Outside the Lines: An Artists' Coloring Book for Giant Imaginations

by Souris Hong-Porretta

Now a New York Times bestseller!

Just add color!

For anyone who loves creativity and contemporary art, or who simply loves the joy of coloring, comes Outside the Lines, a striking collection of illustrations from more than 100 creative masterminds, including animators, cartoonists, fine artists, graphic artists, illustrators, musicians, outsider artists, photographers, street artists, and video game artists. With contributions from Keith Haring, AIKO, Shepard Fairey, Exene Cervenka, Keita Takahashi, Jen Corace, Ryan McGinness, and more, Outside the Lines features edgy and imaginative pieces ready for you to add your own special touch.

Genres: Art, Colouring Books, Nonfiction, Colouring, Adult Colouring Books

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2013

About the author

Souris Hong-Porretta is an art enthusiast, idea enabler, and yay-maker. She blogs about art and culture at Hustler of Culture and waxes poetic about kids and creativity at Tiny Iron Fists. She lives in Los Angeles with her zany family.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps you are like me: you loved coloring as a kid, and you loved doing “projects” like making lanyards and painting rocks. And now you scrapbook and collect pipe cleaners and felt pieces and beads and baubles of all colors and sizes, in your lifelong attempt to be creative and express yourself through art. This is the perfect book for you!

Author Souris Hong-Porretta has taken incredibly creative works from many artists and transformed them into black-and-white pictures all ready for you to wield that set of colored pencils and glitter pens that have been languishing in your craft boxes. (Look at the cover of the book: on the right you see the black-and-white template, and on the left you see what it could look like after your color it.) There are over a hundred illustrations, and they come from an impressive lists of artists, including Keith Haring, Amy Kaufman, Laurie Lipton, Marc Scheff, and others.

But here’s the best part: even if you aren’t the coloring type, this is just a great collection of contemporary art. The selections, which come from animators, cartoonists, street artists, graphic artists, and other illustrators are fun, totally out-of-the-box, and will even remind some of you of the old days when “mind-bending” music and art and pop culture was ubiquitous.

Evaluation: This book would make a great gift, but be sure and buy two so you can keep one for yourself!

[Stiobhard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strange little book. I actually collect col books but they tend to be either disney books or the dover history books. The adult col books are less useful to me... though the star wars: rogue one book has beautiful ink wash illustrations... (though it was a bit too arty for most of the reviewers on amazon. as an illustrator i thought it was excellent.) This book however is an art history of contemporary artists which is interesting. But apart from Kieth Haring there are few artists or works I recognise. Its works are all very naive looking which leads me to think this would be great to accompany a museum show of these works but on its own I find myself confused and wonder where my own art fits in this artistic landscape it presents.

[Filipe Russo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Necessary, regarding more the proposal than the content.
I got the feeling the book was as good as typing drawings in google.com/images and picking the first 100 high def ones, so it kind of defeats the purpose of curating the content. I also think the diversity of styles and themes were not well represented, just take a 15min stroll in deviantart.com and you will know what I mean. I expected more HQ, manga and traditional drawings, but mostly saw the cartoon, toy-art-esque subjects that already dominate the art scene called pop surrealism in the U.S. So I wanted more than hi-fructose and got a colorless version of it, well silly me, better luck next time.

[Maddy Finch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book four stars. I loved this colouring book because it is very unique. It was an excellent idea that Souris, came up with the idea for creating a colouring book and having each colouring image from a different artist. The images for colouring were so different from ordinary colouring books. I loved this colouring book because it was so unique in so many different ways.

If you are looking for a unique colouring book that are not like many others this is for you.

[Tracey Renee Wilson-forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ive heard a lot of good things about this coloring book.Im a adult but love love love to color.Coloring books from Walmart just don't cut it for me.Ive spent tons tons of money ordering unique coloring books off line.Ive signed up for this coloring book through Goodreads and Im praying Im one of the ones to get picked to win this book.I want this book so bad!!!!!

[Qubitng · Rating 2 out of 5]

A couple of the art were basically solid black blobs and a dozen had far too much black. I haven't seen Gary Baseman's art for a long while and I still find it very cool. But as a coloring book ... I think the format is too large.

[Kimpy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is not your typical coloring book. You really need to be creative to work on most of the designs in this book. Basically, the artworks are cool and creative but most of them are very difficult to color.

[Shayna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Was not what I expected. But I gifted it to a co-worker. She absolutely loves it.

[Frederic · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't get caught up in the coloring craze, but I do like that someone produced this one using a range of contemporary art for coloring. A few of the artists are relatively well known, others less so.