Daily Archives: March 10, 2016

Color New York City is an interesting mix of iconic New York City images along with collages of items that can bring the city (or even any large urban city) to mind. Along with Central Park, the Statue of Liberty, and requisite Big Apple, there are taxi cabs, tourist attire, and street food. While to my taste, the coloring book has done a good job of capturing what I classify as New York City, this can be subjective. Those who live or who have lived in the City may see it in an entirely different vein. I think coloring books of this particular city have a tougher time than those, perhaps, of London or Paris.

I will provide a more in-depth review of what I found in the coloring book below, but here is a quick overview:

30 Designs most of which feature New York City views
Designs printed on one side of page
Paper is thin, white, and non-perforated
Line quality of print is varied
Markers, gel pens, and India ink pens all bleed through the paper
Coloring pencils work well but hard leads leave dents on back of page

I really enjoy coloring hand-drawn designs. I understand that because they are done by hand, the quality of the line art can vary. In this case, there were a few incomplete lines whether due to printing or to the artist not finishing the image, I don’t know. This happens from time to time in the best of books. I rectify it when I can by using a good black ink pen to complete the image. I have several in different point sizes so I can choose the one that best matches the design I am correcting. Not an issue that would make me return a book but one that I noticed on more than one or two designs.

That being said, I really enjoyed my first project in this book. The torch of Lady Liberty was interesting to color. I used alcohol-based markers with an overlay of Tombow water-based markers to get the effect that I wanted.

The designs are printed on one side of thin, white, non-perforated paper. Most of the designs merge into the binding. As the binding is glued rather than sewn, you will have to cut out pages to remove them from the book. In doing so, you will lose portions of the design. I was able to get by book to open flat by over-extending the book backwards when opening it. This breaks the spine.

I will list the coloring medium I used to test this book in the comments section below. This is what I found:

All markers, gel pens and India ink pens bleed through the paper. Coloring pencils work well and I was able to blend the soft lead pencils. Hard lead pencils leave indents on the page. Because of my tests, I suggest using a heavyweight card stock under the page you are working on to keep your work on the current project from marring the rest of the book.

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