24 Beautiful Dog Designs in two sizes – printed on one side of paper

This is a lovely set of dog designs by Amanda Neel. I already own her two previous books for specific animal types Lovely Cats and Beautiful Horses and have been enjoying coloring in that book. This book of various dog breeds is just as beautiful and, as with the horse book, has an added advantage of having the designs in the standard size as well as a smaller 5 x 7 inches as well. That way, you can use the smaller design to test colors or simply to have another copy of the design in a smaller format to color or to share. I like the smaller designs for use with cards. I can cut them out, color them, and add them to the front of my home-made card.

The dogs are set in various scenes so you get a real picture of where the dog may be rather than just a head shot or full body of the animal. These are realistic drawings of dogs rather than the more common doodle style artwork. The breed types are printed on the smaller designs but not on the full page version, which is nice so you don’t have to deal with print obscuring part of the design. I’ll list those breeds at the end of this review for anyone interested. I like Ms. Neel’s drawing style. She adds a really nice level of detail.

The designs are printed on thin white non-perforated paper which is typical of CreateSpace publications. The binding of this book is glued rather than sewn or stapled. There is plenty of room to cut the page out if you wish though the space is a little tight on the smaller size designs and you will need to be careful when cutting those out. All designs stop well before the margin. The artist has placed a framing line around each design which helps me tremendously as a colorist. It gives me a natural stopping point which saves me time and ink.

Coloring pencils work well on this paper and behave as expected for their lead type (soft or hard.) The hard lead can leave indents on the back of the page if you are a tad heavy handed as I am. Both alcohol and water based markers bleed through. My gel pens all leave a color shadow on the back of the page. As these designs are printed on only one side of the paper, these issues are not a problem I am now using a piece of chipboard under my work to keep ink from leaking through to ruin the design below. You can use heavyweight paper or card stock but be sure to check to see how many layers you need to keep it from leaking through. The reason I like chipboard is it can be reused over and over again and is available at office supply stores or on-line. I’ll include, in the comments section of this review, a list of the coloring medium I used to test this book.

The breeds listed are as follows: German Shepherd, Afghan Hound, American Cocker Spaniel, Golden Retriever, Yorkshire Terrier, Gordon Setter (puppy), Shetland Sheepdog, Australian Shepherd, Bernese Mountain Dog, Pembroke Corgi, Beagle, Poodle, German Shepherd (second design), Dalmatian, Labrador, West Highland White Terrier, Gordon Setter (adult), Russel Terrier, Doberman, Alaskan Malamute, Siberian Husky, Alaskan Malamute (second design), Papillon, and Chihuahua.