45 Original and Hand-Drawn American Folk Art Coloring Designs printed on one side of the page

I really enjoy American folk art and have seen self-taught artist Karla Gerard’s original artwork (online) and her rug patterns before, so when I came across a coloring book of her original, hand-drawn designs, I was thrilled to be able to purchase and color in it. Fanciful Folk Art is a wonderful collection of 45 modern American folk art designs. The designs have the almost child-like quality that one expects with folk art and that is what draws me to this style. The pictures are much more sophisticated than what a child would draw but it evokes that response in me. I love to pick up colors and work in big blocks without much consideration (except, perhaps, contrast.) I only have one other coloring book that I consider to be American folk art so getting a book with so many great designs has been wonderful.

The designs in the coloring book are printed on one side of medium weight non-perforated paper. I was able to get the book to lay flat by slightly breaking the spine. The binding is glued rather than sewn so you will have to cut pages out if you wish to remove them. The designs all stop well before the margins so you won’t lose any portion of them if you cut them out. The artist has included a framing line around all of her designs. I really appreciate this as it gives me a natural stopping point and keeps me from wasting ink and time. It is also very frustrating to try to draw at the edge of a design when the elements are not finished the framing line solves this and makes coloring easy and more fun.

Both my alcohol and water based markers seeped through the paper. My gel pens and India ink markers left color shadows on the back of the page. My coloring pencils worked well according to type (soft or hard lead.) My soft lead pencils went on smoothly and my hard lead pencils did not leave an indent on the back of the page. As I certainly plan to use markers in this book, I will put a piece of card stock or chipboard behind the page I am working on to keep ink from seeping through to the following pages. In the comments section below, I will list the coloring mediums I used to test this coloring book.