The Meowelo Journal
Gentle, practical ideas for big feelings, calm routines and happy coloring with children aged 6 to 12. Short reads, honest picks, no lectures.
Topic
Honest guides to crayons, markers and pencils for children, and what each one is not good for.
Every coloring technique a child aged 6 to 12 can use, in the order they build on each other: even layers, color choices, blending, texture, light and shadow, then faces, skies, trees and shine.
White is the hardest color to color, because the best white is the paper itself. How to make snow, snowflakes, snowmen and white animals look bright and finished: cool shadows, a darker background and a few white-crayon tricks.
Nine to twelve is the awkward gift age for art: the toddler boxes feel babyish and the artist sets are overwhelming. Gifts by the kind of maker your child is, small extras that finish a gift, and what to skip.
Faces are where a coloring page comes alive, and where children most often get stuck. The right order, a light touch on small features, and how eyebrows change an expression.
Trees fill half of many coloring pages. How to color a trunk that looks like bark, a leafy top that isn't one flat green, leaves with veins, and the same tree in all four seasons.
Most standard pencil sets have one "skin" color, and children notice. Why a set of skin-tone pencils is worth having, how to layer them for faces and hands, and how they help with fur, wood and sand too.
Short strokes for fur, long lines for wood, wavy bands for water, dots for stone: four simple texture techniques that make a coloring page come alive, with the tool that suits each one and a free page to try them on.
Crayons blend better than most people think. Five simple techniques, from light-to-heavy layering to burnishing with white, for sunsets, fur, shadows and skies, with the limits of wax explained and a free page to practice on.
Cartridge printers are cheap to buy and expensive to run; ink-tank printers are the opposite; a black-only laser never dries out. Which suits a family that prints coloring pages, worksheets and the odd photo, explained without the jargon.
Free for parents
A free 40-page guide to reading together, looking closely and giving children room to make each moment their own through color. With ten gift coloring pages to print.
Everything written here comes out of the Meowelo books — and out of what a child needs to colour them.
