47 Beautiful Designs Straight from the Sketchbook of Laurel Burch printed on one side of perforated paper

The Art of Laurel Burch is a coloring book filled with 47 of the beautiful designs of the late Laurel Burch. I have been a fan of Ms. Burch for many years. I have purchased many items with her great designs and fantastic color palette from socks with horses to cat calenders to purses with mermaids and much more.

Many of her design themes are included in this coloring book but the focus is mostly on horses and cats with, unfortunately, very few dog or mermaid designs. I hope this means that this book is really just a volume one and that we will see more coloring books showcasing Ms. Burch’s great talent.

That the designs are taken directly from her sketchbook is evident in the varying thickness of lines. It appears that some designs were done in straight ink pen while others were drawn with markers. That makes the mix a little more unusual and a little more challenging in determining which medium to use to color the various designs. Not a problem but rather something to think about each time I sit down to color in the book.

The book includes (on the inside of the front cover) some representative color images of her designs. The inside of the back cover provides a view of the colors which Ms. Burch typically used. I may decide to go as bold with my colors or I may re-interpret her designs for myself in a different range of colors. That is the fun of coloring you get to decide for yourself.

Some of the images in the book appear to be cropped, possibly for the sake of fitting on the page. Others do not have all of the details included that I recall seeing in other products. At least one design in my book has very faint framing lines surrounding it which probably should have been removed before publishing.

The cover of the book is lovely with a beautiful glossy rendition of Ms. Burch’s artwork with elements picked out in gold foil. The designs are printed on one side of perforated medium weight paper. The binding is glued rather than sewn but you will want to remove pages at the perforations rather than cutting them out. All of the designs stop well before the perforations so you will not lose any portion of the design if you remove it from the book. I was able to break the spine slightly to get the book to lay fairly flat. Once pages are removed from the book, they are sized so that they can be framed in 8 x 10 inch frames. I plan to use a blotter page (chip board or other heavyweight paper) under the page that I am working on to keep ink or dents from ruining the next design.

I tested a wide variety of coloring medium on this coloring book (see the end of this review for a full list) and here are the results of my tests

All alcohol-based markers bled through the page. All water-based markers and India ink artist pens left distinct shadows of color on the back side of the page. My gel pens left a slight darkening on the backside of the page but not enough to show color. All gel pens except the Uni-ball Signo pens took a much longer drying period than what I usually find to be the case. My various coloring pencils worked through to type and brand. My various soft lead pencils went on well and blended well. They were not what I would call thick and creamy but they had good coverage. My hard lead pencils make distinct marks but also left indents on the back of the page.

These are the coloring medium that I use for testing. If there is something else you feel I should be testing, please let me know and I will see if I can add it to my growing pile:

Markers: 1) alcohol-based Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine) and 2) water-based Tombows dual end markers (brush and fine point), Stabilo 88, and Staedler triplus fineliners

India Ink: Faber-Castell PITT artist pens (brush tip)

Gel Pens: Sakura, Fiskars, Uni-ball Signo in the following sizes – 0.28/0.38/0.5/1.0 and Tekwriter

Coloring Pencils: Prismacolor Premier Soft Core, Derwent Colorsoft, Prismacolor Verithins, Caran D’Ache Pablo Colored Pencils and Faber-Castell Polychromos