Daily Archives: April 10, 2017

Year of the Rooster: Adult Coloring Book

By: Phoenix Amulet

Rating: 5 of 5

Mardel Rubio has created a coloring book which commemorates the Chinese Year of the Rooster for 2017. Each of the designs include a rooster and the majority also include a beautiful Asian woman. As I have seen with other coloring books by Mr. Rubio, the designs also include doodle creatures enmeshed into the illustrations. I enjoy doodle creature books but have yet to find any others as refined as those by this artist. It’s fun to have a lovely designs to color and to decide whether to emphasize the creatures or to blend them in.

I was interested in what the year of the Rooster meant. It turns out that 2017 is a year of the Rooster in the Chinese zodiac cycle. There are 12 different animals which rotate as well as five elements. Rooster years always follow the year of the Monkey and preface the year of the Dog.
The Rooster this year is associated with Fire though the coloring book does not seem to emphasize that. I will bring that in with the colors that I use by choosing to use a lot of warm colors throughout the designs. The animal and elements only come together every sixty years, so this is the first time since 1957 it has been the year of a Fire Rooster.
The designs are quite detailed and include intricate elements with lots of tiny spots to color. I would not recommend this coloring book to anyone with fine motor or vision issues. I would also suggest that, for the intricate areas, use of ultra-fine point markers/pens or really sharp pencils would be best.
This is what I discovered while coloring in this book and testing my coloring medium on the paper:
36 Designs based on the Year of the Rooster also with Doodle creatures
Printed one side of the page
Paper is typical of CreateSpace: white, thin, slightly rough and non-perforated.
The designs merge into the binding area (and extend to all sides of the page)
Glue Binding
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page quickly.
Water-based markers bleed through in spots.
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows on back of the page. India ink can bleed through if you apply heavily or multiple coats.
Coloring Pencils work well with this paper. I found that I could layers the same color for deeper pigment or multiple colors and I could blend easily using a blending stick. I tested both oil and wax based pencils. I also found that hard lead pencils leave dents through the paper.
I like to use a blotter when working in the book. I use a page of card stock or several sheets of heavyweight paper under my working page. It keeps seeping ink and marring dents from ruining the pages below.

Colour My Sketchbook MYTHIC

By: Bennett Klein

Rating: 5 of 5

I own a number of Bennett Klein’s coloring books and have been amazed at his beautiful fantasy images (as well as his recent animals in Wild.) In Mythic, Mr. Klein and his daughter Mae Klein give us a wonderful vision of his take on mythological creatures. There are vampires, Kraken, Medusa, cyclops, sphinx, trolls and much more. One of my favorites is of Athena in part because of my Greek heritage but also because it is stunningly beautiful.

The designs are done in grayscale and with touches of line drawings. There are a couple of designs which are line drawing symbols rather than creatures and with light gray for accent. All but three of the designs are printed primarily on white background with the three exceptions done on a black background.
Because of the way the designs are presented, I will be able to use both my markers and my colored pencils while coloring in this book. I really like this as this is my preferred coloring method (markers for background and pencils for details.)
As with his latest two released coloring books, this is done as a collaborative effort with his daughter Mae Klein. The artists have once again provided a table of contents with the title of the designs. The titles are indicative of the mythical creatures more so than a fantasy style title as I have found in previous books.
This is what I experienced while coloring in this book and testing my coloring medium on the paper.
26 Hand-drawn grayscale designs based on mythological creatures
Designs are printed on one side of thin, slightly rough non-perforated paper typical of CreateSpace. All of the paper is white; even the one with black background, (it is black tone printed on white paper.)
Glue Binding
Easy to open to flat position for coloring
Designs do not merge into the binding and there is plenty of room to cut pages out if you choose to do so
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the page to some degree. Water-based bleed through in spots while alcohol-based bleed through freely
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of page. India ink can bleed through if you use multiple layers or apply heavily.
Colored pencils work well with this paper. Both oil and wax based provide good color when I use multiple layers of the same color. I am easily able to blend (using a pencil style blender stick) and layer multiple colors as well. I generally prefer wet blenders for grayscale designs as I have found that some designs with smear with a blender pencil. Hard lead pencils leave dents through the back of the page.
Because of the bleed through and dents, I suggest (and use) a blotter page below my working page no matter what medium I use. I prefer card stock but several sheets of heavyweight paper work as well.

Grimm Fairy Tales: Adult Coloring Book

By: Jade Summer

Rating: 5 of 5

I enjoy fairy tale coloring books and this is one that has designs based on seven different famous stories by the brothers Grimm. The fairy tales included are: Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, Rumpelstiltskin, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White. Each story has several designs associated with it including a title page with the name of the Fairy Tale in a banner across the top of the page.

The designs are extremely detailed and have many intricate and small areas to color. While some of the designs have shading included, it is usually in the form of cross hatch or lines rather than a heavy use of black. The designs are true to the original stories and are a lot of fun to color. The projects will take longer to finish due to the intricate details.
While you can have access to .PDFs when you purchase this book, my review is based on the book as it is received from Amazon. That way you will know what the pages look like and how they accept color. I like that the publisher provides the digital version as well so you can choose the paper you wish to use and/or to color the pictures as many times as you choose.
This is what I found while coloring in this book and testing the paper with my coloring medium:
32 x 2 each designs based on Grimm fairy tales for a total of 64 coloring pages
Designs are printed on one side of the page
Paper is typical of CreateSpace: white, thin, slightly rough and non-perforated. The back of the page is printed black.
The designs do not merge into the binding. There is a heavy framing line at the outer edges of the design to give the project a more finished look, especially for framing.
Glue Binding (there is room to cut the pages out if you choose to do so.)
Though you cannot see the bleed-through easily due to the back of the page being printed in black, I recommend the use of a blotter page when working in this book. I use a page of card stock or several sheets of heavyweight paper under my working page. It keeps seeping ink and marring dents from ruining the pages below.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page quickly.
Water-based markers bleed through in spots.
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows on back of the page. India ink can bleed through if you apply heavily or multiple coats.
Coloring Pencils work well with this paper. I found that I could layers the same color for deeper pigment or multiple colors and I could blend easily using a blending stick. I tested both oil and wax based pencils. I also found that hard lead pencils leave dents through the paper.