Beautiful illustrations and designs but has a couple of issues printed both sides of non-perforated page

Tolkien’s World: A Colouring Book

By: Mauro Mazzara

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 the various movies, I will discuss only how I feel about it as an adult coloring book.

The illustrations and designs show that a number of artists have been involved with the coloring book (according to the book, there are six artists.) There are a variety of styles and it is easy to see which designs are by the same artist. I mention illustrations because a number of the drawings appear to be almost finished ink and pen studies rather than designs that a colorist can easily finish and interpret in their own unique way. I had this same issue with the recent Game of Thrones coloring book and I ended up using Tombow water-based markers (brush end only) to put larger swathes of color on many areas. It worked okay but it was not ideal. Something I really like about the book is that at the bottom of each page, there is a notation which tells which book the design is from and who the character is or which location is being shown.

There are still many designs which I feel that I can, as a moderately experienced colorist and artist, be able to color and enjoy. Some have intricate details but others have are mostly outline drawings that I will give me opportunities to try various blending techniques.

Physically, the book is put together better than some but missed the mark in a couple of ways. The designs are printed on both sides of the page with many of the images spanning across two pages. The non-perforated pages are white and medium weight. There is a removable cover but it is very thin and the artists could have put some coloring opportunities on the inside but did not. The binding is sewn rather than glued, so removing pages will require a few snips of thread throughout the book but you will be removing more than one page at a time Many of the designs merge into the binding and in my copy, about half of the two-page designs do not line up well. That gives me pause on removing pages because it will be very difficult deal with misaligned pages outside of the book.

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 especially my soft lead ones (Prismacolor and Derwent.) My water-based markers (Tombows dual end, Stabilo 88, Staedler triplus fineliners and Pentel) did not leak through (though my Stabilo 88 left the slightest of shadows on the backside of the page.) My ultra-fine Sharpies and Copics bled through immediately. I would suggest checking your specific gel pens and markers as I don’t have every type to try. For me, I will probably use various water-based markers, gel pens, and colored pencils for this book and let my alcohol-based markers sit this one out.

My review is of the British release of the coloring book and is published what is essentially a branch of Hatchette UK Company. I am also ordering the US version which is being published by Thunder Bay Press and whose release is sometime later this month (December 2015.) I will be doing a comparison of the two books but the comparison will be in the first comment area below. A glitch in the Amazon system is not allowing me to edit my reviews once a video or photo is attached. It is also possible that the reviews for both books will be merged into one listing after both are published. This happened with the recent Animorphia and Lost Ocean coloring books. In that case, my comparison will be more lengthy.

In summary, an interesting coloring book with some very colorist unfriendly but beautiful illustrations. Between these drawings, the two-page spans, and misaligned pages, I detracted a star from my rating. I like the book itself but the publishing could have been improved in a variety of ways.