60 Wild and Domesticated Animals in Realistic Designs printed on one side of non-perforated page

I own a number of coloring books by Penny Farthing Graphics. These coloring books are published via CreateSpace which is a publishing company that is generally used for self-publishing. These designs are drawn by a variety of artists from all over the world and are licensed for use in this book via Shutterstock.com. The end result is a large coloring book (although on thin paper) which has a varied look to the designs.

This coloring book contains 60 different designs of animals wild and domesticated. The designs are set up for regular coloring but I wanted to attempt to use some of the grayscale coloring techniques that I have learned recently. Two of my first three projects utilize this form (raccoon and bear) while my giraffe is more of a standard coloring project.

The paper used in CreateSpace coloring books is on the lower end of the scale. The trade-off is getting to see a wide variety of self-published artists. I accept this when I buy these books. I wish that they would improve the paper quality and add perforations but it is not something the artists have access to it is the publishing company (which is an Amazon company) who makes these decisions. If paper quality is of primary importance to you, you should always check to see who publishes the book.

I will provide more detailed information about the physical aspects of the book below but as a quick overview, this is what I found:

60 Realistic Animal Designs
Printed on one side of thin, white, non-perforated paper
Glue Binding
Designs well centered and do not merge into the binding
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through this paper
Gel pens and India ink pens leave spots of color and/or shadows of color on the back of the page
Coloring pencils work well with this paper

All of the designs stop well before the binding. The designs are printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper that is typical for books published by CreateSpace. The binding is glued but there is plenty of room for you to cut a page out if you choose to do so. I was able to get the book to lay flat by breaking the spine with a hard crease.

I test all of my coloring books with various mediums and I will provide a list of those at the end of this review. Here are the results of my tests on this book:

All of my markers (alcohol and water based) bleed through the pages. My various gel pens and my India ink artist pens either bleed through in spots or leave a distinct color shadow on the back of the page. My coloring pencils work well with the paper with the soft lead blending well but with the hard lead leaving indents on the back of the page.

If I use anything other than soft lead coloring pencils, I will use a piece of chipboard or heavy paper behind the page I am working on so I don’t ruin the following page with leaking ink.

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:

Alcohol-based markers Copic Sketch, Prismacolor double ended markers (brush and fine point), Sharpies (fine and ultra-fine) Bic Mark-its (fine and ultra-fine)

Waater-based markers 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