Daily Archives: January 27, 2016

This is coloring book is part of a new line by The Coloring Studio that supposed to be for the entire family. While the designs are funny and imaginative, they have more detail to them than most younger children can color. They certainly require something more than crayons to work with as well as fine motor skills that most children lack. The subject matter spans the age of a family but the artwork is geared towards older children and adults.

The designs are fanciful and would ordinarily be a lot of fun to color. I note below that there are issues with the binding and printing but those I can and have accepted with others books. The real issue with this book (and the others in the same line) is that the artist/publisher have colored in way too much of the designs. It is one thing to have the background colored but to have major portions of the designs colored was not the best decision. It is next to impossible to match the colors used and, in this book at least, the color palette used is the same in each and every design and are certainly not the colors I would have chosen. By coloring the elements as they have done, it doesn’t allow for much creativity for the colorist of any age to work with. I have colors that are similar but in the end, they are in markers that don’t work well with the double sided printing in this book.

This slightly oversized coloring book is printed on both sides of the non-perforated page. All of the designs have unfinished elements at all sides of the page. Seven of the sixteen designs spread across two pages and portions of the designs are lost due to this. The remainder of the designs all merge into the binding. The binding is a hybrid of sewn and glued. It is next to impossible to get this book to lay flat. I broke the spine to get one set flat but then was unable to do so for any other pages without tearing at the binding.

All alcohol-based markers bleed through this paper rapidly. While fine point water-based markers also bleed through, ultra-fine points (such as Stabilo 88 and Staedler triplus fineliners) and Tombow dual end brush tip, do not (note that the fine point of the Tombow does bleed through.) My gel pens (all brands and point sizes) worked well with the paper. My coloring pencils worked great as well and produced the results expected for the type of pencil lead used. My soft lead pencils were easy to lay down color and blend especially well. I will list, in the comments section of this review, the coloring mediums I used in testing this book.

This is a coloring book of 24 fairy designs. The span from child-like to more adult figures and have a nice level of detail but not what I would call intricate. These are designs to have fun with and either color as is or try out some blending skills. The cover art is not a single design in the book but rather three separate designs of one each of the fairies.

The designs are printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper that is typical for books published by CreateSpace. Some of the designs merge into the binding. The binding is glued rather than sewn and you will lose some portions of some designs if you remove them from the book. I found that the book is easy to lay flat if you are willing to slightly break the spine. That is how I will use the book rather than cut out pages.

All of my markers bleed through and my gel pens either bleed through or leave a distinct shadow on the back of the page. My India ink pen fared the best but still left a slight shadow at the back of the page. My coloring pencils work well with the paper and behave as I expect depending on whether they are hard or soft lead. I will use a piece of chipboard or heavy paper behind the page I am working on so I don’t ruin the following page with leaking ink. In the comments section below, I will provide a list of the coloring mediums I used for testing this book.

While I could wish for thicker, perforated paper, it appears that this is the quality that comes from CreateSpace (which is an Amazon company.) What I really like about the CreateSpace is it is a way that independent artists can get their work self-published. That way, I get a huge choice of design styles albeit with not the best paper.