Coloring books are usually for kids, and they’re rarely considered art, but a Charlottesville man has published a coloring book for all ages, with black and white drawings that took at least forty hours to create.
Bob Anderson is an architect who likes to build green. He’s always considered himself a conservationist, and when his son decided to host a bachelor party in the Costa Rican rainforest, Anderson was delighted.
The Corcovado National Park was remote, lush and teeming with beautiful birds and animals.
“Ten minutes into the park and I started to see wildlife that I couldn’t believe would walk right across my path. There was an animal called a tayra. It’s kind of a weasel type of animal, and it just walked right past me - five feet away. Another one is a type of anteater called a tamandua. He was just hanging on a tree, and we walked by and looked at him, and he looked at us and then slowly walked up the rest of the tree. it was fantastic.”
A master of pen and ink, Anderson decided to do a book of Costa Rican wildlife - part of a series he began in Africa. Because his initial drawings were black and white, a friend thought they’d make a challenging coloring book.
“He bought it for his son, and he came to me one day and said my son, after one month, has finished his first drawing -- finished coloring it. I had a woman come to me and say she bought it for her mother, who lives in a nursing home, and her mother had finished the book after almost a year and asked for another one so she could start over again.”
Anderson had collaborated with Osa Conservation - a Costa Rican not-for-profit with an office in Washington.
“They’d agreed to give me any help I needed, and then he asked me, ‘Would you like to be our artist in residence?’”
They gave him a place to live and a guide to show him around. He’s now made four trips to Costa Rica and plans to donate a portion of the proceeds from his book to Osa Conservation. But the story doesn’t end there.
“They’ve had me come back as an architect, so I’m doing a master plan for them, and I’m designing some buildings, so this relationship just continues on.”
Anderson hopes his next coloring book will feature India, Hawaii or the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State - North America’s rainforest. In the mean time, he’s selling the Costa Rican coloring book through independent bookstores and the McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville.
