Corner Brook artist goes outside the lines with new colouring book
Jackie Alcock says her unusual way of seeing N.L. makes for unique colouring book designs
Corner Brook artist Jackie Alcock is writing a new chapter in her already colourful career.
Later this month, her colouring book, Colouring the Rock with Jackie, will be officially released through Flanker Press.
Panes to pages
Alcock is well known for her window paintings around town — something she's been doing for the past 30 years.
Now, she's taking her work from panes to pages and releasing a Newfoundland and Labrador-themed colouring book.
- Postville colouring book showcases life in Nunatsiavut
- St. John's artists collaborate on original colouring book
"I had all of these colouring books with whales, and puffins and icebergs. I said — I'm already halfway there."
Alcock said it was a logical move, since her window-painting background has given her hundreds of scenic outlines of the province.
Not your typical scenery
This colouring book isn't 85 pages of predictable outlines to represent each part of the province, she said.
Alcock cautions that her ideas of each place are abstract and probably not how most people would associate each region.
'The first time that someone actually said we really like your work and we want to publish it.- Jackie Alcock
"I created a ring with a big shape of Labrador on it. Then I drew a dragon into that and then I went from there."
Her interpretation of Marble Mountain is also an example of her abstract work, which she said is three snowballs on skis surrounded by snowflakes.
Different than window painting
Alcock's experience from window painting helped her with the majority of the book, but she admitted it's quite different from her background.
"When I'm doing window painting everything is done backwards. So, what you color first would be last," she said.
"So when I actually went to try colouring the pages it was really hard for me because I was so used to, for 30 years, working backwards."
Publishing a new process
Alcock is grateful that local publisher Flanker Press has picked up her book, though she admits it was a learning experience working with an editor.
"I'm not used to giving and taking — and there was a lot of giving and taking," she said.
Despite having to work with someone else's ideas and views, Alcock said it was refreshing to have a company interested in her work enough to publish it.
"It was the first time that someone actually said we really like your work and we want to publish it," said Alcock.
"As an artist you don't get a pat on the back very often."
The book will be officially released October 22.