Still Time to Color Our Collections

Coloring sheet made from an emblem in Minerua Britanna or A garden of heroical deuises, furnished, and adorned with emblemes and impresa’s of sundry natures, newly devised, moralized, and published, by Henry Peacham, Mr. of Artes, printed in Shoe-lane at the signe of the Faulcon by Wa. Dight, ca. 1612. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Even if you missed the chance last week to participate in #ColorOurCollections, a coloring extravaganza organized by The New York Academy of Medicine Library, there’s still time to join in the fun.

More than 100 libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world produced coloring sheets for the initiative and shared them for free via social media. For our part, we produced 15 coloring sheets, pulling designs from a cross section of our collecting areas, including a painting of flowers, algae in a microscope, and an orange crate label, to name a few. We posted downloadable coloring pages to Tumblr and invited visitors to color printed copies we left in the Mapel Orientation Gallery.

Above and below, you’ll find examples of creative coloring by visitors, staff, volunteers, and other friends. Want to try your hand, too? Download a PDF with all 15 coloring sheets here, print it out, and color away! We welcome you to share your results. Take a picture of your handiwork and share it with us on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr by tagging us and using the hashtags #ColorOurCollections and #ColorTheH.

Coloring sheet made from Clivia by Henrietta Shore (1880–1963), ca. 1930, oil and pencil on canvas laid down on board. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Coloring sheet made from a view of algae through a microscope in the Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science.

Coloring sheet made from orange crate label Cactus brand oranges, printed by Western Litho. Co., ca. 1916, color printed lithograph. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Coloring sheet made from an illustration in L’art des accouchemens: démontré par des principes de physique et de mechanique; pour servir de base & de fondement à des leçons particulières by André Levret, printed by Delaguette, Paris, 1753. The Lawrence D. Longo and Betty Jeanne Longo Collection in Reproductive Biology. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Gardens.

Coloring sheet made from “Zodiac” illustration on 3v-4 in Portolan Atlas (HM 26), Battista Agnese, Italy, ca. 1544, parchment. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Coloring sheet made from illustration on page 153v of Protomathesis by Oronce Fine, Paris, 1532. The Burndy Library Collection. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Coloring sheet made from Repairing telegraph by Andrew J. Russell, 1863, albumen photographic print. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Handwritten thought bubble, courtesy of colorer-artist, reads, “I am in quite the predicament.”

Kate Lain is the new media developer at The Huntington.