Coloring outside the lines

Jman has indeed continued to work on his book he made a week and a half ago. Over the days, he gradually filled in the pages with drawings from books, videos, and whatever struck him at the time. Here's a picture that I think is based on one of his favorite books, "The Good-Night Train." I flipped through the (real) book and couldn't find a picture exactly like this one, but the style is much the same. I'm pretty sure the book was inspiration for his drawing.

About a week ago Jman and I were at a store where I saw a Wall-e coloring book I offered to get for him. He brought it home and disappeared with it. I didn't think too much about it for a while. Then I noticed that he was indeed coloring in it and drawing in it. One of the weaknesses of coloring books is that they might have a tendency to squelch your artistic creativity, seeing as how the drawing is there and all you have to do is fill in the colors.

But Jman isn't one to necessarily play by the rules. He added his own flair to the pictures he colored. Here he added a baseball cap and Frankenstein bolts to Eve, and drew in a hologram projection of the plant in a boot that she found but which was missing.
I think this one is really sweet. This is a picture of Wall-e and Eve 'dancing' in space near the mother ship Axiom. Jman paintstakingly colored the picture in, but then added his own touch: music notes! Afterall, the mostly 'non-verbal' movie was playing music while Wall-e and Eve were 'dancing with the stars!' And if you've noticed, Jman also didn't feel constrained by the coloring book's binding. He selected these two masterpieces from the coloring book, removed them from their original binding, and tried to add them to the book that he had made. Especially interesting is the fact that he placed them inside the 'covers' of the book, removing the last notebook page and putting the coloring pages just in front of that last page before trying to reassemble his book.

When I considered what Jman was doing with his coloring book, I thought about what he was 'supposed to do' with a coloring book. According to 'the rules,' he should have colored the pictures as they were drawn, using appropriate color choices (not a rainbow striped, largely pink mother ship, for example), and certainly leaving the book assembled. If he was in school or in an ABA program, his thinking and creativity would have been squelched, or 'extinguished,' as is the proper and popular terminology. He would have had the 'art project' designed and dictated by someone else. He and all the other kids in the class would have produced essentially identical and interchangeable products. It would have been very . . . boring, and mind-numbing.

But Jman isn't forced into that box. Instead, he has the opportunity to think and be creative. He's able to appreciate what others have already created (such as the books he's studying and using), but then he has the freedom to crawl out of that box and create his own interpretations and expressions. Jman is allowed to color outside the lines, and it's a beautiful thing!