Daily Archives: September 14, 2015

Vive Le Color! India (Adult Coloring Book): Color In; De-stress (72 Tear-out Pages)

By: Abrams Noterie

Rating: 5 of 5

This is a smaller format book of designs inspired by the art and the heritage of India. The book has 72 pages of designs and is in a nice compact form (only 7 x 7 inches.) The binding is at the top of the book, so it will be great for both right-handed and left-handed colorists. The binding is very pliable and it would be very simple to remove pages from the book. At the back of the book is a heavy cardboard which gives a good base to support the book if you are working with it in your hand instead of on a tabletop.

The designs are printed on the front side of each bright white medium weight page with the backside blank. The prints themselves range from some with heavy lines to some with very delicate lines. My children’s after-school care was provided by a gracious family from India. Their home was beautiful with many traditional Indian art designs and their clothing was gorgeous. The colors of the saris that they wore will be a huge inspiration to me as I color in this book. The designs are beautiful and have a variety of styles and some have very intricate parts to them. I will probably resort to my magnifying lamp from time to time with this book.
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Creative Haven Steampunk Fashions Coloring Book (Adult Coloring)

By: Marty Noble

Rating: 5 of 5

Steampunk is a genre of books that I have enjoyed for a number of years. The art that has arisen from the literature has been fun and edgy. I have the previous steampunk coloring book by Marty Noble and was really happy to see another one this time focusing on the fashions (though there are still plenty of elements I look for gears, clocks, etc.) The women in the pictures are gorgeous, as usual for Ms. Noble and the fashions outrageous, which is what I look for in steampunk.

The 31 fashion designs are based on those of the Victorian age but are updated with unusual, slightly racy, and spunky twists. These are all in line with what steampunk is about a what-if scenario that changes the way the world works and society would proceed. The designs are elegantly drawn, which is exactly what I have come to expect from Ms. Noble. I am always pleased with her designs and look forward to new ones as they become available. I am hoping that she will come out with another steampunk book that is more dedicated to the machinery of the genre. I would love to see robots and strange cars and flying machines as the focus instead of the background.