Daily Archives: February 11, 2016

This coloring book has a good selection of both mandala and mandala inspired coloring designs. The designs are curated by Inky Balm and are licensed through shutterstock.com. This provides a colorist with the opportunity of buying a single book with a number of artists work included. Otherwise, you might have to buy a number of books to get such a diverse offering. I like that there are both mandalas and other designs in this book. Usually mandala books are mandalas only but by including both, it makes it a great way to get started with coloring at a good price and with a good selection of styles and types of designs. I especially liked coloring the cute little frog with his mandala tummy. Some of the designs include intricate details but for the most part the designs are fairly open and should be easy to color without resorting to especially sharp pencils or tiny nib pens and markers.

All of the designs stop well before the binding, are centered well on the page, and the print quality is very good. The designs are printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper that is typical for books published by CreateSpace. The binding is glued but there is plenty of room for you to cut a page out if you choose to do so. I was able to get the book to lay fairly flat in the open position by breaking the spine slightly.

All of my markers bleed through and my gel pens and India ink artist pens either bleed through or leave a distinct shadow on the back of the page. My coloring pencils work well with the paper though the hard lead pencils do leave an indent at the back of the page. 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.

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-Castell Polychromos

I was provided a free sample of this coloring book for test and review purposes.