Katie not afraid to colour outside the lines

CREATIVE FREEDOM: Masterton artist Katie Gracie with the colouring books she designed and produced.

Katie Gracie is not ashamed to admit she enjoys colouring in more than her four-year-old daughter.

So the natural next step was creating some colouring books of her own.

The Masterton artist has created a range of colouring-in books for both adults and children, titled The Rescue Collection and Under the Strawberry Patch, which she began selling this year.

Her books, which she mostly works on at her kitchen table once she puts daughter Audrey to bed, are inspired by Audrey's love of princesses, her love of strawberries and her parents' rescue dog.

Each of Gracie's black-outlined images seems too good to touch -- serene-faced women with flowers in their hair cradling rabbits, cute girls in bonnets, and birds with intricately patterned wings.

But this art is meant to be attacked with felt tip and crayon -- the brighter and more oddly-matched the colours the better.

"I think that's what people love about colouring -- you feel artistic without having to draw something from scratch," Gracie said.

"I'm inspired by my daughter -- when she draws, she has total creative freedom.

"There are no limits and barriers, and we lose that when we get older.

"With a colouring book, you've got a set picture, but you can take it in the direction you want it to go."

Gracie said she has enjoyed art since she was young -- starting with a large collection of colouring books.

"My favourite had all these women in international costumes.

"It was so intricate -- it drove me insane, but it was a good challenge."

Later, she began exhibiting her work, mostly done in coloured pencil and fine-tipped pen and featuring images of women with large, expressive eyes -- not unlike the work of artist Margaret Keane, the subject of the Tim Burton film Big Eyes -- and motifs of foxes and birds.

She took a break from art after Audrey was born, but has picked up the pencils again -- inspired partly by Audrey begging her Mum to colour in with her.

"I'd always say 'oh yes, Mummy will do it'.

"But deep down I was loving it."

She was inspired to start The Rescue Collection after her parents picked up an abandoned and near-starving puppy named Arthur -- and by hearing her daughter talk about Disney princesses.

"I thought why not draw princesses as strong women who care for the dregs of society, as opposed to hanging out with ponies and unicorns?"

Similar to Snow White and Sleeping Beauty before them, Gracie's princesses are surrounded by animals -- but these ones prefer chickens, sheep, scruffy cats, skinny horses and droopy-faced dogs.

"They're not pretty animals -- but they're beautiful all the same."

Gracie said her colouring books have charmed her friends' children, and she enjoys seeing what colour-combinations they come up with.

"I had one girl do a princess with black hair and an orange face -- she took it way outside the box.

"It's not about colouring perfectly -- it's what you see in your head."

Gracie wanted to dedicate her colouring books to her "very creative" Dad, Duncan Ferguson, who died suddenly last month.

More of her art can be found at www.facebook.com/Katie-Gracie.