Legendary Landscapes: Coloring Book Journey
By: Witek Radomski
Rating: 5 of 5
Legendary Landscapes is the first coloring book in a series of collaborative coloring books. The format of the books in the series is larger than most standard coloring books. It still fits easily on my bookshelf and the larger size means less tiny spots to color. The designs themselves are quite detailed but, because of the size of the book, I don’t require special tiny nib pens in order to color them.
The designs are from seven different Canadian artists, including: Witek Radomski, Carrie Wong, Kamala Melzack, Al Sayers, Anonymous, Adrienne Drozdowski, and Ratbath. Five of the seven are now familiar to me as I have seen there work in the second book in this series Legendary Worlds but Ms. Drozdowski and Ratbath are new to me in this book. There is a brief bio for each artist, including Anonymous, at the back of the book as well as thumbnails of each design and attribution to which artist created it.
The coloring book is filled with all sorts of landscapes (including seascapes, cityscapes and even views of the planet from space. Some of the designs are very realistic in their concept while others are pure fantasy. I choose, as my first project, to do one of the more realistic designs of birds in amongst a bevy of birdhouses. The garden scene appealed to the gardener in me. There are so many other projects that I find tremendously appealing that I am sure to be coloring in this book for a long time.
This is what I found when I tested and colored in the book:
86 Pages of both Realistic and Fantasy Landscapes
Designs printed on both sides of heavyweight, white, fairly smooth non-perforated paper.
Designs merge into the binding area
A few designs spread across two pages
Sewn Binding
Alcohol-based markers bleed through the page
Water-based markers did not bleed through but some (Stabilio 88 and Staedler triplus fineliners and the fine point end of Tombows) left the lightest of shadows on the back of the page. Using the brush end of the Tombows worked well for me and did not show through.
Gel pens did not bleed through but required additional drying time.
India ink pens did not bleed through the page.
Coloring pencils were mixed. I had good results with waxed-based soft lead pencils and hard lead pencils in general. Oil-based soft lead pencils laid down good color but did not blend well. Both wax and oil based pencils layered well on this paper.
This coloring book was provided to me as a free sample for test and review purposes.