Daily Archives: November 16, 2015

If you like steampunk or octopuses or just want something really fun and unusual to color, this is a great book to consider. The images follow a young woman and her pet octopus. With her garb and some of the other accessories seen in the designs, it seems to be set in a steampunk alternate world. The 48 designs include both the title and end page illustrations and portray funny scenes that just might happen if you could, for instance, take your octopus for a walk.

The format of the book is unusual for an adult coloring book. It is short in height but long in width. I’m assuming that it follows the format of the illustrated books by this artist as the designs are obvious made to fit this format perfect. Because of its size, the book sits a little awkwardly in my bookcase but the designs more than make up for it sticking out a bit at the front.

The designs are printed on both sides of a good weight white paper. The pages are not perforated but the binding is sewn rather than glued, so removing the book from its binding is easily done by clipping those threads every few pages. The designs all stop well before the binding and have plenty of white space around the entire page for framing should you wish to do so.

All of my markers bled through this paper, though my Staedler triplus fineliners worked the best. None of my gel pens bled and my coloring pencils went on very nicely. Because of the two sided printing, I will be coloring this book with a variety of gel pens and coloring pencils and will put the markers away unless I accept that I will ruin the design on the back of the page.