Monthly Archives: June 2018

I’ve been a fan of Angela Porter coloring books for a few years. I was first introduced to her designs in the Color Me books she did with with Lacy Mucklow. I then found some of her books in the Creative Have line. Now, with Doodleworlds, Ms. Porter has ventured into the world of the independent artist using CreateSpace for self-publishing.

In this book, she has created many, many doodle creatures. I am also a fan of this genre and have a number of books (including all by Kerby Rosanes.) I’m always pleased to find a well done doodle book to add to my collection.

The mashup of doodle creature and Ms. Porter’s backdrops makes this an especially interesting and fun coloring book. There are so many creatures and other elements to each designs that it will takes hours of fun to color each design.

The designs are detailed and some have intricate and small areas to color. While I don’t consider the book to be intricate and hard to color, the designs are very detailed.

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“The Princess Bride” is a movie that my family and I watch over and over again. We’ve bought it repeatedly as it came out in different formats from VHS to Blu-Ray. The quotes from this movie have become part of the lexicon of our everday speech. “Have fun storming the Castle!” is a way of merely saying have a good trip. Being mostly dead merely means that we’re having a rough day (though this past year, it really meant I was almost dead when I fell quite ill with pneumonia last November.

Where the first book in this series seemed to focus on scenes in the movie, this coloring book looks at the quotes that we, who watch this show incessantly, recognize in a heartbeat.

The characters are also recognizable – even Buttercup fares better this time around than last (not perfect for at least a little more feminine looking than before.)

The coloring book has a detachable dustcover. The outside of the smooth cover is black on white line drawings with gold metallic accents. The inside of it has repeated symbols from the movie in a wild jumble of coloring opportunity. While it is very smooth, I still found that I could color on both sides of it. The inside attached cover is the same design with a black with golden roses and swords in a repeat pattern.

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I am a real fan of Jane Davenport. I own her two “how-to” books (“Fabulous Figures” and “Beautiful Faces”.) I like her design style and have enjoyed learning how to draw with her.

When I saw that she had a coloring book (though it’s really much more than that), I pre-ordered it and, when it came in, was even more happy with it than I thought I would be.

The book contains high quality paper in a number of finishes: coloring, marker, watercolor, and kraft paper. They each have a different look and feel. By including the various paper, it allows the colorist to experiment with different medium and to branch into other areas of the art form.

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By this time, I would think I would have learned my lesson about Disney’s Art of Coloring books et al. I’ve bought most of them and, with only a few exceptions, have been mostly unhappy with them.

However, I loved going to Disneyland with my kids when they were little, so the idea of having postcards to color that commemorated the rides, etc. was too strong to deny. So I bought the cards.

The designs are simply too small. As a coloring medium, it is almost impossible to color the larger ones and, for the life of me, I can’t figure out what to do with the majority of them. I own very expensive Japanese gel pens with teeny tiny scratchy nibs and even those are too big for most of the designs. Take a gander at the design for Adventureland to see one of the worst examples of small print.

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This is a really fun coloring book of Ocean Fantasy Designs. It includes much more than I generally expect in such a book. There are not only mermaids (and a lot of them) but also mythological sea gods, sea monsters, sunken ships with treasure as well as dolphins, shells and other sea creatures. Even Neptune, in several designs, is shown riding around protecting his kingdom.

The artist, Aaron Pocock, is able to bring life to his creatures. The mermaids have a beautiful feminine quality and grace while the avenging Neptune is a definite masculine force with aggressive movement held in check only by the frame of the page. Usually, I expect one or the other in a coloring book. However, with this book, I get both a feminine and a masculine touch in a variety of illustrations.

The drawings in this book are detailed with backgrounds included. Some of the designs (especially those of mermaids tails) have intricate and smaller areas to color. I don’t think I will need special small nibs for drawing but will take care to keep my pencils sharp for the areas of intricate detail.

I’ve noticed that the paper quality over the last few months seems to change quite frequently on the Creative Haven line. Because of that, if you buy one of these books, it may be slightly smooth or slightly rough depending on when and where it was printed. I’ve found that coloring medium, including pencils, work similarly with both slightly rough and slightly smooth paper from Creative Haven. In this case, my coloring book pages are slightly rough.

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This is a coloring book of vampires. Unlike volume 1 (which was mostly females) there is a really nice mix of both female and male vampires in this second coloring book in the series. Once again, many of the vampires have a touch of “manga” style to them though the book is not manga in natures. Some of the figures are drawn with a sexy look and attitude while others are simply well-done vampire portraits. Some of the designs have a hint of manga style but I would not characterize the book as that. Word of warning, both volume 1 and 2 have the same title. Look for the later publishing date and the cover that shows on my video for this specific book.

The designs are extremely detailed and have many intricate and small areas to color. The designs have a beautiful and flowing style with areas to provide shading and blending if you wish to do so.

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.

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