If you've ever wanted a coloring book that was... well, less colorful, The Coloring Book for Goths is for you:
Created by writer and graphic designer Tom Devonald, The Coloring Book for Goths "puts the 'fun' back in 'funeral' one black crayon at a time" and is for the inner goth in us all.
So dark. 💀
SO. GOTH.
Devonald told BuzzFeed about his inspiration for the book:
For the last couple of years, it has been pretty much impossible to escape colouring books. It seems that almost every kind of shop is selling them, from clothes shops to your local supermarket. In fairness, I actually have a lot of time for the idea and the sentiment behind the colouring book phenomenon. I do believe that colouring-in really does have the potential to help certain people as a means of mindful activity, and I certainly can't knock the beautiful work of illustrators like Johanna Basford and the fun innovation of titles like 'F*ck off, I'm Colouring'.
However, in reality, you can do just about anything mindfully, from brushing your teeth to making a cup of tea. In fact, the best thing you can do mindfully, according to the latest neurological research, (and two millennia of Buddhist and Daoist tradition) is actually… nothing. But nothing doesn't really sell many books! As such, I feel the popularity of colouring books isn't really anything to do with their efficacy; it has more to do with the fact that they're easy to make and sell. There is a certain cynical opportunism to the craze due to the fact that seemingly every publisher around the world has jumped on the back of it, pumping out books that have no hint of mindful instruction or philosophy...
For that reason, I began to view it as a bloated and misdirected fad that is crying out to be satirised and made fun of… It just so happens that I was lucky enough to find a publisher who could see the funny side! I wanted to create the anti-colouring book and what better way than through the absence of colour. Black.