A Free Tutorial on Creating Your Own Therapeutic Colouring Pages With Midjourney AI Art

Unlock Your Creativity and Inner Peace with Personalized Images

Jun 10, 2024

Adult colouring books have become popular as people appreciate the therapeutic benefits of sitting quietly, absorbed in images and colour. Now, with the advent of AI image generation, rather than plucking a generic book off the shelf, you can create personalised images, tailoring those mindful colouring moments to enhance emotional healing and creative expression.

This personalising process can be carried out using any AI art Generator. I am using Midjourney because it is the most flexible, creative, and controllable. You can try the basic prompts in the Image generator of your choice.

I could write a book or a massive manual on this and may do it at some point. This article is just a taster, a little empowering introduction. I hope I get feedback from you, my readers, which may empower me to write more.

Why Colouring?

Colouring is a childhood activity that requires little conscious thought. It is therapeutic in itself, soothing, calming, and meditative. You don’t have to colour within the lines; there is no end goal, and it is a simple grounding activity. Colouring helps reduce stress and promotes relaxation.

Colouring pages of boys — Images created by the author using Midjourney and some original handrawings.

Adding the personalised therapeutic magic

I have been in personal therapy for a while; as a counsellor, I feel I have to be. Working on my own stuff helps me work with others on their stuff. Choosing an image to colour for me often involves finding an image that expresses some aspect of the child part of myself.

One activity I use is to create images of a younger version of myself in a positive, safe place. It may be sitting in a tree out of the reach of everyone, the safety of my room and my own thoughts as a teenager, or the freedom and excitement of the fair.

I don’t use them to explore traumatic episodes. I will already have explored that in therapy. For my self-awareness, I like to reflect on how I adapted and survived difficult circumstances.

I was obsessed with drawing girls with hair and flowers in Art Nouveau style. With a colouring sheet, I can recapture those moments of calm. Maybe I can visualise myself back in my attic bedroom with my collection of inks and pens and reflect on what else was going on in the household and how I created a separate space for myself.

minimalist colouring page female with detailed hair Art Nouveau style

What moments of your life would you like to reflect upon? Are there actions you took that changed your life's course for the better? Did you break away from a family member or a toxic relationship? Was there a pivotal event in your life you grasped with both hands? Here are some ideas for you to customise or create anew.

young man carrying a guitar in a case and a backpack in a city street, a young woman with a bag packed boarding a bus, young woman breaking free of a controlling parent

Prompting possibilities.

Some people make this very complicated.

Keep it simple.

a minimalist colouring page of a young man aged 20 with long hair looking stuck, leaning on a balcony with a sparse living room behind
--no shading --chaos 10 --ar 70:99 --style raw

The first four words are important, and the rest simply describe the scene. Sometimes, I add emotions or atmospheres; it is all about experimentation rather than specific rules. After a double dash, the items are commands explained in the official documentation.

—ar 70:99 gives the aspect ratio of an A4 piece of paper to make printing easy.

One reason Midjourney is so flexible is that you can use style and character references. In the image below, you can see I added two images to the prompt. They are the best images from a previous generation, and one is set as a style and the other as a character reference.

Space for words

Maybe you are going through a therapeutic process where you would like to imagine yourself speaking powerfully or asking for what you need. Create an image with a blank speech bubble. Crafting the words for you to speak becomes part of the colouring. As you can see below, I continue to keep a style reference in place for consistency. This is not always necessary, but sometimes it saves multiple reruns to get what you want.