly on the screen (I still feel like I live in the future when I do it). This means the lines are consistent and each flower/leaf can be drawn on a ‘layer’, as it’s called, that I can move around freely to get the composition where I want it. If you want to go analogue you could sketch out in pencil, draw over your design in a single black pen, rub out the pencil, then scan or photocopy your finished drawing.

5. Finish

In the past I have had an infinite capacity to pixel push something into oblivion in the guise of perfection. I think it was another way of avoiding failure. If it isn’t ready, no one can judge it. Now, I estimate how long a project will take (or how long I’m willing to spend on it) and set a timer. When the time’s up, I am done—or just need to finish off the bit I’m on. It’s the timer that decides, not my endless ability to not recognize the law of diminishing returns!

The law of diminishing returns can be traced back to the 18th century, in the work of the economist Jacques Turgot (thank you Wikipedia).  It’s the principle that increasing one factor of production while keeping other factors constant will eventually result in a decrease in output. Basically, the longer you work on something, the less value you’re adding to it.

6. Test Print

This step is so important, but psychologically difficult. It’s hard enough to call a piece of creative work ‘done’, but when I cross that line it is then REALLY hard to go back and amend it when I find a fault. Ooph. I usually give it a day and schedule in the amend so it’s not so raw and my annoyance has subsided.

7. Amend

The amend needed for this one was luckily an easy fix. The little ‘bolts’ I had put in the word were too fiddly and inconsistent. Some printed with holes and some didn’t. On a professional printer at a high quality it would be fine, but who is printing out colouring pintables on a machine like that? Not me!

I went back into the file and filled in the holes, then exported it again. Huzzah!

8. Print

The great thing is I don’t need to keep an eye on how low my printer ink is running, as my colouring printables print in black and white mode. As long as I make sure it’s printing ‘actual size’, and the right orientation, it will comes out rosy. Although, I’m always surprised when stuff actually comes out of my printer when I ask it to print. Like so many, I have had printer trauma in the past, and using WiFi to connect is essentially magic that I don’t feel worthy to possess.

9. Colour In

The therapy bit! This makes up for the time spent constructing it on a screen and calms me down. I use Arteza ‘Real Brush Pens’ because you can blend them but they also have a nice bright solid colour. I have a pack of 96 so most colour needs are covered. I then went in and added a few details and highlights with my uni-ball Signo bronze and white gel pens. See the before and after below with this cool slider function.

10. Enjoy

It’s now pretty as a picture, so I might pop it up on the wall to enjoy or add it to my colouring portfolio. Also, completing/achieving something boosts your serotonin levels, so that’s grand isn’t it! Win win!

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I hope you’ve enjoyed my step by step of designing a colouring sheet. If you already love colouring in, or you are looking for a screen break (that is not actually on a screen) then I’d love it if you would join my membership for FREE and you’ll have access to this November colouring sheet for FREE along with lots of other lovely free prinatables.

If you’d rather support my small business but not join up, the colouring is available to buy in my Etsy shop in A4 and Letter size, landscape and portrait.

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