The Garden of Earthly Delights: A Lush Wonderland of Coloring For Adults
By: Adriana Picker
Rating: 5 of 5
This is a beautifully illustrated coloring book which focuses on a more realistic view of gardens. It gets down to the level of bugs, worms, snails and insects and fungi. In all cases, the designs are artistically arranged and give a feeling of richness to the subject. You see flower petals flying in a breeze, clumps of mushrooms beautifully set across a page. There is even a mandala of insects that is quite stunning. I am a gardener (though more of vegetables than flowers) and I confront the natural elements portrayed in this book each day I am in my garden. It really appeals to me to have one of my other hobbies so beautifully represented. I will really enjoy coloring in this book, especially during the colder months when my garden is on hiatus.
The outside of the cover and the inside as well have coloring opportunities. The designs are printed on both sides of cream colored medium weight non-perforated paper. Many of the designs spread across two pages. Many of the designs merge into the binding. My copy of the book has most of these two-page spreads aligned extremely well. I have only two which are slightly miss-aligned. The book binding is sewn rather than glued, so if you choose to remove pages, you can remove a few at a time by cutting through a few threads. I will not be removing my pages as I find that aligning two-page spreads outside of the book is next to impossible for me. I was able to get the book to lay fairly flat by slightly breaking the spine of the binding.
All markers (both alcohol and water based) bled through this paper. Unfortunately, all gel pens left a color shadow on the back side of the page, too. Coloring pencils worked well and behaved as expected. Since coloring pencils will be the medium I suggest for this book (as it is printed on both sides of the page), I tested them extensively. I am very happy with the way the color lays down and how they blend. I would keep a lighter hand with hard lead pencils so you don’t leave indents on the back of the page. If you decide to use markers or gel pens, you will ruin the page behind the one you are working on. You should still use a blotter page to keep the ink from seeping further into the book and marring more than just the back of the page. I will post a listing of the coloring medium I tested in the comments below if you are interested.
