Channel Your Inner Kid, Unleash Your Creativity With 'Simpler Times' Coloring Book
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The past several months have been challenging and these times can feel complicated. Now an artist is finding a way to make life feel simpler for a little while.
The crazy thing about coloring is that whether you're a kid or an adult, you realize at one point you just can't stop. For artist and illustrator Jim Shore, he hasn't been able to stop coloring and creating since he was a kid.
"We lived just a few doors down from a fire station," Shore said. "I used to go down there and just watch, look at the fire engines. I was just probably 4 years old. They were re-topping the road next to it and I discovered I could take the tar and make things out of it. I made a whole imaginary of animals and my mother kept them until the day she died."
A natural gift that has made him a household name for carving traditional folk art figurines for some of the biggest names like Disney and Peanuts.
"That's the core of what I do," Shore said. "But having done that for so long, I generated an enormous amount of artwork."
It's with this menagerie of illustrations that he's developed a new coloring book that explores his new ideas while paying a colorful homage to simple living. He calls his coloring book "Simpler Times."
"This all stems from my working drawings that I do before I do the sculptural items," Shore said. "We cleaned up the working drawings and said 'hey this is something someone could color themselves. It would be a perfect blend of their creativity and my creativity.' It's a connection between me as an artist and those people who love and appreciate my art. And we're doing it together."
And for Shore, the purpose of this book is quite simple: to reassure you that at any age your creativity can come out and play.
"I want them to get pleasure out of doing this," he said. "So what people should do when they see these things, don't just say these are a bunch of lines and it's color by number or something. That's not the thing. Use your creativity, think. When you see these drawings, imagine what it could be. Like they said in school just stay within the lines and you'll be fine."
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