Daily Archives: February 2, 2016

Rather than discuss how this is like or different from the books and/or movie series except to note that the iconic images seem to be taken primarily from the movie, I will discuss only how I feel about it as an adult coloring book.

As with the first book in this series, there is a team of illustrators involved with the designs in this book. Perhaps it is the fantasy aspect of the book or perhaps they are particularly trying to make the designs work better together. Whatever the case, I found the designs in the book to be a more cohesive set over those in the first book. This time around, most of the designs are more on the complex and intricate side rather than simple line drawings. While they are intricate, I don’t find them over-drawn or with such small spaces as to make them next to impossible to color. I have upped my rating on this book to a five from a four on the last book because I like the cohesion of the design much better this time around.

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This is a beautiful coloring book of fairy tale designs. There are 78 pages of designs with most of them spanning across two pages. The designs are intricately drawn and will require a steady hand and good eyesight to color. The fairy tales included are: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Swan Lake, Twelve Dancing Princesses, Cinderella, The Magic Horse, The Mermaid, the Snow Queen, and The Nutcracker. Many of the words are in English (introduction to the designs) along with Japanese. The explanation pages at the beginning and end of the book are in Japanese only.

The book has a removable dust cover. The inside of the dust cover is plain white and the actual book is red with white line drawings on it. You can try to color this if you choose to do so. The book is printed on both sides of non-perforated paper. Many of the designs span across two pages and the designs merge into the binding. The binding is glued rather than sewn and you will lose portions of the design if you cut the page to remove it from the book. I was not able to get the book to lay flat, so coloring into the binding edge will be problematic. If I could give this book a 4.5, I would do so because of the binding/printing issues. I always round up when I am faced with this issue, thus a 5 star rating.

All of my alcohol-based markers bled through on this paper. Almost all of my water-based markers did as well. The only exception was the brush end of my Tombow markers. Maybe it is because I use a lighter hand, but I could not get these to bleed through. The fine point edge did bleed through. My India ink artist pens did not blled through (I’ve been so pleased with my small set of these, that I will shortly be expanding to the full set.) My gel pens did not bleed through but all of them required a much longer drying period than normal. I especially liked the smaller nib Uni-ball Signo (0.28 and 0.38) for the fine detail on this book. My coloring pencils worked well for their type of lead. My soft lead pencils blended well and the hard lead pencils didn’t leave an indent on the back of the page.
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

India Ink: Faber Castell PITT artist pens (brush tip)

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