Daily Archives: September 21, 2018

This is an older releases in the series of “Make Your Own Art Masterpiece” coloring books from Flame Tree. I purchased it more than a year ago but because of my issues with some of the designs, I had put it to the side. The designs in this book are based on the artwork of Gustav Klimt, whose imagery I really appreciate. I have a large canvas print (tree of life) over my fireplace and was really looking forward to this book.

While many of the designs are done really well, there are some that hit a touchy spot with me. There are close-up details rather than full size renderings and I really would have rather had more to color than less. In some cases, the outlines of the designs are done with double lines – again, something I don’t like. The one thing that more than a few of the designs have that I really don’t like is lines drawn across the figures to (especially faces, hands, etc.) to show where shadows should be put. I would really rather do my own blending and not have to follow the dictates of the extraneous lines that someone has added to the design.

I knocked down the stars on this review by .5 for each of the things that I don’t like – hence a 3.5. However, I will note that for the designs where these issues don’t occur, the artwork is 5 star as is the publishing of the book.

There are 45 line drawing designs to color. The designs were chosen by Daisy Seal and were illustrated by David Jones. The name of the original illustration is on the page facing the drawing and includes, where possible: name, date, medium used, size and current location. There is a thumbnail of a small portion of the design with some color showing.

The inside flaps at the front and back of the book have black and white line drawings which can be colored as well. The cover is quite smooth but will accept various forms of color medium.

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