Category Archives: Adult Color Books

This is an absolutely beautiful book of grayscale sketches. I’m fairly new to this way of coloring and as soon as I saw this book, I had to have it. I had never heard of Bennett Klein before but I will certainly be following him from this point on. The designs are beautiful and unusual, especially in grayscale where so many of the coloring books available are merely photographs instead of hand-drawn sketches.

The designs are all flowing and almost lyrical in their composition. Women make up a lot of the designs, with unusual hairstyles and poses. There are animals and cultural symbols as well as some fairly hippie-vibe young women. It’s just a great combination of unusual designs that will be a blast to color.

I will go into detail about the book below for those who are interested; however, here is an overview of what I found:

25 Hand-drawn sketches in grayscale
Designs are printed on one side of non-perforated paper
Glue Binding
Easy to open to flat position for coloring
Designs do not merge into the binding
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page
Gel pens leave shadows of color on the back of page
Coloring pencils work great with this paper

The designs are printed on thin, white, non-perforated paper. The back of the page is printed with the Colour My Sketchbook emblem. The binding is glued rather than sewn. The designs do not merge into the binding. If you choose to remove a page from the book, you will have to cut it out but will not lose any portion of the design. I could easily get the book to lay in flat position for coloring.

I test my coloring books with various medium even though I generally use coloring pencils for grayscale. I will list the mediums I used for testing in the comments section of this review. Here is what my tests showed:

Alcohol and water-based markers all bled through the page. Gel pens and India ink pens left easily discernible color shadows on the back of the page. Coloring pencils worked very well with this paper. The soft lead pencils went on thick and blended easily. The hard lead pencils left dents on the back of the page.

I usually use soft lead pencils for grayscale projects. That is what I did with my first project. I used Prismacolor Premier Soft core pencils in usual grayscale order (light on first, dark second, and medium tones last for blending.) I found that I preferred a more ethereal look for the ballerina, so I went over the whole design with lighter pencils, especially 10% cool gray. It muted the entire design and gave me the look I was hoping for.