Daily Archives: May 19, 2016

Color the Classics: Beauty and the Beast: A Deeply Romantic Coloring Book

By: Jae-Eun Lee

Rating: 5 of 5

t the time I am writing this review, there are now three classic storybook coloring books released by Jae Eun Lee. I was less pleased by the number of simply story book pages as compared fully coloring pages in the first release Anne of Green Gables. In Alice In Wonderland and now again, in Beauty and the Beast, I appreciate that there are more coloring pages and that some of the story is inset in those pages instead of taking up a lot of the book with story. Of the 72 design pages in Beauty, only 14 are simply illustrated story book pages. Note that the book is listed as having 85 pages but that includes title pages, the foreward, and the thumbnails images at the back of the book.

To be clear, the story portrayed in this book is not the happy, feel-good version that we have seen on the big screen. This story goes back to the roots of the tale and includes some less than happy characters (for instance, Beauty’s sisters apparently plot to have the Beast devour Beauty.) While the story harkens back to the original, it is in no way complete. You may want to pick up a classic telling of the story to keep along side the coloring book for future reading and reference.

I really love the illustrations in this book as I have the two prior ones. Artist Jae Eun Lee has a beautiful ability to draw and make the scenes highly romantic. I found that the designs were open and flowing and easy to color without resorting to specialty pens to get into tiny spots.

For my first two projects in this coloring book, I chose to do first a design of Beauty with the Beast and then for the second design, I chose a lovely design of hands in lace partial gloves. I used Caran D’Ache Pablo oil-based Colored Pencils. While I found that these, as well as other oil-based pencils did not blend as well, I liked the way the pencils worked with the paper otherwise and I used them more for layering colors than for any blending. I might have used Verithins for the lacework but I am trying to keep my coloring pencils consistent within each book in this series. For fun, I will use a different brand of colored pencils for each book going forward to give each one a slightly different appearance.

Here is what I found in a brief overview:

72 pages of Designs and Story Book Illustrations

Printed on both sides of page

Pages are heavyweight, slightly smooth and non-perforated

Glue Binding

Some Designs merge into the binding

Some Designs spread across two pages

Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page

Water-based markers do not bleed through

India ink pens do not bleed through

Gel pens do not bleed through but require extra drying time

Coloring pencils did well in laying down good color with this paper. I was able to use them with a light touch as well as with multiple layers for a more solid appearance. Colors also layered well over other colors. Wax-based pencils did better at blending than did oil-based colors but both were acceptable for my use. Hard lead pencils did not did through the back of the book.

Drawn to the Sea: A Colouring Book of Sea Forms

By: Sabrina Impieri

Rating: 4 of 5

Drawn to the Sea is my first coloring book by Sabrina Impieri. She has a lovely free-flowing design style that suits sea forms. The designs in this book are line drawings of sea creatures and plant life. I find them open and easy to color without an extreme amount of detail or tiny spots to color.

The designs were fairly free-form rather than realistic. I like to see an artist’s interpretation, so this is something I do appreciate. There were a number of designs that used circles or bubbles. There seemed to be three types of use for these: 1) as part of the design (as with my project, I used them to show water without having to color the entire background), 2) some use as a form of pointillism to give the shape of another object, and 3) decorative and without as much meaning. In the first two uses, I would showcase the circles. In the last one, I would try to blend them in rather than bring attention to them if they were too distracting.

In my first project, I used Tombow water-based brush markers to color a crab in the ocean. I really liked the way the designs looked with watercolor and it allowed me to layer colors and blend them to get the effect that I was looking for.

This is what I found in coloring and testing this book:

51 Hand-drawn artistically interpreted Sea Form Designs
Printed on one side of the page
Paper is typical CreateSpace paper thin, white, slightly rough and non-perforated.
Glue Bound
Designs do not merge into the binding area
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page (I suggest you use a blotter page under your work.)
Gel pens and India ink leave colorful shadows on the back of the page.
Coloring pencils work well with this paper both oil and wax based pencils lay down good color, layer and blend well. Hard pencils dent the back of the page.

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.

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

Magic totem: Coloring Book for Grown-Ups, Adult. Beautiful decorative animals, birds, flowers

By: Nadiya Vasilkova

Rating: 5 of 5

I’m fairly new to working with grayscale coloring and Nadiya Vasilkova’s designs are the only ones that I have done in pointillism grayscale. It was with great pleasure that I discovered that she had recently published a large number of her beautiful animal designs in this coloring book. In addition to 34 wonderful animals, there are an additional 5 similar designs in a variety of subjects as well as 10 great line drawings with slight amounts of pointillism that I can use for regular coloring.

The majority of this coloring book is printed in pointillism style. This is the style that was developed by Georges Seurat and Paul Signac during the 1800’s. I’m not as familiar with Mr. Signac’s work but I have seen (and studied in art history) some of Mr. Seurat’s works such as A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

In pointillism, the image is created by using very small uniform dots of color in place of the brush strokes we are used to seeing in paintings. Similar to Impressionism, the further you stand from a pointillism painting, the more you see the overall effect. The designs in this book are not printed in color but rather in varying shades and density of gray.

As with regular with grayscale coloring, you choose your colors based on the design. Light colors with light dots or areas where there are no dots, medium with medium, and dark with dark or densely dotted areas. I’ve mostly used colored pencils with my grayscale but have recently begun using a variety of markers as well.

For my first two projects in this book, I used markers. With the lion, I then went over the entire designs with colored pencils as well. Using markers has given me a very different look to my projects and is something that I am pleased to be trying and learning.

This is what I found in coloring and testing this book:

49 Beautiful Designs with 39 in pointillism style

Printed on one side of the page

Paper is typical CreateSpace paper thin, white, slightly rough and non-perforated.

Glue Bound

Designs do not merge into the binding area

Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page (I suggest you use a blotter page under your work.)

Gel pens and India ink leave colorful shadows on the back of the page.

Coloring pencils work well with this paper both oil and wax based pencils lay down good color, layer and blend well. Hard pencils dent the back of the page.