Daily Archives: January 14, 2016

When I think of beautiful girls in fantasy art, Jasmine Becket-Griffith is one of the first names that comes to my mind. She has brought her ethereal girls to a coloring book in an outstanding fashion. There are 46 pages of coloring art filled with 55 different images. There are 43 full page designs and three pages which include 4 each smaller designs. It is interesting to get the smaller ones and I appreciate that by doing the publishing this way, I get more to color. The artist mentions that it was difficult to choose which artwork to put in the book, as she has so much to choose from. I think she did an excellent job and my response is come out with more coloring books! That should solve the dilemma!

The designs are on the right hand side of the book. On the sheet opposite (which is the backside of the previous design), the artist ha provided the name of the artwork and when it was created and for what purpose. She then gives us some background information as to how and why she created the artwork the way that she did. I think this is fantastic. It really gives a new layer of enjoyment to the process of coloring.

I’m torn about the actual coloring. Her artwork is so fantastic, I am tempted to mimic it (though mine would be a pale and less than stellar shadow.) On the other hand, it is fantasy and now it can become my fantasy if I decide to color it my way. Knowing my tendencies, I am sure to color it my way in the end.

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This is a great coloring book of 31 circular form mandalas by Alberta Hutchinson. The mandalas are open and easy to color. They are detailed without being small and intricate or difficult to see and color. I like that the designs have a hand-drawn, almost organic feel to them. Many mandalas are now computer-generated but you can tell that the artist was involved in creating these designs. I think the magical part of the type may just be a fun play on alliteration as there were no magical elements to the designs that I could see that and it made sense as a title as her prior book was Mystical Mandalas. They are simply well drawn and fun to color designs.

The designs are printed on only one side of the perforated page. The paper and all around printing and binding is consistent with the good quality you can expect from Creative Haven. While the binding is glued, you can easily remove pages at the perforations. The mandalas are all centered well on the page and you will not lose any part of the design if you remove it from the book.

For those who are interested, I will list the various coloring medium I use for my tests in the comments below. My markers both water and alcohol based bleed through Creative Haven paper. My gel pens don’t leak through but they do leave a shadow of color on the back side of the page. My coloring pencils work well with the paper and as expected for the type of core in the pencil. I recommend using a blotter sheet below the page you are working on to keep from ink leaking through to the next page. You can also remove the page. I use chipboard as a blotter but you can use multiple sheets of paper of card stock or even a paper folder if you have one handy.