Adult Coloring Book: Color Yourself to Calmness – And reduce stress with your animal spirits (Adult Coloring Books)
By: Sue Coccia
Rating: 5 of 5
This is a gorgeous coloring book filled to the brim with beautiful animal designs. Within each animal, are a myriad of other designs. In reading the bio about the artist, I found it really interesting to discover that she starts each design from the middle of the inside designs and does not put the outline of the animal in place until after she has finished everything else. I absolutely love the book and the only drawback is that the designs are printed on both sides of each page. Once I had gone through the book and checked to see what pens worked and didn’t, I made the decision to buy a second copy of the book so that I can have a full choice of which designs I want to color. While the price of the book is not low, the quality of designs and the sheer volume of what you get for the price made it an easy choice for me.
The designs in this coloring book are printed on non-perforated bright white paper that is a fairly heavy stock. The designs are printed on both sides of the page. The drawings are intricately detailed enough that I will use my magnifying lamp for most of them. The coloring book is a sewn-in binding with a thick, hard cardboard cover. It should be fairly simply to cut the binding strings to remove these designs from the book, if you prefer to color pages rather than in a thick book and that is what I will probably do.
The book is broken into six chapters Desert, Prairie and Savannah, Mountains and Woodland, Rainforest, Rivers and Wetlands, and Oceans and Seas. Each chapter has many designs of animals related to those areas. Each of the animals have qualities associated with them and the author lists these along with their names beside their designs. Examples include: Coyote playfulness, trickster, humor; Hawk messenger, warrior, healing; Raccoon opportunism, curiosity, sociability; and Dolphin joy, playfulness, and harmony. The list is very long, so I’ve included a picture of the table of contents for you to view to see which animals are included.
While I am thrilled with the designs in the book, I do note that the details are intricate enough that I will use only ultra fine markers or sharp pointed color pencils to color these designs. My gel pens, while they didn’t leak, did not have fine enough points to get into the nooks and crannies. Also, the decision to print double sided makes it harder to color. I guess the publisher could have provided half as many designs (at the same cost) on one-sided printing and come out with a second book with the remainder of the designs. In that case, I would have bought both books, so buying two of this one puts me in exactly the same place.