Why adults colour, and why a daily deadline helps
Adults colour to give their hands something absorbing while their head goes quiet. A new shared page each day, with a closing time, is a reason to pick the pencil up again tomorrow.
Once the kettle's on and the iPad is off its charger, the biggest decision of the next forty minutes can be whether the shadow under a footbridge wants more blue or more brown. That's most of why adults colour. Your hands get something absorbing to do, and your head goes quiet while they do it.
Is colouring a real skill?
Yes, and an odd one, because you need almost nothing to start. The lines are already there, so there's no blank page to be scared of, and in the app you can tap a shape to fill it. A first page can be done in four minutes, before your tea has gone cold.
Then you see someone's sky go from warm apricot at the horizon to a clean pale blue at the top, and you want to know how. Finding out takes you into value and edges, layering, a limited palette and a habit of squinting at the page from across the room. Years in, most pages still have something to teach.
That's one weekly page three ways, and all three are finished. How far you take it can change from one night to the next.
Why do people give up on colouring?
Usually because nothing comes of it. A lot of colouring apps hand you another page, then another pack behind a paywall, and whatever you make goes into a folder nobody opens. Paper has the same problem. Plenty of colourists keep a drawer of colouring books, each about a third done.
Why a shared page and a deadline help
PencilDrop grew out of two small rules: everyone colours the same page, and the page closes. There's a new one every day, and bigger ones each week and month. Entries are judged in pairs, with the names hidden.
The shared page is the part that's easy to underrate. When you judge a pair you're looking at two other people's answers to the exact shapes you wrestled with, and sooner or later you'll pinch an idea from one of them. Everyone does.
The deadline is what gets pages finished. A page with a closing time gets done by bedtime, and the extra hour you spend layering burnt sienna under a sunset gets a proper look from someone deciding between two pages.
What a daily page looks like in practice
Think of it as a short run before work, with Prussian blue instead of trainers. Some days you might tap-fill the daily page on the bus in ten minutes and enter it. Some days the weekly scene gets a whole evening.
Closed pages join our free printables, so on a wet Saturday you can print an old one and colour it on proper paper, feeling the tooth under the pencil. Only pages coloured in the app can be entered, so that one goes on the pinboard.
Today's page is already up, and everyone has the same one. Feel free to take far too long over the sky.
These are our own examples of what a page can become, each coloured to a written colour plan. They aren’t competition entries.
