46 Licensed Woodland Animal Designs printed on one side of page

I purchased this coloring book on the basis of the description saying that the designs were original. In the sense that someone did originally create these designs, that is a true statement. However, I did not expect what I received which was a coloring book filled with designs that were licensed from Shutterstock.com. I’ve purchased and reviewed a number of these types of books and had no plans to buy any more of them.

I have seen a few of these designs in other of my coloring books, so be sure to watch the video to see if you are duplicating those in your collection. The majority of the designs are new to me, so in the end, I was happy with the number of design pages I received for the price I paid. Also, and I will get into more detail about this below, the way the book was printed makes it head and shoulders above most of the licensed books that I own.

There are 46 animal designs in this book. They are mostly doodle style which allows me, as a colorist, to use a wide variety of colors which would not be possible with a realistic representation of an animal. The designs range from very simple to extremely detailed and intricate with many tiny spaces to color.

There are many animals in the book, including: deer, bear, owls, foxes, birds, butterflies and more. As to whether or not they are all woodland creatures, I cannot say, but they are well done and well printed. Since they are licensed, they are from a wide variety of artists. That reflects in the style of the designs and even how the lines look when you compare one design to another.

I colored two designs to show the vast difference in style and complexity. The first is a stag which I colored with a limited number of Tombow brush markers. The second is a mouse which I did very quickly with alcohol-based markers. There are a number of colored pages in the book of the designs. These are obviously all colored digitally and the color print quality of those pages leave a lot to be desired, so I won’t include the in my photos (but you can see them in the video.)

I will provide detailed information on the physical coloring book below but here is a quick overview:

46 Animal Designs Licensed from Shutterstock
Printed on one side of the page
Printed on thin, white perforated paper
Glue Binding
Designs stop before the perforations
Alcohol and water based markers leak through the page
Gel pens and India ink markers leave color shadows on the back of the page
Coloring pencils work well with this paper

The designs in this book are printed on one side only of thin, white, micro-perforated paper. The designs all stop before the perforations, so you won’t have any loss of design in you remove pages from the book. The binding is glued rather than sewn and I was able to get the book to lay fairly flat for coloring. As a nice feature, the publisher included several pages at the back of the book specifically for testing colorways, etc.

This is the first of this large compilation licensed coloring books that I have bought that have perforations. Between that and the excellent print quality of the pages, I was really pleased to have bought this book. I don’t know if I will buy more of these in the future it will probably depend on the subject matter. However, the quality is good apart from the paper being too thin.

I test my coloring books with a wide variety of coloring medium (which I will list in the comments section below.) Here are the results of my tests:

Alcohol and water based markers easily bleed through this thin paper. Gel pends and India ink leave distinct and heavy color shadows on the back of the page. The gel pens leave dents on the back of the paper. Coloring pencils worked really well with this paper. The soft lead pencils were very thick without much effort and blended and layered very well. The hard lead pencils provided good color and clear lines but left heavy dents on the back of the page.