Gorgeous Grayscale Animal Designs with a fun coloring technique printed on one side of heavyweight perforated paper

This is the first coloring book that I have had that uses grayscale coloring. It reminds me a lot of the old black and white photos that I colorized a few decades ago. Back then, I photographed and printed my own photos in my photo lab and the paper was quite different. Because the images in Beautiful Creatures are printed on heavyweight paper, the techniques used for coloring these are different as well.

The coloring book states and the artist reiterated to me that coloring pencils are the preferred medium for these images. I found that to be absolutely true. However, I love a challenge, so I tested all of my coloring mediums with the book as well. While my soft lead pencils worked very well, I was also intrigued by effect my water-based Tombow brush markers had on the images. It seems to turn the photo into a water-color painting of sorts. I am including photos that show a coloring pencil frog, my test page of medium on a snail (the shell was done by Tombows), and two photos of birds (one half done and the other finished) that show how the Tombows change the image. I don’t usually show my test pages because they are so messy, so please excuse most of the snail image I included it because it shows that all but the soft lead pencils and Tombows didn’t work for me. It might well be that there are techniques I can learn to make them work but for the moment, I can’t recommend them.

Essentially, coloring with soft pencils in this book is simple light colors for light areas, medium for medium, and dark for dark areas. You color the light areas first, then the dark areas. Finally, you come through with the medium colors and blend the picture together. I suggest that you have a blending medium (such as a pencil) at hand when working with this coloring book.

The images are printed on heavyweight perforated paper. The book is glue bound but it is easy to remove the book at the perforation. I was able to get the book to lay flat by breaking the spine.

As noted above, I only recommend soft lead pencils and, for anyone who wants a challenge, water-based Tombow markers. All markers bled through the paper but my gel pens and India ink markers did not. I found that my hard lead pencils were not as effective for this style of coloring as they don’t blend well. I chose not to remove my pages but used a blotter under the page to keep ink from seeping through.

I was provided a sample of this coloring book for test and review purposes.