Daily Archives: October 3, 2017

Art of Coloring: Mickey & Minnie: 100 Images to Inspire Creativity

By: DBG

Rating: 2 of 5

Attached to this review will be a silent flip-through of the entire book and some photos so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not it will work for you.

My family and I are all huge Disney fans with many years of season passes to Disneyland. I was so looking forward to this coloring book even though I had been discouraged by other recent Disney Art of Coloring books.
Turns out that the group behind this book has done exactly the same with this coloring book as they have with other recent books. The coloring book has an inordinate amount of wall-paper (repeating pattern) designs and has many of the figures in the designs pre-filled in with black. What is even worse with this book is that the use of cartoon strips was done in really small format which makes them virtually impossible to color.
So why two stars instead of one? Because there are a few designs (less than a third of the over 100 images) that I think will be fun to color. There are even a very few wall-paper designs I will enjoy but on the whole, most of these designs either don’t pertain specifically to Minnie and Mickey, have lots of black already printed, and/or are too small for even my micro-point coloring medium.
Also, given the number of wall-paper designs, it is very disappointing to me that they were not placed on the backside of well-done character designs. It could easily have been done if the publisher had given it proper attention. This is something that I had noticed and mentioned in previous books by this group.
I would have liked to have had my choice of colors I could use for my Minnie and Mickey. Just because they are traditionally done in black doesn’t mean that I want to do that for my coloring projects. I want to use my imagination and create my own unique vision of Minnie and Mickey. Unfortunately, this is not the coloring book that will allow me artistic freedom.
The use of cartoon strips was quite nice in concept; however, in the actual use, many of the strips were reduced so small, they could not be colored. It would have been better to bring the size up and have less repetitive iterations of them across the page.
This is what I found while coloring in the book and testing my color medium on the paper.
Over 100 Mickey and Minnie Mouse inspired designs
Includes many pages of wall-paper style repeating designs
Printed on both sides of page with some designs which spread across two pages.
Paper is medium weight, white, very slightly rough, and perforated
Glue binding
Many designs extend across the perforations, some into the binding. I was able to break the spine to get into the binding area a bit easier. If you remove pages, you will lose some portion of the designs, especially on those which are two page spread designs.
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the paper,
Water-based markers either bled through or left colorful shadows on the back of the paper.
Gel pens and India ink pens left anywhere from colorful shadows to indistinct shadows on the back of the page but even at best, where still noticeable.
Colored pencils worked well with this paper. I was able to get good, deep pigment. I could layer easily (both same and different colors.) Blending was okay though the tooth of the paper was not optimal. I was able to blend with a pencil style blending stick.