Monthly Archives: July 2018

This is more of a storybook with coloring images than it is a coloring storybook. The words of the story take up much of the book with the designs being relegated to a smaller percentage. There are a few full page designs but most are partial.

I find it a good book to complete to read to my grandchildren and have to pass on to them. While not a fun story, it is a good cautionary tale.

All of the components that I would look for from the story are present with Marley and the various ghosts arriving to take Scrooge on a trip of self-exploration.

The designs have a nice level of detail without intricate and difficult areas to color. I will be doing this book in colored pencils as I don’t want bleed through of any sort to mar the words of the storybook.

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Serene Little Village

By: Julia Rivers

Rating: 5 of 5

I love little villages and I especially love little villages filled with cute animals dressed up in their Sunday best. This coloring book is one of the cutest I have seen in this style. The designs are detailed with lots of fun elements to color. The animals are tricked out in human garb and we see them as they go about their day in this hidden vale.

There are some areas with smaller than average elements to color but not what I would consider too difficult or hard to color.

This book is published under the imprint name of Julia Rivers but unlike many of their other books, this one does not contain the name of the actual artist(s) responsible for the book. I can only hope that the publisher will encourage that the person(s) responsible for it and we will see new books in the future.

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I was really excited to see a Greek Mythology coloring book by Jade Summer as I had really enjoyed the Norse one they released last year. I am also half Greek, so I have grown up with the stories of these myths. I do like the book but nearly as well as the Norse book. The reason is quite simple – the females in the Norse book are featured as quite strong as well as beautiful. The Greek females are lovely but have the look of a pin-up more than a fierce god (with the exception of Athen.) I would have liked to have seen some muscle tone on those arms and some of the striking poses of the Norse women.

The designs have some detail but then again, not as much as the Norse one. The backgrounds are sometimes a few mere lines while others have a little more to them.

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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This is the second coloring book by Molly Hashimoto released by Pomegranate. While the animals are still predominantly birds, there are other animals as well, including a love fox that will be my first project in this book. The drawings are uncolored block prints which have big, bold black lines.

Included on the inside of the front and back covers are full color thumbnails of all of the original artwork. The title of each design is listed both on the contents page at the beginning of the book as well as the design page itself. The contents page also gives the size of the original artwork, the medium in which it was done and also the date it was finished.

The designs are easy to color but with a heavy use of black which is very prominent due to the nature of block prints. I used to use my markers for this type of design but as I am unable (due to health reasons) to use alcohol or solvent based markers for an extended length of time), I will be using my Tombow water-based pens and my coloring pencils to color these designs. With coloring pencils, I have to take care to not color over the black as the pencils have a tendency to look gray on top of the heavy black.

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