Cool Cats Coloring Zine

I made you something cute again!

Someone recently gifted me a copy of Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath’s Art of the Visual, and I’m almost embarrassed to say that up until that very moment I had no idea Sylvia Plath was a masterful artist! I mean, I guess I’m not alone. Her drawings weren’t even discovered until a family member rifled through an attic in 1996 and turned them up. She gave up her visual artistry dreams in her early 20s to focus on writing, apparently.

Once I realized Plath loved to draw and paint, it came as no surprise that she was brilliant at it — but what I keep coming back to is her doodles. Her more serious drawings are, unsurprisingly, full of curiosity, introspection, and a remarkable attention to detail. Her doodles, though, are full of whimsy. One of my favorites is a little comic at the top of her journal from 1945. There’s a hot dog with legs declaring, “I’m a hot dog!” There’s a guy with a cloudy head shouting, “I’m a marshmallow!” She kept a drawing from her niece of a leviathan jumping out of the ocean and snacking on a stick figure. And, no surprise, I love her doodles of French cats best of all.

It makes sense Sylvia Plath kept on doodling even after she gave up more professional art; the therapeutic benefits of doodling — the way it calms down your nervous system and reduces stress and anxiety — are well-documented. Plus, doodling helps you sort through all the tangles in your noggin and also helps you remember stuff you’re hearing while you draw. (The teachers who reprimanded you for doodling in class were wrong, wrong, wrong!)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about Sylvia Plath’s doodles while doodling my own doodles lately. And I made some of them into a new zine for you. It’s a mini-coloring book you can print out and fold like a regular eight-page zine. It’s very cute! It’s Cool Cats for summer!

You can download the PDF right here! And you can watch a very quick video about how to fold it right here! I colored my Cool Cats queer for Pride, but you can color yours any ol’ way you want, of course! If you do end up printing and coloring it, you’ll make my day if you share it with me. I loved seeing all the colorful flowers people did on the last zine I posted.

love,

Heather