Daily Archives: February 22, 2016

This is a coloring book of 48 designs which take the colorist on a tour of various cultures around the world. The countries include: Japan, Indonesia, Guatemala, Morocco, Italy, China, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey and more. There are many motifs and artistic styles from these cultures included in the designs. I can only hope that this turns out to be volume one and that more designs of this nature will be available in the future. While 48 designs is a lot, there are many cultures in the world and I would love to color beautiful scenes from more of them.

This book is published by Skyhorse Publishing. I have another Marty Noble book by this publisher (Sugar Skulls) and I have been enjoying it. The majority of my coloring books by Ms. Noble are by Creative Haven and Dover. These are completely different publishers though Ms. Noble’s artwork is as high quality as ever.

The designs in this book are even more intricate than I have come to expect from this artist. While each of the designs are fairly intricate, they are not small to the point of making coloring difficult. I appreciate the detail in these designs as it gives me a great project to think about and color. This is truly an opportunity to try out different colors and to venture into a culture’s color palette.

The designs are printed on one side of a good weight white perforated paper. While the paper is not top grade, it is certainly sufficient for framing purposes. I was able to get the book to lay fairly flat by breaking the spine of the book. The binding is glued rather than sewn but this is not an issue as you can remove a page at the perforations if you choose to do so. The designs all stop well before the perforations and all of the designs have a framing line around them. I try to note whenever an artist takes the trouble to include this framing line as it gives my project a more finished look and saves me time, trouble, and ink by giving me a natural stopping point while I am coloring.

All of my markers, alcohol and water based, bled through the paper. The water based were a little spotty but still came through enough to ruin the next project if you don’t keep a piece of chipboard, heavy weight paper, or card stock below the page you are working on. You can also simply remove the page from the book to color as well. My India ink artist pens left a shadow at the back of the page. None of my gel pens bled through and they did not require additional drying time. My coloring pencils worked well with the paper according to their brand and lead type (soft or hard.) Soft lead pencils were especially easy to blend.

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, and Staedler triplus fineliners

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