Category Archives: Adult Color Books

Fashion Forward is the first coloring I have purchased which features the artwork of Minjee Kang. Her style is fun and flirty with clothing designs that have a bit of a retro vibe. Her models can be anything from big-eyed girls with pouting lips to that of the bored looking young women we associate with modeling. In addition to the model-style women in clothing against a white background, there are scenes of stylishly dressed women in scenes with more realistic backgrounds (for instance, Paris). There are also collage studies of various fashion accessories such as handbags, perfumes, makeup and shoes.

I find the book to be a fun look at fashion. I especially like the scenes of the young women on the go. There is one of a young mother pushing her stylish baby stroller that is especially cute.

I will provide more detail on the coloring book below, but here is a quick overview of what I found:

28 Fashion Designs with a light retro vibe
Printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper
Some of the designs merge into the binding
Binding is glued
All markers, India ink pens, and gel pens either bleed through the paper or leave distinct color shadows on back of page
Coloring pencils work well with the paper

The designs are printed on one side of thin, white, non-perforated paper. It is thin enough that you can see the design on the next page through the page you are working on. I try to be pragmatic about this type of paper when I get to see a new artists work. If it were done on better grade paper that was perforated, it would be a huge improvement. If I could, I would rate this coloring book 4.5 because of the paper but as I can’t, I always round up, thus a 5 star rating.

The binding is glued rather than sewn so you will have to cut pages out to remove them from the book. Some of the designs merge into the binding. With those designs, you will lose some of the design if you remove it from the book but nothing of significance will be lost. I was able to open and press down hard to get the book to lay flat for coloring.

I test my coloring books with various coloring medium and I will note those used in tests on this book in the comments section below. Here is what I found in my tests:

All markers whether alcohol-based or water-based, brush, fine, or ultra-fine points bled through this paper. My gel pens all left easily discernible color shadows on the back of the page. Coloring pencils worked well and I was able to blend the soft lead pencils fairly easily. The hard lead pencils left distinct dents on the back of the page. All of this points to the less than stellar paper used by this publisher.

Because of the grade of paper, I will always use a heavyweight blotter page beneath the page I am working on. It will keep the rest of the book in good condition by keeping stray ink and dents from marring the ensuing pages.