Beautiful illustrations and designs but with a problematic issue

The Official A Game of Thrones Coloring Book (A Song of Ice and Fire)

By: George R. R. Martin

Rating: 4 of 5

Attached to this review will be a silent flip-through of the entire coloring book so you can make an informed decision as to whether or not it will work for you.

Rather than discuss how this is like or different from the books and/or TV series, I will discuss only how I feel about it as an adult coloring book.

First of all, the illustrations are beautiful. I say illustrations rather than designs because a number of them appear to be finished ink and pen studies rather than designs that a colorist can finish and interpret in their own unique way. For those designs, I can’t envision how I would color them (possibly with watercolors) but I certainly will try as I’m up for a challenge. Because of this, I detracted a star from my rating.

There are still many designs which I feel that I can, as a moderately experienced colorist and artist, be able to color and enjoy. For those, there are intricate details and I may need to use my magnifying lamp to work on those areas.

Physically, the book is very well made. The designs are printed on one side with excerpts from the books written on the back of the page. The pages are thick and white; however, they are not perforated. The binding is glued rather than sewn, so removing pages from the book will be a little more difficult. Most of the designs merge into the binding, but the portions that might be lost if I cut the pages out are not the central theme of the design.

None of my gel pens bled through to the back of the page. My colored pencils all worked well on the surface of the paper. My water-based markers did not leak through; however, my ultra-fine Sharpies and Copics did. In any case, I would recommend putting a waste sheet of some sort (chipboard, freezer paper, cardstock, etc.) under the page you are working on to keep ink from possibly getting on the following pages.

In summary, an interesting coloring book with some very colorist unfriendly but beautiful illustrations. The book is very well made but could be improved upon if the pages were perforated for easy removal.

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