Monthly Archives: October 2015

Doodle Fusion is a really interesting coloring book. It is based on the line artwork of artist Kerby Rosanes. The Zifflin’s color books seem to be exploring the far edge of coloring opportunities. I recently got the US version of Mr. Rosanes Animorphia which had a lot of publishing issues with the book. I can assure you that that is not a problem with this book. This set of designs is well published without missing parts of images, etc.

The 50 pages of designs in this book are made up of a multitude of small hand drawn images of all sorts of things (though mostly little goblin like characters.) In some cases, the little characters are used to create a design of something else and in other cases, the little guys are crawling around, in and out of some other item. For someone who really likes to color small and elaborate designs and wants something really different, this line of books, and this one in particular may be perfect.

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This is a book of optical illusion designs. The pages are printed in gray rather than black as most coloring books. While I like the concept and the designs are quite different, I think that the light gray makes it difficult to color. If it had been printed in black, I could use light or dark colors without any problems. With the lighter tone, my bright colors overwhelm the page.

The format of this is smaller than most coloring books at approximately 8 x 8 inches. The binding is a type of rubbery glue that is located at the top of the book. It makes getting to all sides of the design much easier and now that I have experienced it, I wish more coloring books had top binding (as do many art books). My only concern is that if I remove a page, it may break the binding at that point and take more than the one page off. The back of the book is a heavy cardboard that keeps the book stable, especially if you are working in-hand instead of on a hard surface.

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This is a cute and funny set of 70 cat designs. The designs are all fairly intricate with many small details. It will take very thin pencil or pen nibs to get into all of the nooks and crannies of these designs.

The format of this is smaller than most coloring books at approximately 8 x 8 inches. The binding is a type of rubbery glue that is located at the top of the book. It makes getting to all sides of the design much easier and now that I have experienced it, I wish more coloring books had top binding (as do many art books). My only concern is that if I remove a page, it may break the binding at that point and take more than the one page off. The back of the book is a heavy cardboard that keeps the book stable, especially if you are working in-hand instead of on a hard surface.

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This book contains 50 mandala designs. This is my first coloring book from Angie Grace but it is the third in her Extreme Stress Menders series. The designs are a series of flowing and graceful mandalas. Coloring them will be a fun experience with lots of choices of colors to make some lines pop and some to recede. I’m looking forward to them and to picking up future books by this artist as well.

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This is my first coloring book by Cher Kaufmann and it will not be my last. The smaller format book is filled with designs that will provide me with many hours of coloring fun and relaxation. While many coloring books are created from computer generated artwork (and I enjoy those, too), this book has 100 hand-drawn designs from the beginning to the end. They are not all mandalas but those that are not are certainly influenced by the artwork associated with mandalas. I really appreciate the wide range of choices in this book.

In addition to the designs, the artist has included interesting suggestions on how and where to color. Also, she has included explanations of what the various colors mean as far as what you may be expressing when you wear (or color with) a particular color, e.g., gold means wealth, elegance, abundance, and success.

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This is my first coloring book by Penny Farthing Graphics. They are published via CreateSpace which is generally used for self-publishing. The designs are drawn by a variety of artists from all over the world and are licensed via Shutterstock.com. What we end up with is a great coloring book (although on thin paper) with a large and varied selection of designs.

There are 60 coloring images in this book. I’m happy with the variety and the way the designs are printed on the page. Every one of them is complete rather than running off the page. If a design is stopped, it is stopped with a frame which gives me a defined end to the item I am coloring even if it is not complete within the picture (e.g., half of a stocking, ornament, wreath, etc.) The editors of the book have done a great job with their selection, including all the symbols I think of for Christmas, such as: Christmas Trees, Santa, ornaments, stocking, nutcrackers, fireplaces, snowman, candles and much more.

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I received a free sample of this coloring book for test and review purposes.

This is coloring book filled with adorable dog designs. Most of them are based on simple line drawings but are filled in (both inside of the dog and in the background) with lighter design elements which are cute and fun. The bonus pages seem to be sketches of dogs (rather than line drawings) and have had other design items added around them.

While the designs are really cute and should be fun to color for the most part, most of the designs simply stop near the edge without a frame which leaves the colorist with open-ended and unfinished elements to their coloring. This is a particular nit of mine as I hate to be left without a definite edge or finished element as it gives a very uneven and unfinished look to my work.

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I received a free sample of this coloring book for test and review purposes.

This is coloring book filled with cute cat designs. There are a variety of styles but most are line drawings with fun elements added both inside and around the cats. Others are stylized portraits of cat faces and the bonus pages have pictures of many different types of cats, including wild and large cats.

While almost all of these cat designs are very cute and fill be lots of fun to color, there are a couple things to note: print quality between designs are quite different, a few designs are sized too large for the page and edges are missing, and some designs simply stop near the edge without a frame which leaves the colorist with open-ended and unfinished elements to their coloring. All three of these issues could be fixed in future books.

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