Black and white patterns for coloring uploaded by the official Weibo account of the Palace Museum. [Photo from Weibo]

Following the success of the best-selling coloring book for adults, Secret Garden, the Palace Museum is going to issue its own coloring books in October, Beijing Daily reported.

Named "Color the Forbidden City", the book series will be constituted by black and white patterns featuring the intricate, richly ornamented architecture of its famous structures and other traditional cultural symbols for people to color.

The official Weibo account of the Palace Museum uploaded three black and white patterns of decorations often seen on traditional Chinese architecture on July 19 and called on the public to color them in.

The three patterns, which span different levels of difficulty, may take "about a week to finish if worked on at an easy pace", said an organizer of the activity.

And within several days, the original thread was reposted and commented nearly 6,000 times.

Guo Ting, who maintains the official Weibo account of the museum, said color and architecture are subjects the museum has always wanted to introduce further to the public. With this coloring activity, the museum hopes to deepen interactions with Internet users and let the public learn more about architectures in the Forbidden City.

Inspired by the success of the coloring activity on Weibo, the Palace Museum has decided to issue its coloring books, which according to the preliminary design will include a volume about architecture pattern, a volume about ancient costume and one about household utensils.