Daily Archives: January 22, 2016

This is a beautifully designed book of 31 head studies of various animals. The animals are drawn first realistically and then are filled with intricate details that can be colored to mimic reality or to take the designs on a wild ride of color. The brown bear design on the cover is included in the book; however, the design has more of the bear’s body and is not as up-close as the cover. This is not a coloring book that is friendly for those who like to do a lot of shadow and blend work. The spots for coloring are simply too small to support much of that kind of work. It may also not be the best book for those who have vision or fine motor skill issues. For those who like intricate work, it is absolutely the best general animal book I have come across as yet. The animals included are: Bengal tiger, gorilla, badger, impala, English bulldog, black rhinoceros, red fox, bighorn sheep, giant panda, ring-tailed lemur, llama, hippopotamus, rabbit, African elephant, Arabian horse, Koala, brown bear, Highland cow, kangaroo, red panda, deer, Main Coon cat, giraffe, African leopard, otter, mandrill, zebra, gray wolf, sheep, moose, and Masai lion.

In case it is noticeable in the video and/or photos (if either post successful), the copy I receive was bent in half. While that is usually done by the carrier, in this case, the book was folded in half and mailed in much too small a padded envelope by Amazon themselves. They are sending a replacement and I am hopeful that no one else with have this issue. If you do, just call Amazon to get it replaced. They have also graciously allowed me to test the designs in the damaged copy so I can complete this review.

The designs are printed on one side of a good weight white perforated paper. The paper is a good enough quality for framing. The attached cover is beautifully illustrated with coloring and light touches of matte silver and copper metallic foil on the front artwork. Slight elements of the background design are already colored. While I would have preferred they left that blank, I am okay with the small amount they have colored in this instance. The designs do merge into the binding and you will lose portions of the design if you remove a page at the perforations. You can remove the entire page by snipping threads but you will have the perforation line.

The coloring medium I tested was a mixed result. All markers, both alcohol and water based, fine, ultra-fine, and even brush ends, bled through this paper to some degree. Gel pens worked great regardless of brand or point size. They did not require extra drying time as compared to other books. My coloring pencils worked well and behaved as they should depending on the type of lead used. I did check my soft lead for blending and they worked well but, as I noted above, there is not much opportunity for blending unless you do so in the backgrounds or, perhaps, across a number of the intricate elements. I suggest using a blotter sheet under the page you are working on with this book. I prefer chipboard but you can use card stock, a file folder, or a couple of sheets of heavyweight paper as well.

These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:

Markers: 1) alcohol-based Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners, and Pentel markers

Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo in the following sizes – 0.28/0.38/0.5/1.0 and Tekwriter

Coloring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, and Faber-Castel Polychromos