Local coloring book artist aims to lighten adults’ load
Art has always been Jules Baker’s escape from the world.
The Huntington Beach native drew, painted and colored to help her fight depression while attending Cal State Long Beach in the 1990s, and she has continued these activities to relax.
Little did she know that her art would help others manage their problems.
Baker, 43, recently self-published two coloring books designed for adults. The books’ elaborate hand-drawn sketches of letters and mandalas are ready to be colored with pencils, markers or crayons.
Baker said she has sold about 300 copies of “Letter Doodles” and “Relaxing Mandalas” since May through Kickstarter, Etsy and Amazon and recently sold 150 books to a store in San Diego.
Lately, coloring books have been marketed to adults as a form of art therapy to alleviate stress.
“It’s so inexpensive compared to other hobbies, a lot of fun and extremely creative,” said Nina Chapman, a sociology professor at Golden West College in Huntington Beach and a friend of Baker’s. “But I think it’s more about people feeling stress and pressure. … Our lives these days are a dead run.”
But Baker said she didn’t publish her books to jump on the latest trend. Many friends and relatives thought her artwork was worthy of being shared and sold, she said.
“I started posting on Instagram and Facebook pictures of my [artwork] process,” she said. “I was drawing mandalas and the alphabet, and people kept telling me that my black-and-white images would make for great coloring books. I had never thought about that, though I own a massive collection of other artists’ coloring books.”
She launched a 30-day fundraising campaign on Kickstarter in April, asking for $3,500 and raising $4,187. She bought a MacBook Pro laptop, a printer/scanner and a Wacom illustration tablet. Most of her backers were Huntington Beach residents, she said.
Though she had to buy new equipment to publish her art, Baker prefers to hand-draw her pieces before she scans and touches them up with Adobe InDesign.
“It’s the only way I know how to draw,” she said. “There’s so many amazing graphic designers and artists out there using a computer, but to me things kind of look flat if they’re not done by hand first.”
Baker said she wants to bring the analog and digital sides of art together.
Though Baker felt that coloring books helped to calm her nerves, she didn’t expect her works to affect others as they have.
She said a customer told her that a daughter who has synesthesia, a condition in which she associates letters and numbers with color, started coloring one of Baker’s books, and now the family can see what the daughter sees every day.
Baker said she recently went to a fundraiser at an art gallery next to Johnny’s Saloon in Huntington Beach and drew custom art pieces for people to color.
“I walked into the bar and everybody was coloring,” Baker said. “It was the coolest sight I’ve ever seen. People were sitting there talking to each other and sharing crayons. When I left, there were four big burly guys sitting in the bar drinking beers and coloring.”
Chapman said she bought both of Baker’s books and is coloring with her daughter and granddaughter.
“Now I have friends that want to go on coloring dates,” Chapman said with a laugh.
Baker said she has seen her family bond over her books and the works of others. Her husband, son, grandmother and mother, Huntington Beach City Clerk Joan Flynn, have started coloring as a group, she said.
“You can color and talk about each other’s days,” Baker said. “It’s relaxing and nobody’s mad at each other. If someone’s stressed out, we just pull out some pages and pull out the crayons.”
Flynn said she teams up with her daughter when coloring in a piece; Flynn colors the base while Baker fills in the details.
Much like her daughter, Flynn, 62, said she colors to help her calm down after a stressful day at work. She said the activity is “mindless and Zen” and puts her in a relaxed state.
“Coloring is very nostalgic,” she said. “It takes you back to a time when life wasn’t quite so hectic.”