33 Nautical Steampunk Designs printed on one side of thin white paper

Steampunk Ocean is as close to a graphic novel as I have seen in a coloring book. It tells (without words) the story of an engineer whose ship sinks and he seems to find a house under the ocean filled with mechanical parts and information. He uses this information to create many fantastical creations and is able to eventually create a dive suit so he can explore the ocean floor. He finds an injured mermaid and octopus and is able to create mechanical parts to replace their injured limbs/tail. The story ends with a happy note.

In addition to the cute visual story, the designs are quite different and fun to color. They have a graceful sway to them that I don’t usually find in steampunk. I think it makes a nice change-up from the rigid pipes and mechanics that I usually find and enjoy in this genre of coloring books.

For my first project in this coloring book, I went out of order in the story to color the mechanical mermaid. I loved the fluid grace of the ocean and her upper torso compared to the rigid look of her tail and the other mechanical elements of the design. I did the design using Copic alcohol-based markers with soft lead colored pencils for shading as a top layer.

I will provide more detail on the book below, but here is a quick overview of what I found:

33 Nautical Steampunk designs
Printed on one side of thin white non-perforated paper
Glue Binding
Designs do not merge into the binding
Alcohol and water-based markers bleed through the paper
Gel pens and India ink Pitt artist pens leave distinct color shadows on back of page
Coloring pencils work well with the paper

The designs are printed on one side of thin, white, non-perforated paper. It is thin enough that you can see shadows of the design on the next page through the page you are working on. I try to be pragmatic about this type of paper when I get to see a new artists work. If it were done on better grade paper that was perforated, it would be a huge improvement.

I’ve recently noticed that this publisher (Blue Star) is coming out with some of their existing coloring books on a better grade of paper. I hope they will make that their default for future publications even though the price of the book is about 50% higher.

The binding is glued rather than sewn so you will have to cut pages out to remove them from the book. None of the designs merge into the binding area, so if you cut the pages out, you will not lose any portion of the design. I was able to open and press down hard to get the book to lay flat for coloring.

I test my coloring books with various coloring medium and I will note those used in tests on this book in the comments section below. Here is what I found in my tests:

All markers whether alcohol-based or water-based, brush, fine, or ultra-fine points bled through this paper. My gel pens and India ink artist pens all left easily discernible color shadows on the back of the page. Coloring pencils worked well and I was able to blend the soft lead pencils fairly easily. The hard lead pencils left distinct dents on the back of the page.

Because of the grade of paper, I will always use a heavyweight blotter page beneath the page I am working on. It will keep the rest of the book in good condition by keeping stray ink and dents from marring the ensuing pages.