L’artiste mexicain Ricardo Solis a fait des illustrations d’animaux qui sortent de l’ordinaire car il introduit dans son dessin des petits ouvriers qui oeuvrent à la création de l’animal en question en le coloriant. Cela rend l’illustration vivante et animée avec cette dimension de travail qui se réalise simultanément sous nos yeux.
The pet project of paint company Dulux, Let’s Colour is an international outreach project in which volunteers travel to drab and dreary corners of the world and enliven them with a fresh coat of paint. “Color your world” is the tagline for the program that hopes to transform communities by the brushstroke.
This year the Let’s Colour crew has travelled to London, Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Jodhpur to find and help neighborhoods paint themselves anew. They hope to expand to other countries, including Turkey, throughout the year.
In an interview with CH, Fernanda Romano—Global Creative Director of Marketing at Euro RSCG—talked about Let’s Colour. Says Romano, the idea behind it was: “let’s find locations, places around the world, they’re a bit dull, a bit grey. Let’s engage the local community.” She adds, encouraging community involvement was crucial to succeed: “Mandating things to people feels a bit old fashioned. People want to collaborate, people create content to share with the world.”
The project turned into something more than a P.R. campaign for Romano and her team. “We really wanted to get people excited about painting and color. We really wanted to get people excited about the effect color has on you. it was about a spiritual, emotional regeneration.”
When Dulux, a subsidiary of AkzoNobel, approached Romano, they brought a video of employees painting houses in Brazil that had sparked the original concept. The company approached countries where the company has a big presence about participating in the project and found enthusiasm from the local communities.
Romano found the response hopeful: “It was quite touching to see how much the community appreciated what was happening and how much they saw the benefit.”
The Let’s Colour blog documents all the locales, as well as their color choices and inspiration in each neighborhood. The project also has filmmaker Adam Berg filming the entire process. The individual video for the four places is online, and Berg has plans to release a full video of the project in the next month.
Says Fernanda, “by showing it and being it rather than telling people to do it, it’s a truer way to invite people to bring color into their own home.”
Founded in 2008, Eco-Kids is the brainchild of mother and former nanny Cammie Weeks, who used her mother’s recipe to make eco-dough for her son and his friends. Cammie explains that she and her husband “realized the need for safe and natural art supplies and toys,” so the duo began selling their sustainable dough at farmers markets throughout California and eventually expanded the collection to include a bevvy of environmentally-friendly, all-natural art supplies and toys.
While I’m holding out on the pencils until my two-year-old can distinguish between wall and paper, she loves her eco-dough and eco-paints. Made with flour and dyed with organic fruit, plant and vegetable extracts (like purple sweet potatoes, paprika and blueberries), the naturally vivid colors please the eye and make clean-up time easier.
The organic-rosemary-scented dough (to keep it fresh) stays malleable without being sticky like other brands, and comes in a gluten-free version for kids with celiac disease or special dietary restrictions.
Just in time for Easter, Eco-Kids recently introduced an Easter egg coloring kit that includes the same fruit and vegetable colors and two soy crayons for fancy decorations.
Almost any parent will tell you the futility of explaining to a toddler why they shouldn’t put a toy in their mouth—a non-issue with the Eco-Kids line of products. Everything they make is safe to eat, although the pencils could be a bit rough on younger teeth.
The supplies and kit ($10) sell online from the Eco-Kids website.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
