I am a big fan of Marjorie Sarnat’s animal coloring books. In the Creative Haven line, “Dazzling Dogs” is her third such book following her highly successful Cats and Owls coloring books.
In this coloring book, once again Ms. Sarnat provides a wonderfully and whimsical look at the world of dogs. Her hand-drawn designs are highly detailed with lots of fun coloring elements. So many of the designs take almost a collage look at each dog with items surrounding them to give you the whole picture of what that particular dog(s) is involved with.
What is really nice about this book is that Ms. Sarnat chose to reflect a number of breeds of dogs – which is unlike what I found with her Cats and Owls books. It makes for a lot more fun to color a dalmatian or a poodle as well as her more generic cute dogs. The designs are highly detailed but do not contain tiny elements that are hard to color.
For my first two projects, I chose to do a fireman dalmatian (my grandson is crazy for fire trucks at the moment) and a gardening dog. I had a lot of fun with both designs and was able to color them easily using a variety of alcohol-based markers. I will include images of both as well as the two colored samples from the book.
This is what I found in going through this coloring book:
31 Hand-drawn and Whimsical Dog Designs by Marjorie Sarnat
Printed on one side of white page
Page is white, slightly rough, and perforated
Glue Bound
Designs stop before the perforation and have a frame or framing line at the outside edge of the design.
Alcohol and water based markers bleed through this paper (alcohol bleed through quickly and water-based spots heavily depending on which type I use.) I use a piece of card stock under my working page to keep ink from leaking through. You can also remove each page at the perforation before coloring.
Gel pens and India ink pens leave shadows of color on the back of the page
Coloring pencils work well with this standard Creative Haven paper. Soft lead lays down good color, layers and blends well. Hard lead pencils leave dents on the back of the page.
