Adult coloring books are about to get a little more adult. That’s because a Golden Girls coloring book Kickstarter campaign has blown its funding goals out of the water. Launched by artist Mike Denison with an initial goal of $1,500, the Kickstarter campaign to create a coloring book based on the popular TV series The Golden Girls has currently raised over $15,000, and the campaign has 11 days left to go.
The Golden Girls coloring book project was inspired by Denison’s year-long art project, #BeaADay, which featured a year’s worth of sketches of Bea Arthur, one of the stars of The Golden Girls. There were many gems in the collection, reports Frontier’s Media , with that publication’s personal and touted favorite being Bea-yonce.
#BeaADay2 154/365 “Bea-Yonce” from my 2nd daily Bea Arthur art project #SB50 pic.twitter.com/g9cLqJLN3K
— Mike Denison (@mikd33) February 8, 2016
After the overwhelming response to his Bea sketches, Denison realized he had the potential to turn his vision into something much bigger. It was then that the idea for his Golden Girls adult coloring book was born. The artist planned to expand on his previously released sketches, combine them with some new ones, and create an adult coloring book worthy of Bea Arthur and the rest of The Golden Girls.
Originally, if the Kickstarter campaign reached its $1,500 goal, the intent was to produce 250 copies of a Golden Girls coloring book, each one containing 40 pages. Since the campaign has now raised more than ten times the original goal amount, the artist is promising to produce 500 copies of an 80-page book instead.
In addition to his highly popular #BeaADay sketches, Mike Denison plans to utilize some of The Golden Girls’ most memorable moments to illustrate his upcoming, 80-page adult coloring book. Some of the scenes reportedly come from holiday episodes of The Golden Girls, such as when the ladies visited a nudist camp on Valentine’s day. The artist is also planning on satisfying the Golden Girls cravings of even the most rabid fans of the iconic show, promising to add obscure characters and details to the adult coloring book, such as an appearance by Coco.
(If you’re not familiar with The Golden Girls , Coco was a gay cook that only showed up in one episode of the series; the pilot.)
In an interview with the Huffington Post , Denison described falling in love “instantly” with the comedy of The Golden Girls . Dennison said he grew up watching the series with his grandmother during its original airing, which ran from 1985-1992.
According to Denison, he feels as though some of the “snarkiness” portrayed by The Golden Girls ‘ leading ladies has rubbed off on him over the course of his life, and that he’s not surprised by the show’s popularity, a popularity that has never waned, especially among the “queer” community.
“A lot of the themes on the show dealt with sexuality and equality, and I feel that they have helped plant the seeds in a lot of the progress we see today.”
Denison says that he has modest goals for his Golden Girls adult coloring book, envisioning the idea of people having fun coloring his artwork, perhaps together. He says he’d also like to contribute to people laughing together while they color, perhaps “while enjoying a nice piece of cheesecake.”
According to the Kickstarter page for the Golden Girls adult coloring book, the artist already has plenty of work to fill it with from his “rather large” back catalog of work. His aim, however, is to fill the book with as many new drawings as he can. He calls the production of new material to fill the now-80-page coloring book the “only challenge” he sees when it comes to completing the project. Denison plans to publish the Golden Girls coloring books through Amazon’s Createspace.
[Image Courtesy Of @coolhardwareLA/Twitter]