Fairy Tale Colouring Book (Japanese Edition)
By: Tomoko Tashiro
Rating: 5 of 5
This is an really pretty coloring book of fairy tale designs. There are 78 pages of designs with most of them spanning across two pages. The designs are intricately drawn and will require a steady hand and good eyesight to color. The fairy tales included are: Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Swan Lake, Twelve Dancing Princesses, Cinderella, The Magic Horse, The Mermaid, the Snow Queen, and The Nutcracker. Many of the words are in English (introduction to the designs) along with Japanese. The explanation pages at the beginning and end of the book are in Japanese only.
The book has a removable dust cover. The inside of the dust cover is plain white and the actual book is red with white line drawings on it. You can try to color this if you choose to do so. The book is printed on both sides of non-perforated paper. Many of the designs span across two pages and the designs merge into the binding. The binding is glued rather than sewn and you will lose portions of the design if you cut the page to remove it from the book. I was not able to get the book to lay flat, so coloring into the binding edge will be problematic. If I could give this book a 4.5, I would do so because of the binding/printing issues. I always round up when I am faced with this issue, thus a 5 star rating.
All of my alcohol-based markers bled through on this paper. Almost all of my water-based markers did as well. The only exception was the brush end of my Tombow markers. Maybe it is because I use a lighter hand, but I could not get these to bleed through. The fine point edge did bleed through. My India ink artist pens did not blled through (I’ve been so pleased with my small set of these, that I will shortly be expanding to the full set.) My gel pens did not bleed through but all of them required a much longer drying period than normal. I especially liked the smaller nib Uni-ball Signo (0.28 and 0.38) for the fine detail on this book. My coloring pencils worked well for their type of lead. My soft lead pencils blended well and the hard lead pencils didn’t leave an indent on the back of the page.
These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:
Markers: 1) alcohol-based – Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based – Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners, and Pentel markers
India Ink: Faber Castell PITT artist pens (brush tip)
Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo in the following sizes – 0.28/0.38/0.5/1.0 and Tekwriter
Coloring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, and Faber-Castel Polychromos
