Is Color Gender Related?

I have six boys and one girl. My daughter loved color since she was a little girl. The more color, and the more different colors she could use, the happier she was. I recently have been given some work by a young girl artist to use in my book because it badly needed some girl power in it. Lots of color!

I vividly remember a couple of things about my daughter in her young years. First she would take her color crayons or pencils and color a stroke of color across the page side by side with all the colors … over and over again. She also was drawn to poetry and how color is expressed in that. Her absolute favorite book for quite some time was Hailstones and Halibut Bones. She gifted me with her first poetry with her trademark color on it around age 5.

Color even goes further than that for her. She wrote a blog post called Songs Have Color that shares how she sees various color schemes when she listens to different kinds of music. Take note about what she says she sees when listening to classical music, and compare that to the positive effects of this kind of music to learning. Interesting!

My oldest son is an artist. He never had an interest in coloring, just line drawing. He even would barter with his sister for her to color some of his work in exchange for his drawing some pictures of her choice. This video game character is one of the few drawings he colored. When he did color, he wanted it to be the exact colors only, no experimentation. My daughter loved to experiment and make art from her use of color.

My sixth child, and fifth son, enjoys coloring now, but he had to grow into it (he’s almost 13 now). In fact, it was his sister who mentored him with drawing and coloring, so maybe that had a greater impact than I realize. He focuses his coloring on Indian pictures, and I do notice how he adds “painting” elements to the coloring. With his serious delays in graphomotor skills, this is quite a testament to his natural connection to his right-brained side.

As well known, I also advocate for the right-brained learning style. My daughter is right-brained, though her female gender brings in some left-brained features, like learning to read at 5 years old (she taught herself). She also loves to write and focused on words young. This is a left-brained trait. Females are more left-brained oriented as a gender; boys more right-brained oriented as a gender. So, is coloring more female oriented, and if so, does that mean it’s more of a left-brained trait?

Question: Who do you notice colors more in your family, boys or girls? What observations have you noticed specific to this?